We don't want to face violence alone anymore
Speech read on December 17th at Stella's open mic
Par Adore Goldman & Francesca
We are Adore and Francesca and we are activists at the Sex Work Autonomous Committee. SWAC is a group that demands better working conditions in the sex industry and the decriminalization of sex work. We do that by encouraging grassroots organization within our workplaces.
As sex workers, we are sometimes tempted to hide the violence we are experiencing because we don’t want it to be used against us. We don’t want to confirm the stereotype that sex work is inherently violent. Unfortunately, by doing so, we are annihilating any chance to fight it collectively. In the last year, with SWAC, we did a militant inquiry in massage parlors and the interviewees shared with us many stories of violence in the workplace. Moreover, many explained that violent customers were often tolerated because they were a source of income for the parlors. This isn’t something specific to the sex industry. Bosses have never guaranteed a safe workplace environment before they were forced to do so. But because our workplaces are criminalized, we are told we don’t deserve these rights, that it’s impossible we get them. Well, rights were never given to us on a silver platter, it was always our collective organization that gave us the power to conquer them.
In these inquiries, we also heard stories of solidarity among workers. Despite having a highly competitive environment, when facing injustices and violence, sex workers do come together. This is what we are doing today and this is what we have to do more of. I’m not talking about being face out; I’m talking about organizing and speaking as a collective. By using collective actions, we can shift the power balance from the abusers to the workers. If money is what our employer is looking after, it’s his pocket we have to aim for.
We don’t want to be alone anymore when facing violence. We want to stand united against it and to fight it as workers. Cause when you’re a worker, you have a toolbox against violence: there are labor laws that say your employer has to guarantee your safety. If he doesn’t respect that, you can go on strike or you can collectively resign. We’re saying it’s time to stop the violence and make this toolbox ours.
The story you’re about to hear is a personal one. It exemplifies one of the many ways in which we may react when confronted with violence. It also exhibits the necessity of the collective. When we support each other, we may begin to organize. Some remarks of the characters may be shocking. We ask you to remember that it’s a literary work and a personal experience. While the characters use generalizing terms, its intention is not to paint the industry in broad strokes, but rather, discuss the unfortunate truth that violence does occur, and that community is one way to combat it.
Short-story by Francesca
When the club closes, we follow three balding men into the back of an Uber XL. I don’t need to tell her that I feel unsafe because she feels it too. We commit portions of our lives to feeling unsafe–being pushed beyond our comfort zones for the cost of a gram or a hydro bill. In the back seat, the balding men are coked-out. They ask us if we know any of the techno artists playing tonight’s event and I joke that I only come for the drugs. Recognizing the severity of my tone, I pitch my voice up an octave, hoping they may pay us more later.
Now, I am digestible; a consumable version of myself that so many women before me fought to dismantle the need for. Part of me feels guilty, but more than that I’m tired because I have been working since 7 o’clock, telling stories from my childhood to men who believe they know what love is, who have recognized it in my small act.
We reach the event late. In the coat-check lineup, I am a performance, stripping off my everyday clothes to reveal the bikini I had been sweating in an hour before. The balding men love this. They chew and swallow and then we go inside. We find space on the dance floor, taking turns keeping them interested. While she dances with them, I let my jaw go slack and my eyes close, allowing my movements to drive me – present rather than presenting. At work, this body moves to its intent, defined by its profitability. Here, this body moves through space and time and even memories. And then we switch, and I am performing for the balding men, but this time, for free.
I cannot be consumable for long, or I risk chewing away the parts of myself that don’t sell. The balding men dance and we monitor them, waiting for an opportunity to slip away. When they are full of drugs and us, we become whole again, cocooning ourselves in a bathroom stall, our bare asses touching the frigid tile. I hold her hand and she tells me about the first time she was raped.
“I think it makes us better at our work,” she says. I ask what she means and she responds,
“Having been abused.”
I think that maybe she’s right. Everyday, we confront the limits of our comfort until, at some point, we don’t recognize them, or ourselves, anymore. At some point, getting into the Uber XL feels like going to sleep and getting raped feels like waking up. Our boundaries are informed by our bodies ability to take and pretend. More than this, we’ve seen the worst and we know to expect it. We are not surprised when the men in your life touch us with cold hands, fiending for a person who is neither of us, who doesn’t exist. We are only sorry for you – the you that shines blue on his phone when he sets it on the table–the you we know he wishes were just a little more consumable. In some ways, we are more sorry for ourselves because we’ll never be able to go back to a time where we don’t know again. Unless we are dancing, slack-jawed, with our eyes closed.