CatsMTL

The Power Wielded by Cities

The Power Wielded by Cities: Striving for Local Resistance

By Celeste Ivy and Melina May
Translation by Adam Hill

The criminalisation of sex work falls under “Canadian” federal jurisdiction, but the criminal code’s Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act is applied by law enforcement, judges, and tribunals of the Canadian provinces. It is also this set of laws that allows for the setting up of victim rescue projects across several territories. In 2014, when the law had just been passed, Harper’s administration pledged 20 million dollars to the fight against human trafficking; a bit less than a half would go to applying the law and the rest to agencies and organizations providing services to those wanting to leave the industry.   

Although cities do not have the power to directly criminalize sex work, several municipal governments and district councils seek to control and limit certain aspects. In this article, we want to expose the power that cities wield over our working conditions. We also want to propose local organizing among SWers: a fight within our neighborhoods and our cities would allow for forms of resistance that are more direct, decentralized, and spontaneous. We will set out examples of repressive municipal regulations in Montreal, Laval, Toronto, and Edmonton: zoning regulations that threaten to make our spaces of work disappear, mandatory licensing in certain cities, and consequences of this on SWers’ integrity and security. We will also explore the birth and implementation of John Schools in Canada, presented as an alternative to the current criminal model that targets a particular demographic of clients. We will conclude by putting forward several strategies of organization and local action. 

Gabor Szilasi, Club Supersexe et Cinéma Palace, Montréal 1979

Urban Zoning: a Constant Threat to our Workplaces!

Increasingly, municipal governments are making use of zoning and urban planning regulations in order to target and shut down our workplaces. Although these regulations are formulated as if designed to guard against public disturbances and to ensure public health and security, we maintain that their aim is rather to undermine the working conditions of SWers and to “sanitize” cities of troubling, visible prostitution. This strategy also contributes to the larger process of gentrification.

During the 2007 Rendez-Vous Montréal Métropole Culturelle, the city of Montreal and the Ville-Marie district presented the Programme particulier d’urbanisme du Quartier des Spectacles as the outline of plans for the urban renewal of Place des arts. The primary motivation of the urban transformations initiated by this program was to visually sanitize the Quartier des spectacles, historically the Red Light District, center of Montreal’s entertainment and sex work, supposedly with the aim of reviving a “dead” neighborhood. These attempts at clearance date back to the 1950s, when the then mayor Jean Drapeau launched multiple political campaigns and urban renovation projects aimed at revamping the neighborhood.There was a distinct irony in the political discourse that claimed to want to make Montreal a more lively and cultural city: the Quartier des spectacles was already a cultural center, but in a form that the municipality preferred to erase. Confronted by the literal destruction of their place of work and increased street-level surveillance, SWers were forced to relocate to neighborhoods where their presence would be less visible to the authorities and where finding clients would be more difficult. 

Among the tactics adopted by district councils and municipal governments, the tightening in the issuance of business licenses has proved effective in closing massage palours and strip clubs. In Montreal, this strategy formed part of the electoral promises of Coderre’s administration when he came to power in 2013. If this tactic was not successful, several districts of Montreal have, since then, adopted measures to get rid of massage parlors in their neighborhoods. Since 2017, the Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie district no longer grants commercial occupancy permits to businesses suspected of seeking to open erotic massage parlors. Following this decision, eight massage parlors have seen their business license revoked, forcing them to close down shop. This tightening of licensing was proposed by the mayor of Projet Montréal, which goes to show that the erasure of our workplaces is a project that rallies the left as much as the right. In September 2023, the district announced their intention to pursue legal proceedings up to the Superior Court in order to shut down the last erotic massage parlor in their jurisdiction, Spa Bamboo. This parlor had appealed the decision in 2017 and continued its activities. In Laval, since 2018, massage parlors and strip clubs are banned across the whole jurisdiction except within the industrial zone at a maximum of five establishments, which are not allowed to display any signage or advertising. Such municipal measures explain the disappearance of clubs across Quebec at large: fifteen years ago there were 220 establishments in the province, now there are no more than 60. In Toronto, the Division of Municipal Licensing & Standards allows only 63 adult entertainment licensing in its jurisdiction since the 1970s. Zoning laws and the procedure for applying for an exception, which costs between $100,000 and $250,000, make the opening or relocating of these clubs almost impossible.     

We have all met a SWer who dreamed of opening their own establishment, offering better working conditions and increasing inclusivity, but the stubbornness of this municipal sanitizing prevents the industry from developing ethically. Andrea Werhun, author of the memoir Modern Whore and social worker at Maggie’s, a pro-SWer activist project in Toronto, speaks to this same point: 

I dream of a world where women or people who are sex-worker allies are running these clubs, and creating the type of environment where people feel both entertained but also fulfilled on a meaningful level, where they’re like, ‘Oh, this is just, like, a really great entertainment complex where people are enjoying themselves’

If these measures undermine the owners of clubs that already exist, the opening of new clubs by a woman or allies with fewer resources and administrative connections is basically impossible, which is in itself anti-feminist. 

Cities make use, therefore, of their zoning and urban renewal powers in order to close our workplaces and to push us further and further from city centers towards industrial neighborhoods, which are less  well-lit and more isolated. The decrease in the number of our workplaces and their lack of regulation also increases competition between employees and the power held by employers. An activist with SWAC and dancer explains the following: “Dances at my club are still priced at $10 because there are not many strip clubs and the managers let anyone come in at any time, which means there are so many girls on the floor and so much competition.” The closure of massage parlors and strip clubs will not put an end to the need to work for many. Forced out of our workplaces, many of them will turn to working from their home or outcalls. This further isolates us and puts us at greater risk of assault.

Picture from the industrial zone in Laval from Google Earth Pro
Art by @heatofthenow

Licenses to Work:  a Means to Control and a Threat to Security

In certain Canadian cities and provinces, for example Ontario and Edmonton, SWers in lawful spaces need to obtain a license in order to prove their age and work in a massage parlor or strip club. Although these licenses serve, inter alia, to inhibit access for minors to these spaces, they are also a means to control, weaken, and surveil SWers.

In May 2022, the city of Newmarket in Ontario adopted a new classification of licenses for massage parlor employees in an effort to curb the sex industry. As a result of the new measure, owners are obliged to prove that employees offering massage services received training at an accredited institution. The city’s mayor explained this decision as follows: “I think we really just want to drive [the sex trade] out of our town, quite frankly, […] I don’t think it’s consistent with the values of our town.” 

 

A petition launched by Butterfly, an organization that defends the rights of migrant and Asian SWers in Toronto denounced the measure as “perpetuat[ing] systemic racism and undue hardship by preventing non-English speaking, low-income, Asian women from working in [personal wellness establishments]”. Following this decision, several businesses were forced to close overnight leaving many women and families without means of subsistence.

In Ontario, dancers are also required to obtain a license to work legally. SWers with criminal records and im/migrant SWers without permanent residency cannot apply for this license, which pushes them into work situations that are all the more precarious and criminalized. In Edmonton, massage parlor and agency employees must also obtain a license to work. Even if the physical copy of these licenses do not include any personal data, this data can nonetheless be accessed by employers, which threatens the integrity and security of SWers. In an open letter to the city hall, ANSWERS, an organization that defends the rights of SWers in Edmonton, denounced the harmful effects of such a measure: there are many cases of employers and/or colleagues disclosing sensitive personal information to SWer’s family, civil employer, or landlord. The obligation to share personal information with employers is not only dangerous, it is also redundant because SWers receive payment directly from clients.

The stigmatization experienced by SWers is also anchored in the introduction of work licenses; they are treated as a danger to public health. These licenses are a way for municipal officials and police to control SWers more effectively, without concretely offering support services for risk reduction or for safe working conditions. These forms of legislation are born out of a vision that is anti-SWer, in which SWers are perceived as a threat to public health and therefore need authoritarian surveillance. Those SWers working within the majority of legal contexts conform to standards set in place by the employer. This undermines the possibility of unionizing since the autonomy of SWers is heavily restricted and any consideration of working conditions is pushed further to the side. The actual needs of SWers in terms of their general security, harm reduction, and the improvement of their working conditions are ignored.

 

John Schools: a Moralizing Boot-Camp 

In May 2022, the city of Longueuil put in place a pilot project financed by the Ministry of Justice designed to entrap clients and impose reeducation upon them by way of John Schools. Clients that were arrested by the police for the first time would have to pay $1000 and commit themselves to an eight-hour long course during which multiple speakers would lecture them and explain to them the dangers of the sex industry. The former police chief of Longueuil and current head of the Montreal City Police Service, Fady Dagher, explained how the course plays out: the clients come face-to-face with a young victim who explains to them “how she feels abused, […] how many drugs she has to take to get through her day, and how times she faked [an orgasm].” These programs refuse to consider SWers as actors in their own story. The offensive discourse that they expound foregrounds the popular narrative according to which SWers are passive victims that need saving, all whilst being presented as alternative justice programs. 

The John School concept emerged in the 90s in San Francisco. The proponents of these programs defend them as an alternative to the punitive criminal model that remains ineffective, supposedly redirecting clients in a different direction. These programs can take several different forms, but at their core they offer the following choice to clients who have been arrested: commit to a day-long course or go before the tribunal, which would mean the risk of being found guilty and being given a criminal record. The programs are also designed to handle as many offenders as possible outside of the traditional system and therefore at the lowest possible cost. 

The first John School in Canada dates back to 1996 in Toronto. Around this time, a growing number of citizens, concerned for their security and quality of life, began to put pressure on politicians, legislators, and the police to take action on street prostitution in their neighborhood. In 1995, a local committee on prostitution was formed, consisting of police officers, social workers, and local councilors. The setting up and running of the first John School pilot project was taken on by the Salvation Army, which is, unsurprisingly, also involved in probation and conditional release programs for the Canadian penal system. Originally, participation in the program was free, clients were invited to contribute via donations to an exit program for street-based SWers. Since the donations were insufficient, the Streetlight Support Services agency took over administrative control of the John School program, and introduced a mandatory participant registration fee of $400, of which 100% of the profits went to supporting the administration and mission of the agency.     

These programs targeted and controlled a certain type of client: “the men diverted to the ‘John School’ tend to be working class, visible minority and English as Second Language (ESL) immigrants with comparably low levels of education and income levels.” It would be factually inaccurate to suggest that this is a representative cross section of men that pay for sexual services in Canada. Instead, it seems clear that John Schools serve to punish a certain fringe of the industry’s clientele, those from poorer and more marginalized socio-economic groups. 

Certain programs in Canada are still supported today by Christian associations such as the Salvation Army. This non-profit organization, renowned for its murky past and homophobic practices, now has the power to interfere with the sex industry, extracting profit from it and exercising forms of control. These programs use moral panic about human trafficking to distract attention from the actual needs and concerns expressed by SWers themselves. 

These programs have nothing close to do with restorative justice, as some current programs claim to defend themselves. Instead of offering an alternative to the criminalization of sex work, the John School model expands the scope of control and surveillance of sex work to non-governmental agencies.

For Workplaces Without Police: Local-level Resistance! 

Keeping track of municipal politics becomes extremely important, even in the ideal context of decriminalization, because they constitute one of the principal regulatory mechanisms that govern the lives of SWers. A good example of the reach of their power is the city of Campbell River, which, several days before the start of the three-year pilot project that decriminalized the possession of drugs in British Columbia, adopted a new municipal regulation that sought to impose a fine on those who consumed drugs in public spaces.

In the face of constant threat from city governments, we must reflect upon strategies that can be put in place to protect our workplaces. In an extensive study of working conditions among dancers in the United Kingdom, the authors concluded their article by highlighting the potential that the granting of business licenses could have on defining workplace standards in the sex industry. According to Lo Stevenson, “[i]f these standards were negotiated with organized sex workers, adequately reflecting their needs and concerns, such a regime could not only increase autonomy and solidarity for sex workers, but also reduce reliance on costly and time-consuming litigation.” Putting pressure on local and licensing authorities, for example during city council meetings, to demand that business permits accord with our wishes or to block attempts by city governments to close our workplaces, could represent an interesting means of action.

 Profiling, particularly of Asian women, during the inspection of massage parlors is a well-known tactic. In solidarity with our migrant colleagues who face constant targeting by the police, we should demand that the city of Montreal as well as the multiple other sanctuary cities in Canada make good on the commitments they have made towards those with this status and cease their collaboration with border services deporting SWers whether or not they have legal status. In Montreal, the collaboration between the police and Canadian Border Services Agency makes recourse to the protection of the police next to impossible for migrant SWers who are victims of criminal acts and abuse. 

Although public health arguments are often mobilised to defend the criminalisation of sex work, we believe that decriminalization could support the reduction in the transmission of illnesses transmitted sexually or through the blood. In the current context in which clients are considered to be criminals, it is difficult for SWers to gain the necessary information from their clients, because they are even more reluctant to go through a filtering process generally put in place by SWers. Communication with our clients, not tarnished by fear of the authorities, would significantly help reduce risks for both parties involved. If clients could share their personal information with less fear of arrest, SWers could better choose their clients. This is why the Canadian municipalities involved must bring to an end the application of the federal law that criminalizes the sex industry as well as their punitive John School programs. The resources this would free up should be reinvested in community organizations that offer support and harm reduction services directly to SWers. 

CatsMTL

Ground Score Diaries

Ground Score Diaries

By Jesse Dekel

When we learn about a colleague’s death, we generally don’t need to know the circumstances to know it’s a violent one. I’m not necessarily talking about the kind of violence that ends up on a true crime podcast or the front page of the Journal de Montréal. Although these stories do exist, there are often multitudes of them that are never talked about; deaths that occur after a series of traumas and injustices; a series of month-ends, filthy apartments and crooked landlords; a series of closed doors, access counters, and waiting lists. Death by despair.

I recently lost a friend. There are those friendships that are made amid struggle, and there’s something different about them. You know that no matter what, there will always be that common experience connecting you. That’s how it was with Jesse.

Our first interaction was at a meeting of the Sex Work Autonomous Committee. Back then, it wasn’t called that. In fact, the project didn’t yet have a name. Melina May and I had put out a call for mobilization, and this was the second meeting we’d organized. We didn’t really know what we wanted to do, and I don’t even know if we believed in it ourselves. We had a bit of impostor syndrome. But now we could say there were three of us, and that counted for a lot!

Jesse wasn’t afraid to speak up for SWers. She didn’t do it because she loved her job, but because she wanted to organize with her colleagues to improve her working conditions. She didn’t care about charity; for her, we had no time to lose. We had to be political if we wanted to make gains that would improve our lives!

I remember the first action we organized with SWAC on May 1st, 2021. It was she and I who led it. We were speaking out against the curfew, the total lack of consideration for SWers during the COVID-19 health crisis, and the repression. Jesse confided in me that it had been her happiest day of 2021. She continued to get involved despite her return to New Zealand during the summer of 2021 and the 18-hour time difference.

The last time I spoke to Jesse was the day Carole Leigh died. Carole Leigh was the first person to define herself as a sex worker. Jesse had posted in her story a photo of her encounter with her a few years earlier when she was living in San Francisco. I had replied to her story because I was impressed; to me, Carole Leigh was a legend in terms of hooker activism. I’d asked Jesse if she wanted to talk soon. She said she was going to Auckland that week, but we could call the following week. In the end, she and Carole Leigh passed away the same week.

I think we must remember when we lose people. I think one way Jesse would have liked us to honor her life is for us to continue the whore resistance and not compromise.

A few weeks before she passed, Jesse sent me a manuscript of her diaries from her time in San Francisco. She wanted to publish them. I told her I’d give her a hand with proofreading and sending it out to publishers. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time. So I’m taking the liberty of publishing a few excerpts here.

Adore Goldman

Zine from Jesse Dekel distributed on June 2nd at International Sex Worker's Day

05.12.18

Sleep was shit, I kept waking up uncomfortably, and frustratingly at every move.

Early in the morning, I left Angel’s apartment because she had to be somewhere at 8, and I took a bus to the HSRC. I got there at 9, and Rose was late and came at 9:50, instead of 9:30, so I just sat down looking at dog shit for a while.

The Cole Street Clinic is this incredibly overt friendly LGBT friendly place, with a crapload of free snacks (of which I helped myself dearly), and the most patient staff. Unfortunately, I am not patient. And I spent a total of like 3 and a half hours there, sitting in various waiting rooms, and saw a total of 3 doctors and case managers.

I talked about everything case managers usually ask about. Being homeless, suicide attempts, drugs, being undocumented, etc. There was a lot of talking. I did a urine test, and a TB test (finally), and checked my weight, which was something around 149 pounds/67 kgish. I guess I’ve gained 5 kg since I got to America. Being homeless means being well fed, or I’m just over-eating because of the scarcity of available food? I don’t know. I still had to do the urine STI test even though I told the doc about my lack of sex. Ugh.

Eventually, I got the American prescriptions, and a new sleeping med prescription because Zopiclone is non-existent in the States, or something.

I was there way too long and spent so much time fucking around on Shazam, it was so boring and stressful. The case manager printed out 50 pages of my medical record. Euggh.

Because it went on for so long, and I had a job interview at 2, they called a Lyft for me, and I got to my interview at New Door 5 minutes early.

New Door is like a hip, trying to be youthful, cool place-zone-area. The interview mostly consisted of really personal questions (confidential, don’t worry!) about legal history, drug history, etc. Super weird. I answered them all. There’s a two-week stipend-paid orientation starting January, and a follow-up interview next week. So that means I think I ‘got’ the job, though I think everyone does because it’s literally an unemployment program.

I walked straight to the San Francisco General Hospital, which didn’t help me at all because I have no travel insurance, and then walked to a Safeway, where I was told my concerta would cost $600 USD, and my hormones $120. Fuck. So I left after trying to call my travel insurance and failing to sort it out.

I’m so frustrated with this all.

I ate at a shitty sandwich store and bussed to the Haight to go to the Homeless Youth Alliance needle exchange because I wanted a sleeping bag and fentanyl strip tests. Luckily, I bumped into Rose, who took me to Sonya. I was so happy to see her. I like her so much. She’s so great. I really like the way I feel around her. I ramble. She’s fucking great.

Afterward, I headed to HYA and got the fentanyl strip tests, sleeping bag, and snacks. I asked about hormones and was taken to a nurse/doctor room thing, and told about some resources from a couple of really helpful people who were really supportive. I’m exhausted by how nice people are to me. So much niceness.

I left and walked around looking for a sidewalk to crash on. Some dude, Randy, told me there’s a rule where we can’t sleep/lie down until 11 pm. He also had this joke. What’s the difference between Medford’s tea, and a bottle of piss? They’re both a bottle of piss.

Medford is this German guy who gives out food to homeless people, including tea. What a sweetheart.

I found a little alcove in front of a kitschy storefront and across the street from ‘The R Tours’. This is where I lie in my blue sleeping bag and sleep on the sidewalk.

I had dinner at a taco shop and brushed my teeth/washed my face/did my nightly routine in their store bathroom.

I will sleep on the ground in my warm, blue sleeping bag.

Jesse's collage

06.12.18

I woke up multiple times in the night, the first time to go on a tempered, agile, pee mission. And the second time, to pee on a tree 20 meters away from my sleeping bag.

It was a nice sleep except for that.

When I woke up,  I didn’t need to get dressed obviously, so I just bussed to Tom Weddel’s place. Some Russian guy (by his self-proclamation) ranted to me and was super racist, so I argued with him. He also said he gets all his free money + stamps through SSI (Social Security Insurance) and made a weird comment about New Zealand’s meth.

I waited almost an hour at the clinic, even though I was the first to arrive 15 minutes before opening because I am an idiot and didn’t go to the right place. I met a couple of doctors, Shannon and Doctor Zabin, the latter who sorted some hormone stuff, and wrote a letter for me to give the SF General Pharmacy about signing up to SF city insurance or something like that.

A doctor gave me a bunch of fentanyl strip tests, and Doctor Zabin asked me to learn how to administer Narcan, a drug given to people overdosing on opioids. So another nurse took me to a room, and gave me a quick demo and explanation, and gave me Narcan, and registered me as a Narcan carrier on the database. So now I have a bunch of clean needles in my possession, fentanyl strips, and a tab of acid.

We tested a tiny sliver of the acid for fentanyl. I put on gloves and cut that sliver off with teeny scissors. Luckily, there was no fentanyl, and I am just a crazy person.

After that, I walked to Thomas’ apartment and picked up my contacts, and the bag I was storing there. He had a friend over, who told me about some trans and undocumented persons’ resources. I used his bathroom to brush my teeth etc, left some items to donate, and then headed off to the HSRC.

I ate lots of food and talked to Sonya and Rose. Camila offered me a job as a youth representation during an intern interview, paid via gift cards, and I accepted. So an hour after closing, I stayed back and participated in an awkward yelly interview, which mostly consisted of people questioning the interviewee about whether she had ever been homeless and if not (not), how would she be able to relate and connect with homeless kids. There were lots of neighborhoods repping and posturing. It was uncomfortable. I asked the obligatory ‘do you have any transgender friends’ query that I was probably brought in to ask, and she said no.

I got my gift cards and talked to Camila, Rose, and Sonya about the Jazzys shelter. They may have a bed tomorrow night. So I’m meeting Sonya at 10:30 am at HSRC tomorrow, and heading to Jazzys. I’m thinking about getting into sex work. It sounds like a good way to make money in my position, but I don’t really know. I talked to Sonya about it, and she said she doesn’t recommend it but can provide me with good resources, should I decide to.

So I decided to go to the SF General, and Angel said they are open till 7 pm. I got some laundry money and took a half-hour bus there. Angel was wrong. They close at 5 pm. It was 5:20 pm. So I decided to go to the SF LGBT center because I thought it would be open. I was wrong, the youth program closed at 6 pm. It was 6:15 pm. So I headed to the Contemporary Jewish Museum and spent $5 for an exhibition. It was pretty nice, there was one of a Jewish tattoo artist called ‘Lew the Jew’ and one on Jewish clothes. There was also an embroidery workshop, and I embroidered a gold thread through a flower.

I accidentally stole a bunch of food from a private event. I had no idea it was a private event until I ate everything. I feel kind of bad about it. I think it was a retirement party for a sweet old Jewish lady.

I decided to stay at a hostel. So I went on Agoda and booked a $30 night at Amsterdam Hostel. Walking there, I saw a massive line in front of Gamestop. People waiting for the new Smash Bros game, Super Smash Bros Ultimate. I got to Amsterdam Hostel and excitedly jumped into the shower until I realized it’s fucking broken I couldn’t even use it as a bath because there is no bath plug. So I used the lower bath tap while lathering soapy water on, and splashing myself upwards for like 30 minutes. It was fucking stupid. Ugh. I’m stupid.

12.12.18

I feel so fucking tired of all this shit. I went to the HSRC today yada yada yada. Talked to Sonya. 

I printed off some resumes that were tailored to hospitality jobs and dropped them off at a couple of places. We walked by an art exhibition of blot sheets and saw some Alex Gary-type murals on them.

We hung out at the LGBT center, and I played Fire Emblem and watched Blue Planet 2. Then I headed to St. James Infirmary. The sex workers’ infirmary. I met with a harm reduction counselor, who I talked to about hormones and sex work. I am so lethargic, and my right nostril feels rough and sore, for seemingly no reason.

 

Jesse's collage

I got to the St. James Infirmary and took the elevator to the 4th floor where I checked in with a receptionist and filled out a bunch of forms. After that, I waited in a social room where some gay Robin Williams movie was playing, and there was free food and clothes with a ‘you try it on, you keep it’ policy. I grabbed a couple of croissants and a ‘non-store’ food bag. Someone complimented my necklace, and I talked to a worker about the new Smash game. People were nice. I was given a number to wait (54) for my doctor/counselor, and after 15 minutes or so, she came out to get me. The door to the meeting space wouldn’t open, so she asked me to go sit back down and came to get me again a few minutes later.

She asked me all about what was going on. “You’re undocumented, trans, trying to get hormones, and homeless”. She said it was going to be really tough in San Francisco. Really tough. She warned me.

I asked her how to get into sex work and she told me. She asked if I was scared, and I told her I was scared of the cops catching me and deporting me more than anything. She said that wouldn’t happen. She told me to ask for cash upfront. And to always be nice. I need to dress up. And wear heels. And a mini skirt.

We talked about access to hormones, and she said that I should probably just pay for them. She also told me about where I can go to find sex work, and what to expect in terms of rates, and what to do. She told me what to wear, and how to get clients. She said that I’m young and trans and that I can sell that. I just need to work.

I asked for sex worker resources, and she asked me if I have ever done sex work before. I said no, and she told me all about it. She told me what to expect, where to go, and how to make sure I get paid.

She gave me heels, and her card and said “I worry about you.” and “I hope this city doesn’t swallow you up.” and “But you can do it.” She is a 60-year-old trans woman from Australia who worked as a showgirl in Vegas in the 80’s.

I left feeling lethargic and couldn’t get Google Maps to work properly so I walked after failing to find the 2nd bus stop.

I feel tired and stupid and shit. I can’t write properly. I keep making mistakes. Nothing is changing. I just want to play video games all day. I don’t want to be here. I am sick of this place. I don’t know what to do. I have no motivation. I hate this all. What am I supposed to do??? I hate this. Should I leave? This reminds me of when I was homeless in Wellington. I thought to myself “I’m struggling so hard to find a place here, but I don’t even see why this place is worth it. I hate it. It’s not so special”. That’s what I’m feeling again. Why the fuck am I in San Francisco?

Jesse's collage

09.03.19

Today, I finally continued my e-payments account verification and tried out camming.

It was really difficult at first, but slowly, after broadcasting for an hour in total, I got 11 viewers at once. People would comment saying my lips are sexy, and DM me. One guy became my ‘room moderator’ for a while, and gave me advice on ‘teasing’. He sent me a GIF of him stroking his cock. I really liked the attention, and honestly was semi-hard the whole time, despite being fully clothed. I got out the fake plastic DUREX practice penis [stolen from the doctor’s office] and blew it. I only got 1 token, which is 5 cents in the hour, but I had two offers to meet older men, one in exchange for $200. I liked it a lot, and I need to get better at it. I have to learn how to properly use apps and bots, for my broadcast to function smoothly. I’ll try tomorrow.

Turns out I didn’t even need to verify my e-payments account and could have started earlier. I guess Monday. Fuck.

I really fucking like the sexual attention. I have never felt desired before.

One person joined my chat room and asked me how many inches I am. I replied saying I use the metric system, and he left.

Fun fun fun.

Other than that I mostly just watched anime, and worked on a ‘Top 10 Places To Cry’ joke article. I wonder if it will actually get accepted.

At 4:30 I left for Haight Street and checked out old action figures at Amoeba Records.

I bought a yellow long-sleeve mesh shirt for $10 at K-POK and talked to Frankie and Drew who were sitting at a spot nearby.

There is this really cool art exhibition of tiny baby CRT TVs running anime footage on loops at the Red Victorian. I want to make something like that.

I returned to the house and watched Berserk Arc 1 with Kat and Antoinette while sharing a fruit granola smoothie, and pizza. The movie was average compared to the 1997 anime.

Afterward, I studied HTML online for a while, and talked to my cousin Guy, wishing him happy birthday.

I am sick, and my lips are sore. I had a dream where I tried to memorize music and a comedy concept. There is something in my eye. I’m lonely except when I’m not. I’m sad except when I’m bored. I’m bored when I’m not stressed. I’m busy when I’m not organized. I’m a boring, stressed walking contradiction, with nothing to offer in a timely manner.

I canceled all today’s plans because I am a piece of shit, who sucks in terrible ways.

I need to study. I need to read. I need to write. I need to relax. I need…

Tomorrow I might buy a Nintendo Switch. If anything, it will give me things to write about. And jerking off for strangers online who compliment my titties’ potential to ‘fill out’.

I like sucking on the dildo-looking thing and looking salacious. I want people to want me. I hope I can get money because fuck, what I am doing being homeless. Ahhh… everything is weird, fuck.

I am an ugly regressive freak. I am hideous, I am disgusting. A gremlin. Ugly. Ugly. Freak. Gremlin.

Jesse's collage

23.03.19

This morning, I had my date with Kat. I think it went pretty well. We sat and talked at Coffee To The People for a couple of hours, and then walked up Haight. Checking out stores as we did.

I bought a zine DIY guide from Silver Sprocket.

The only thing that was off was when we passed by some Dirty Kids, like Misha, and Kat asked if I ‘volunteer’ with them. Which felt kind of condescending or something. I’m not exactly sure how to articulate this emotion/response. I still really enjoyed her company, and she’s very cute.

I jokingly said that her leather shoelaces were ‘very gay’ and she told me how she finds that kind of comment weird. Ahh.

I do like her though, and want to spend more time with her.

We went to the taco restaurant off Belvedere, but at 2:30 pm-ish she had to leave because her HIV-positive friend’s viral load was really high, and his nurse wasn’t there to help him.

After the date, I went home. And at 6 pm, I decided to go to this comic book store closing party/sale. It took 40 minutes to get there, and the place was packed full of obnoxious, loud American nerds standing in front of the comic book racks that I wanted to check out.

I ended up buying a Saga enamel pin that was 50% off for a total of $5. Then I left. The event was anxiety attack-inducing, and I didn’t see any comics for sale that I was interested in.

After that, I bussed to a McDonald’s that was also peak full and I gave up. Then I bussed home.

I watched a couple of episodes of Jojo, and at 11 pm I began broadcasting on Chaturbate.

In total, I made $32.25 worth of tokens. This guy named Al joined my chatroom and was dropping tips. At one point, he sent me his phone number and eventually convinced me to call while blocking caller ID.

I started talking to Al on the phone. He is a 35-year-old electrician who lives in Santa Clarita, and his birthday was March 17 or 18.

He only likes girls and said a lot of nice things about my lips.

I added a password to my broadcast, and he paid me tokens as I stripped and touched myself.

I had phone sex with him, while he jerked off.

After pretending to ride him, and do a couple of different positions, I masturbated until I came.

After that, he jerked off until he finished, and tipped me a total of 625 tokens, I think.

Good stuff. I am a sex worker.

The first time, I made 1 token. The second time, I made 100 tokens, and this third time, I made 625 tokens. I’m learning, hopefully.

07.04.19

This morning following 2 cancellations (one from Bualia, and one from that dude Dan who I met at Comix Experience), I decided to try to display and do tarot readings. At 11:45, I went on Haight to where Peaches, Curls, and Catfish were, and sat down facing a storefront with my display.

I was at it for 2 hours. Two crust punks came to ask if I’d seen their dogs and then were total jerks. One bought a pin off of me for 30 cents, and the other demanded a free reading followed by them both tag-teaming to lecture me on how to do readings. They stamped my sign, even when I asked them not to. Assholes.

I wrote (Hebrew) reading $5 on the sign, which in grammatically incorrect Hebrew transliteration means ‘butthole reading $5’. I made $7.32 in total. I did one reading. It sucked.

Jesse's collage

I gave up at 2 pm, and spent all the money I made and more on a slice of pizza, an Arizona, and nachos.

The two dudes who go around bare naked with those chastity things on walked past us. I told Curls that I’d spange them as a joke, and I did. “I don’t have any change on me. Where would I put it?”.

After that, I went home in time for a community meeting feat. pizza. I said that the house is fucking hot, and Cocoa teased by saying that it might be my hormones and asked if I was going through menopause.

Earlier in the day, she said that there was a drag show that we were invited to last night, but I said that I was “Incredibly high on cocaine” so couldn’t go. She laughed.

I watched Jojo, and at 9:30 pm went back out on the street. Peaches was tired, so went to crash, and I saw Toast. I went to a corner store to buy a fizzy drink and a man near me kept swearing/talking to himself loudly. I didn’t buy anything, and when I walked out after this guy, the store owner screamed at him, telling him to give back a can that he apparently stole. Toast told him to give it back, and the store owner told Toast to “Kick his fucking ass”. The guy said that it’s harassment and threatened to call the cops. Toast told him to “Get the fuck off of my block” and counted down from 5. A bus stopped because this guy was in the middle of the road, and then he banged on its door and said “Let me in, this guy is telling me to get off the block right now.” The bus let him in, and as it drove off, Toast ran with it and slapped the window yelling “I knew you’d listen. Bitch!” Wild.

Fuck mentally ill people? This world. Sucks. Fuck.

What a waste of a weekend.

At home I cammed, and the guy from Santa Clarita came back on my broadcast, and I phoned him. We organized a private show at 30 tokens per minute, in which I got naked and jerked off, but didn’t cum. He spent around 500 tokens on me, and when he ran out, we ended the call.

I finished camming after that.

Gaaaaaaaaah. Surely I can do more than jerk off and watch anime? No? Probably not then.

At least I got to do cocaine.

Jesse's collage

01.06.19

This morning I went to the Castro to sell a couple of books at Dog Eared Books, and to check out the historic gay synagogue Sha’ar Zahav. All the services were over at the temple, so it was a waste of time, and I only made $4 from the books.

I went home, and then at 5 pm, I went to the DSA office for the Socialist Feminist sign-making event. I got an email this morning from Lia saying that they nominated me as one of the new socialist feminism co-chairs, but obviously, I’m not going to do it if I skip town. So the whole sign-making event was awkward, as I didn’t want to bring it up.

I made a whole bunch of pins with the badge maker and signs that read “Sex Work Is Real Work” or “TERFS and SWERFS Fuck Off”, and had lots of fruits while I was at it.

Christian from the ILWU said he was going to a ILWU party, so I invited myself and took the 33 to the Mission with Lia. I told them that I’m going to Montreal. It went well.

I got to the Hilton hotel where the party was at 8:30 and met Kevin and this other guy from DSA. We went in, and I was instantly surrounded by the ruling class of rich liberal Democrats.

This fancy rich lady dropped a couple of prongs on the floor and walked away, so I told her, and she went back to pick them up. Hehe.

The party was really uncomfortable. Everyone was so rich, and I was so out of place. So much old money. Kevin and the other guy went with me to the fucking YIMBY party upstairs, and the security guard stopped me, asking if I was “at the right place” (regarding my attire), so I told him yes.

That party was fucking obtuse. There was a very impressively plastic surgeoned lady speaking to Kevin about how Bernie was trying to ‘whore her out’ or something, and the whole crowd of rich fucking yuppies made me want to vomit.

One guy lectured me on how trickle-down economics/housing equity is connected, and I wanted to cry. I was so out of place, and a bartender asked me to take off my bag because I knocked some serviettes off his table. There was free wine though.

It was so high in the tower, and the weird environment got boring. I went back downstairs and met Jennifer from the Tenants Union, and Kate-Mary from DSA. And Xavier from DSA. We went to a liquor store, and Jennifer bought me Anchor Steam beer. Then we headed to the Moscone Center on Howard and the 4th.

At one point, when I was leaving the YIMBY party, this DSA East Bay person in an elaborate transport system-themed dress decorated with political pins talked to me in the elevator. Also occupied by yuppies. I complained about being uncomfortable surrounded by rich people, and they said it’s an important skill in politics. Guh.

We got to the center and went to the Bernie 2020 party. Bernie Sanders had just left the conference. We drank, and I met up with Jen Snyder.

We went to a nurses’ party for free food and beers, and another party for the same. I got drunk, and Christian told me to email him about NZ sex workers’ unions, so he can talk to Bobby from ILWU about unionizing sex workers with this helpful info.

Jen Snyder and this political consultant Jim, and I fucked around and drank a lot. At one point, this liberal in a ‘Ruth Bader Badass’ shirt gave me shit for my ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ shirt and said he didn’t think there were still Nazis, and that American History X was just a movie.

We got more drunk and laughed at the middle school prom playlist playing. Eventually, we got kicked out at closing time, and I saw the dude running against Pelosi who befriended me. He said he was reading poetry at the Mission and had vegetables thrown at him until he smoked weed with the throwers.

Jen got us a Lyft to the Haight, and I walked home from her house. What a weird fucking night.

03.06.19

Yesterday was the first day during the almost 7 months I’ve been in America that I didn’t write in my journal. It feels sort of shitty, but I’m also happy that the shtick went on for so long, straight.

So I guess I’ll just recite the events of the last two days.

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 9:30 and didn’t have enough time at all to shower, so I just put on my clothes and bussed to the DSA office to meet Lia so that they could give me a ride to the International Sex Workers Day event held at Oscar Grant Plaza, in Oakland.

Jay was there too, and we all loaded Lia’s car with DSA shit and drove to Oakland.

Jesse's collage

The event was great. I noticed that I had a big ass smile on my face half the time, and I just fucking loved feeling as though I was part of a community. I am a sex worker. I’m one of them. They are like me. It feels to me as though freelance sex work is lonely work, and community is hard to find, but being surrounded by all these fellow sex workers was so communal, kind, and caring.

Carol Leigh, aka Scarlet Harlett, the person who coined the term ‘sex work’, interviewed me about how anti-sex trafficking laws are oppressive and screw over sex workers, as well as lucrative multi-billion dollar businesses for Christian reactionary NGOs.

I gave out the sex workers’ zine at the DSA table to passersby and ate lots of bagels, strawberries, etc from the Coffee Not Cops stall.

After the event, Lia gave me a ride to Mission and 24th, and I had McDonald’s, then skated to the 33 bus stop at 16th and Mission. The bus took like a half hour to arrive, and I only stayed home for a minute before heading off to the St. James Infirmary fundraiser gala.

I was let in the fancy as fuck gala, that had security guards and ‘mixologists’ in tight shirts, and when Jay arrived, we snuck into the actual $200 ticket gala area.

Jennifer Holliday from Dream Girls sang, and it felt like a movie. Christina Aguilera was there too apparently.

Back downstairs at the after party, Molly and Eugenica, whom I met at the sex workers’ day event, showed up. Jay left, and as I was getting pretty wasted, I was invited to an after-after-party in a hotel room.

A group of us took Ubers to this fancy as fuck hotel, and Molly kept buying me drinks. One with olives in it, which tasted awful.

We headed up with the group to a hotel room, where we drank, and people snorted cocaine in the bathroom. Molly said “You’re really cute. Do you want to kiss a little bit?” and I said, “I’m really sorry, but no”. We then all got kicked out of the hotel room by management for some reason, so we just went on a weird little pub crawl that I really don’t remember much of. Just drinking, peeing, and Molly holding my hair as I vomited in a toilet.

Molly called me a Lyft home, and at like 3:30 am I got there. I passed out immediately in all my clothes, without taking my meds or writing in my journal.

So that was yesterday.

This morning I woke up with a horrible headache and a huge overall hangover. I vomited into the toilet, and at 10, had a meeting with my case manager Kristina. I told her that I had a migraine, and I had my head in my hands in pain for the entire time. The meeting only lasted 15 minutes, and I went back to sleep afterward.

At 12, I had my doctor’s appointment with Dafna and I vomited in the toilet once more. So hard that I cried. I told her about falling off my skateboard, and she ordered my refills.

I headed to the HSRC after that and gave out stickers that I got from the sex workers’ day event. A 90s cartoon was playing on YouTube, and I ate pasta, to satiate my disgusting queasiness.

I left and went back home to sleep. I was so fucking hungover. Christopher dropped off the new house keys, since we no longer have day staff, and can let ourselves in. Fucking cool.

Alice got home, and while in pain in bed, I asked her to Google the symptoms of a broken chest. All the symptoms match up, except pain when touching. It hurts so much. I wish I mentioned it to Dafna. Hopefully after therapy tomorrow, I can see a doctor.

We ordered Burger King, and I spent most of the day napping. I watched the end of Leave No Trace, which I started on the plane ride here, 6 months ago. What a cliffhanger.

I think the hangover is ending. I’m sick of feeling so damn shit.

What a weird two days.

Jesse speaking at SWAC's rallye on May 1st 2021, the first SWAC action in reaction to the lack of rights and protections for SWers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Probably refers to the Haight Street Referral Center, a drop-in center for homeless youth in San Francisco. ↩

2. Tubercolosis. ↩

3. New Door is a non-profit organization offering employment programs to San Francisco’s youth. ↩

4. Homeless Youth Alliance. ↩

5. St. James Infirmary is a peer-based non-profit organization serving SWers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. They are the first occupational health and safety clinic in the U.S. run by SWers for SWers! COYOTE members, the first sex workers organization in the US, like Margot St. James and Priscilla Alexander, founded the clinic. ↩

6. Gay neighborhood of San Fransisco. ↩

7. Democratic Socialist of America. ↩

8. Probably referring to the International Longshore and Wharehouse Union.↩

9. Referring to “Yes In My Backyard” as opposed to NIMBY – “Not In My Backyard”. Jesse saw both of these tendencies as gentrification tactics, but YIMBYs had a more pervasive way of dealing with homelessness in gentrifying neighborhoods. The YIMBYism movement wants to tackle the housing crisis by rezoning and increasing the supply, failing to view the class element of the housing question and reducing it to supply and demand question. ↩

CatsMTL

Because Working is Playing the Whore!

Because Working is Playing the Whore!

Melina May and Adore Goldman

Translated by Mehrad Abad

In Quebec, several unions have historically taken anti-sex work stances and actively advocated for the criminalization of clients and third parties. Instead of showing solidarity with other workers fighting for better working conditions, these positions have perpetuated a class contempt, suggesting that we are victims to be saved rather than exploited workers, much like unionized workers.

Thus, the positions of several unions have not only undermined class solidarity but also solidarity among women: following a controversial stance on the agency of SWers during a General Assembly of the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ) in 2018, the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN), the Syndicat des professionnels du gouvernement du Québec (SPGQ), and the Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) left the federation. Here, we aim to deconstruct the arguments of these groups suggesting that our struggles are individualistic and devoid of collective action within our movements.

And You, Have you Chosen your Work? The Question of Agency and Choice

A cornerstone of the arguments of unions against pro-sex work stances, like the one taken by FFQ, is the criticism of the concept of agency. According to the defectors from the federation, this stance promotes individualism and disregards systemic oppressive structures such as patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. We believe there are nuances to consider and elements to clarify for a worthwhile debate that includes us. as patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. We believe there are nuances to consider and elements to clarify for a worthwhile debate that includes us.

The questions of choice and agency are central here. The definition the FFQ presents of agency is as follows: “the ability of an individual to act upon the world, things, beings, to transform or influence them.”1We acknowledge that this definition is individualistic. However, asserting, as the CSN does, that “according to estimates, over 90% of prostitutes are coerced by poverty and violence into enduring sexual exploitation”2 apeals to pity and charitable sentiments rather than solidarity among workers.

It’s not surprising that some SWers claim to have chosen to work in the sex industry. After all, the primary condition of capitalism is that the worker is free to sell their labor power but lacks the means to independently realize their labor power (without a capitalist who owns the means of production)3.

These SWers aren’t wrong in asserting that they chose sex work, even though it was a set of circumstances that led them there. While these circumstances may sometimes be more or less constraining, for most, it represents the best or least bad option. Several reasons explain this: sex work enables many to earn more money in less time, with some flexibility in terms of scheduling. It can be started and stopped at any time and doesn’t require diplomas. These features are appealing, especially for single mothers, individuals with chronic illnesses, or disabilities preventing full-time employment. This work also allows many to return to education and later secure better-paid jobs.

However, for some, the possibilities are more limited. This is the case for migrants working in the sex industry. They face the most challenging conditions. Due to their precarious immigration status, employers have the leverage to blackmail and further exploit them, similar to their migrant colleagues in other industries like agriculture. However, the anti-prostitution argument completely ignores these individuals’ desire to migrate. For example, the CSN focuses solely on traffickers and pimps but remains silent about the role of the State and its immigration policies in these abject working conditions.

It’s also noteworthy that many SWers have another “civil” job that doesn’t provide enough income to sustain them through the month. Sex work then serves as supplementary income. This is also the case for several unionized workers. Among our colleagues, there are nurses, social workers, beneficiary attendants, community workers, public service employees, blue-collar workers, etc. By not supporting the struggle of SWers, unions not only demonstrate a lack of solidarity with other workers but also with a segment of their base.

Certainly, being free to choose to sell one’s labor power doesn’t mean we aren’t exploited! On the contrary, it’s a false choice since working is inevitable. Individually, we might choose our work, but we can’t choose not to work! Depending on the options available to us, we choose the least bad option. In this regard, we believe it’s fruitless to pose the question of choice or no choice. Because we must work, and our work is exploited and undermined by violence, we’d rather discuss organizational strategies to improve our living and working conditions!

 

Don't Save Us, We've Got This! For Genuine Solidarity Among Workers!

Following the adoption of positions by the FFQ, the CSN lamented a departure from the federation’s values and interests: collective action would have been replaced by individual experiences. We don’t aim to defend the FFQ on this issue. It’s undeniable that collective action has been dwindling in the FFQ for several years, similar to many other community organizations. Additionally, it can’t be said that unions are a very prolific ground for struggle. The struggles and interests of workers are often paralyzed by bureaucracy and the management of major union bodies.

While the CSN “believes [collective action] remains the best way to defend the interests of everyone,”5 it nonetheless advocates for the criminalization of the sex industry as a savior, meaning police intervention rather than the struggle of workers. If there’s anything that hinders the collective organization of SWers and more broadly, community organization, it’s repression and surveillance!

It’s important to remember that the Nordic model advocated by the CSN and other unions has serious consequences for SWers and our ability to defend our rights and protect our integrity. The criminalization of clients means they’re generally reluctant to reveal their true identity, complicating the identification and reporting of dangerous clients.

In a system of criminalization, arrests, evictions, deportations of our migrant colleagues, the closure of our workplaces, and the absolution of our bosses from ensuring a safe and inclusive work environment are all means to undermine SWers’ organization. Furthermore, our initial attempts at workplace organization already face these concrete impacts: if we organize against our boss, there’s a risk the police will arrest them and close our workplace. Consequently, we’d all lose our jobs, and our migrant colleagues would be deported.

We don’t want your savior complex and appeals for more resources to get us out of the industry. What we need is genuine class solidarity. It’s high time for unions to stand on the side of the people they claim to defend. We are workers; we want labor rights; we want sick leave, parental leave, holidays; we want to be able to report abuses by our bosses and clients using the same mechanisms available to other workers.

The organization of SWers has never waited for the support of unions to operate, nor to create and strengthen ties with communities and allied groups. We know that the legal reforms we demand alone cannot fight against the structural violence SWers often face, being at the intersections of several forms of oppression. That’s why our collective strength is also at the core of other struggles, against the penal system, against borders, transphobia, sexist violence, colonialism, and against our general oppression. While the CSN worries “about the effects and repercussions of prostitution on all women,”6 we respond that our struggle is part of a more radical project, a class struggle, a struggle of women and genders, to reject the exploitative conditions that weigh on all of us.

Because working is playing the whore And playing the whore is working!

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1. Translation from: “faculté d’action d’un être; sa capacité à agir sur le monde, les choses, les êtres, à les transformer ou à les influencer.” Confédération des syndicats nationaux. (2014). Document de réflexion sur l’adhésion de la Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) à la Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), p.5 from https://shorturl.at/gGPTX ↩

2. Translation from: “selon les estimations, plus de 90% des prostituées sont contraintes par la misère et les violences à subir l’exploitation sexuelle.” Confédération des syndicats nationaux. (2014). La Prostitution, une pratique à dénoncer, une exploitation à combattre, p. 6, from https://shorturl.at/pu3c8 ↩

3.“For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power.” Karl Marx. (1867). “Chapter Six: The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power”, Capital, Volume 1, from https://tinyurl.com/lecapitalchap6 ↩

4. Confédération des syndicats nationaux. (2014). La Prostitution, une pratique à dénoncer, une exploitation à combattre, p.4-5, from https://shorturl.at/pu3c8  ↩

5. Translation from: “estime [que l’action collective] demeure la meilleure voie pour la défense des intérêts de toutes
et de tous.” Confédération des syndicats nationaux. (2014). Document de réflexion sur l’adhésion de la Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) à la Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), p.5 from https://shorturl.at/gGPTX ↩

6. IDEM, p.7 ↩

CatsMTL

$andwich blues

$ANDWICH BLUES

Maxime Holliday
Translated by Celeste Ivy

On February 20th, 2021, I got into my car to visit the escort agency closest to my home. I was done with the restaurant business and I needed more time to make music. But the rent of my 4 and a half wasn’t going to pay for itself.

At the escort agency, the people responsible were two guys that vaguely seemed to be tweaking and the facilities were disgusting. I chatted with the girls there, smoking ciggies in the laundry room that doubled as their smoking room. The guys told me I could have started right now to try it if I wanted too but I didn’t have a bra, only panties, to advertise myself to the clients, so I left.

Afterwards, I went to an erotic massage parlor.1 There, I was greeted by a receptionist in a clean, nicely decorated lobby. I immediately filled in the application form because it was clear that I was gonna be better off here than at the other spot. When you start out in the industry, you have to choose a working name. I wanted to take the name Jasmine because of The BEEaUtiFuL PrIiinCEs$E. Of course, there was already a girl working there with that name. So I made my first genderfuck affirmation by choosing a guy’s name.  I also bought a beautiful gold watch to easily calculate the time of my sessions without having to look at the clock on the wall in front of the clients.  One of my long-time lovers stopped touching me when I told him I’d started to sell sexual services. I think he wanted to sound critical and cynical by telling me that I “had found my way “ but it was still true.

Whores are powerful witches, whether they know it or not.

In the staffroom, I meet girls with larger-than-life characters with whom I feel privileged to establish sorority-like bonds. I found a clan. The salon manager wears a scar across her face, a mark left there by her ex. She looks after her children and takes care of her salon and of “her girls” at the same time. She often cooks us small meals and puts them in the staffroom’s freezer for the cost of 5$. The parlor is well-kept and she gives us a cut of the room rental that clients pay. At the end of our shift we just have to tip the receptionist. With the additional money of the extras, when I work during the day, I make an average of 500$ per 7-hour shift. 

When the salon had to close because of the pandemic and curfew, Nancy2, a colleague about thirty years my senior took me under her wing to go work at the hotel with her.  She had experience of these things. You have to know which hotel to go to so as not to be reported by the staff, which app to download to get an anonymous phone number and which sites to post your ads on. The thing is: it’s also safer and less boring to work in pairs.3 In the end, I only went for two days and didn’t really like it. I found it too difficult to manage answering the calls and texts by myself, considering that a third of them came from guys who just wanted to waste our time and/or verbally assault us. In the parlors, the institutional facade and the receptionists spare us that. 

All in all when the salon reopened a few weeks later, Nancy was no longer working there. I heard from colleagues that she had a fight with everyone and turned real paranoid. She thought I was an undercover cop because I hadn’t stayed to work with her at the hotel. 

I kinda understood why though. Compared to her, I was fucking straight edge. I never use on tha job, I’m pretty much always chilling in my corner, working on my laptop and I obviously don’t come from the same social background as Nancy. The girls laughed their heads off that she’d think that because I’d have been a pretty fucking weird cop and very dedicated, let’s say. We had a good laugh about it, but I was a bit sour for real.

I live alone and I pay my rent, internet, hydro, gas, insurance, my car, my food, and my cat’s food. I produce my own music. I exercise. I have time to invest in each of my priorities. I’m now in a healthy, dynamic romantic relationship with a wonderful person. I’m dating a rare pearl and on my hands are tattooed oysters. In the hollow of my palms, like a precious treasure, I often trace their name and those of our lovers. 

Sometimes, I’m afraid that customers will be disgusted by my leg or armpit hair -which I don’t shave- and turn aggressive. But I think often they don’t even see it. And I also think that sometimes they find it beautiful. In any case, I wear my hair actively, a soft accessory to the revolution of our bodies that starts in the bedroom. 

September 2021; following my move, I started to work in a new parlor in Montreal. The owner is completely fucked up. The customer traffic is fine. Here we have to do the laundry ourselves and pay a 10$ fee per client to rent our room. Big girl from a small town switched games.

“ Working is whoring
Whoring is working  ”

I wrote a letter to my mother to tell her about my work. We’ve always been super close and we had an excellent relationship. I thought it would bring us closer. That she would be proud to have a daughter who cared enough about the relationship to get over the fear and social stigma and share her secret. That she’d find it intense but would ask questions and trust me regardless. But her reaction was the worst-case scenario I could have imagined. She panicked. She asked me to stop right away by trying to send me cash. In fact, she was so unsettled that I suspect she or one of her close friends once had a traumatic experience related to sex work. Despite my patience and attempts to rectify the situation, she stopped hearing and seeing me. All that’s left is judgment and anguish. After a couple of months, she’s still as blocked as ever and I regret opening up because it’s excruciatingly painful to carry all the shame and hurt of my own mother. To feel that her support can be conditional. A difficult impact. I am weakened.

Once, I went with a friend to work two days in an extra club 4  in the middle of nowhere. The men over there had mustaches and smelled of a little milk or manure.  They were farmers, not very rich, and they would dress up as nicely as they could to see the visiting girls from Montreal. Raymond5 knew I would be there that week and brought me earrings as a gift but never wanted us to go to the room to buy my services. It seemed like he was just really happy that a new person came all the way there and he wanted to feel like a provider for a beautiful girl. I left there burnt out with 2000$ and the bittersweet feeling of having had privileged access to the heart of a small, isolated, rural community, touching in a way as tragic as it was pathetic. 

On November 26, 2021, I take the metro to a station I don’t know, to go do a shift at a downtown stripclub. I think I’m pretty brave, and for good reason. It’s the first time in my life going inside a stripclub and it’s to work. As usual in the industry, I learned how to do it right here and there, by watching others and with a few tips from a young girl super proud to show me what she knew. The boss was so aggressive and demeaning that when I left, at 3 am, I knew I’d never go back.

More than a year later, I met a girl who told me she once worked at this bar. And one night she was working and unable to move because she’d had drugs put in her drink, this same boss had ordered another dancer to take her out in the alley with all her stuff.  The colleague in question refused and decided to take her to the hospital herself in her car. The boss fired both of them on the spot. The bar is Wanda’s, so be careful babes. 

Since moving to Montreal, I’ve been involved in an autonomous militant committee run by and for sex workers. I find there solidarity, anger, love and intelligence. Courage, dignity and benevolence.

The sexual energy inside me is an immutable fire that requires only a few resources.

A fire that roars and heals.

I educate and curse.

I cast spells of all kinds.

I am a good witch and a bad witch.

Boy, make me a $andwich.

 

After learning from an activist book that, to avoid getting accused of “brothel-keeping”, a landlord could decide to evict his tenant if he suspected her of being a sex worker, I felt super unsafe in my own home for a full week. I felt inferior and fragile. Imagining the loss of my home, my balcony on which I have my morning coffee, the little birds in the vine. Having to start all over again, alone and dispossessed. The worst possible scenario.

I’m gonna arrive pretty tight at the protest. I stopped to print my speech at the stationary shop. I’m gonna lead a protest for the first time in my life. We’re gonna march to show that we exist and, above all, to shout that we want fucking rights. That we look out for one another. We’ll march and we’ll dance and we’ll scream, for us and especially for those whose lives are too fucked up to do all that.

These days when I go dancing it’s in the suburbs. In Montreal, I find the bars too posh and it disgusts me. I have no willingness to play the luxury game and anyway, I don’t have the casting it seems. I applied to two spots but the bosses aren’t calling me back. Finally, I went straight to Cleo even though dances cost 10$6 cause I can come & go whenever I want. I kinda see diversity in the staff so I suppose (I wish) that the management is less racist and fatphobic than elsewhere.

My best songs 
for stripping :
M.I.A- Bad Girls
Ciara- Body Party
Troy Boy- Do you?
Rihanna- Sex with me
Beyoncé- Naughty girl
Future- Mask Off
Nathy Peluso- Delito

I left the parlor I’d been working at since my move because the boss was too toxic and it was starting to take too much out of me. Yannick Chicouane, if you’re reading this, know that all your masseuses, past and present, hate you and are plotting to ruin you. You’re a manipulative narcissistic pervert of the worst kind. A shitty pimp, a dangerous abuser. I curse you, and all the men who exploit women’s sexual power to make yourselves rich. Fucking loser. Fucking coward. I’m listening to Lingua Ignota and lighting candles of doom in your direction. If I catch you, I’ll eat you.

« I’m paid to lie to you 

but I often 

tell the truth. »
Jiz Lee

January 2023. I decided to go to school to become a sexologist. The first step was to take basic college courses that I hadn’t done because I studied arts. I found a new parlor to work in. It was the only spot that was hiring when I was looking at this time of year. It’s handjobs only. No fellatio, no penetration; no clients, no cash. I go mostly to study and see the receptionist I adore. If I’m lucky, I do one or two clients and walk out with 200$ cash. 

One night at the bar, a client ran off to avoid paying my colleague to whom he owed money. I tried to stop him by getting between him and the door so he slammed into me and I pulled a ligament in my knee. There was a bouncer. There were police. Bouncers and cops are useless. In this industry, you have no choice but to take the law into your own hands. 

August 2023. I have the ruined knees of a summer in high heels, but plenty of cash saved in a little wooden box to start my university studies off on the right foot. I went to a cottage by myself for 4 days to recharge before school. I found it hard to stop working because sex work is like part of my identity now. I wear the golden hoops Raymond gave me almost every day. I even let my mother wear them the other day when we took family pictures because she thought they were gorgeous. 

When I got out of the lake earlier, I noticed that my watch had taken on water. You know, the beautiful watch I bought three years ago when I first started. The light still works but the numbers have completely disappeared from the screen. I wonder if I should take this as a sign that I need to take a break. Just enough time to find myself a new watch that will adorn my body to the height of all it has learned in the last three years. 

Music sheet: Every Day Blues, Miroslav Loncar

1. For those who don’t know, the difference between a massage parlor and an escort agency is that in a parlor, the girls don’t move around. Also, when you work in an agency, the base price includes fellatio (and in the majority of agencies, in Montreal at least, they don’t even hire you if you don’t agree to perform your fellatios without a condom) and penetration. In massage parlors, the only thing that’s automatically included in the service the client pays for at the reception desk is a massage and manual masturbation. Everything else is extra, at the girl’s discretion. ↩

2. Not her real name. Not her work name either. A name invented for the zine.  ↩

3. Just sayin’ for those who think that the current legal model concerning prostitution in force in Canada (the Nordic model; also in force in Sweden, Norway and Ireland) is good for sex workers because the sale of sexual services is not criminalized, don’t get it twisted. All the other related things, which are criminalized, mean that working in a team, whether independently with one or multiple colleagues or in parlors, can be considered as pimping and brothel-keeping by the police. And that, you can be charged, arrested, and prosecuted for it.  ↩

4. A stripclub where the girls can do extras, ranging from a handy in the cabins to full service in a motel room adjacent to the bar. ↩

5. Not his real name. ↩

6. You should know that usually, it’s 20$. It can be worth going all the way to Rimouski to take off your panties. ↩

CatsMTL

Pan-Canadian Action Day

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pan-Canadian Action Day

Sex Workers Call for Full Decriminalization of their Work

Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, Unceded Indigenous Territory, where we recognize the Kanien’kehà:ka Nation as custodian of the lands and waters), June 2nd, 2023 – On this International Sex Workers’ Day, multiple sex workers organizations across Canada organized visibility actions to collectively demand the decriminalization of their work. In Montreal, in response to a call from the Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC), around a hundred people demonstrated. The demonstration started at Place de la Paix, near the intersection of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine, a symbolic location for Montreal’s Red Light.

The Federal Government Must Act!

Activists and allies across the country are together calling for the federal government to introduce legislation to decriminalize sex work, as New Zealand has done. As Adore Goldman from the SWAC explains, “the New Zealand model has proven itself over the past 20 years to be the way forward. Sex workers benefit from the same rights as other workers and can denounce work-related violence using the same through the mechanisms already in place under employment law.’’

For several years, sex workers have been condemning the negative effects of the current model which criminalizes clients and third parties, such as drivers and owners of escort agencies. “Because of police repression, our clients refuse to reveal their real identity to us for fear of being criminalized. This makes it difficult to identify and denounce dangerous clients,” argues Melina May, a SWAC activist.

In workplaces such as massage parlors and strip clubs, working conditions are often threatened by bosses who take advantage of deregulation to lay down the law. Faced with safety issues, abuse and harassment, sex workers have little to no way to protect their rights to decent working conditions. “If my boss were held accountable by labor laws, he would be forced to ensure our safety, hear our complaints and take action,” says Adore Goldman.

United for Decriminalization

Multiple actions took place today in several Canadian cities to challenge the federal government, with more to come next week. Sex workers and their allies in Quebec city, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton are joining forces :  “We want to send a clear message to Justin Trudeau’s government:  we’ve had enough of waiting. Criminalization puts us at risk and prevents us from working in decent working conditions!” says Maxime Durocher, sex worker and SWAC activist.

-30-

For more information:

Sex Work Autonomous Committee
Melina May
438-838-7538

cats-swac-mtl.org 

To ensure the safety of committee members, all speeches and interviews will be conducted anonymously. Some people may choose to show their face or disclose their working name.

CatsMTL

Privacy online: a myth?

Privacy online : a myth?

A few tips to ensure your security

By celeste and susie showers

The impact of SESTA/FOSTA1 has dramatically altered the online landscape for sex workers and civillians alike. From deplatforming to doxxing, the safety of sex workers is viewed by many as the most disposible.2 The dreaded “shadowban” is placed on SWs without warning and effectively blocks your posts from being viewed by your audience. The reliance on these external platforms to advertise with no more access to SW-specific listing sites (RIP Backpage)3 means that your business and therefore your personal wellbeing and safety is at risk. Indeed, the loss of income caused by these measures can lead to greater risk-taking, because the bills must be paid! In addition, some SWs choose to work on online platforms to leave toxic workplaces and secure more control over their working conditions. So these actions go far beyond losing access to an Instagram account, it’s our working conditions that are directly affected!   You can exercise some measures to help protect yourself and your data: All of these may not be relevant depending on your usage of the Internet related to the kind of SW you do or what your boundaries are.
Secure your accounts/ passwords
  • Encrypted software like Signal and Protonmail are only secure end-to-end when both the receiver and the sender are using the same service. Example when you send a message from your PM account to a Gmail address, the data is still exposed. 
  • Use complicated safe passwords with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.4 
  • Set up the two-step authentication in your online accounts when possible.
Collage: Jesse Dekel
Secure your browsing habits
  • Sign out of social media accounts before leaving the page, as when you’re signed in your browsing behaviour is tracked on any other pages you open.
  • Use a VPN like TunnelBear to hide your location.
  • Use incognito mode when using your browser.5
  • Use an extension on your browsers to block ads.
  • Manually disable data collection on the websites you use if possible.

Secure your content

  • Make images of yourself less recognizable (For example, close-up angles that do not show recognizable parts of the body, such as the face, tattoos, etc.) 
  • Before posting SW related images, remove EXIF data, which is a time and location stamp embedded in the photo. Use iphone app Shortcuts to automize or search how to delete EXIF data on your specific cell phone model.
  • Don’t post your location on Instagram stories or Snapchat while you are there, wait until you are at another location.
Secure your privacy settings
  • On your website, pay for the extra privacy that does not reveal the domain purchaser’s name and address.6
  • Keep your legal name off PayPal transactions by creating a business account and using  DBA (Doing Business As) as the name. Alternatively, If you link your account to your debit card rather than a credit card, it doesn’t show any name. Check by sending a small transfer of $0.01 to a trusted person and ask them what information is shown on their statement. 
  • Depending on your bank, it is also possible to change the name on your statement. You can put your initials for example.
Collage: Adore Goldman

Secure your ways of communicating

No apps and platforms are totally secure, and many sites are dropping SWers as rules and guidelines change quickly and without warning. 

  • Use code words on forums when talking about services.
  • Do not talk about money or explicit services directly.
  • Check community guidelines before posting on SWers forums. 
  • An email list is the most secure way to keep in touch with clients.
Security when crossing borders
  • When crossing borders, bring as little electronic devices as possible. 
  • Set all social media accounts to private.
  • Delete ALL images and messages on your devices that might be related to SW in any way.
  • Add a numerical password on your smartphone.7
  • Change notification settings to not show any message content on the lock screen. 
  • Advertise your dates outside of the dates you are travelling.
  • Take down any ads with your image on it before you travel.

This advice is subject to change quickly because of the ever evolving online world. Our best weapon against political online attacks are solidarity and organisation among colleagues to obtain changes. 

1.The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) were passed by the U.S. Senate in 2018. Since then, platforms that knowingly host content that facilitates prostitution have been held accountable. These laws, which are supposed to address sex trafficking, cast a wider net: they come to criminalize any site hosting content associated with prostitution. So it’s no surprise that several social media sites, like Tumblr and Instagram, have decided to change their standards to no longer accept SW content on their platforms.
↩

2. Thorin Klosowski. (s.-d.). How to Protect Your Digital Privacy ↩

3. To know more on the closure of Backpage and other consequences of SESTA-FOSTA: Adore Goldman, Celeste. (2021). Crusade Against Porn, SWAC Attacks↩

4. Thorin Klosowski. (s.-d.). How to Protect Your Digital Privacy. ↩

5. Dan Raywood. (2018). Top Ten Ways to Reduce Your Digital Footprint. ↩

6. Hacking hustling. (2019). Online Worker Safety Hazards and Cautions : A Practical Harm Reduction Guide on Why and How Sex Workers Can Protect Ourselves at Work ↩

7. IDEM
↩

CatsMTL

Every Mother is a Working Mother

Every Mother is a Working Mother

Par Adore Goldman et Latsami, translated by Fred Burrill

In our society, sexuality is a commodity all women are forced to “sell” in one way or another. Our poverty as women leaves us little choice. Hookers get hard cash for their sexual services while other women get a roof over their heads or a night out.1

When sex workers call for the complete decriminalization of their labour, partisans of the status quo will unfailingly respond that this goal was already accomplished in Canada through the 2014 adoption of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.2 This affirmation is not only false – if sex workers can no longer be prosecuted for advertising and selling their own sexual services, they can be if they collaborate with colleagues – but it also ignores the fact that the criminalization of sex work brings with it a whole parcel of stereotypes. For sex workers who are mothers or parents, having to interact with social and health services, including youth protection, is accompanied by daily stigma, stress, and suffering. Through these institutions, the State reinforces the archetypes of the Madonna and the Whore, and separates the “good” mothers from the “bad”.
Photo taken by AM Trépanier at the Cabaret Support your local Whoreganization

This text is a summary of a workers’ investigation that we carried out. We interviewed three mothers/parents who are also sex workers in order to explore their experience of motherhood/parenthood, focusing particularly on their antagonistic relationship with the institutions of the State.

  • Rebecca is a white woman, mother of two young children of whom she has partial custody. She started sex work after having separated from the father of her children. Over the years, she has worked as a camgirl and an escort.

  • Anita is a queer Indigenous person and the parent of two children who are now an adult and a teenager. They have been a sex worker since the late 1990s and have worked in several parts of the industry. They are now a community organizer and an escort. They are also a former drug user, which brought them into contact with different health and social service institutions.
  • Chantal is an Indigenous single mother to a 16-year old girl. She has worked in the sex industry since the age of 14 and is currently an erotic masseuse.

For all of them, sex work has been a tool in the struggle against the economic precarity too often experienced by single mothers. The use of this strategy is nevertheless judged extremely harshly, and the stigma that comes with it impacts their children. Too often, stigmatization is a precursor to repression. The threat of a call to youth protection is used to control sex workers, whether it be by ex-partners, landlords, or different actors in health and social services.

The Madonna and the Whore

We operate from the understanding that sex and motherhood are both part of the category of domestic labour, and that this labour is employed to reproduce the workforce – both today’s and tomorrow’s. In giving birth to, caring for, and educating children, women and queer/trans people are producing the next generation of workers. Within the context of the heterosexual couple, it is most often women who cook, clean, and make themselves sexually available in order to ensure that today’s workers are fresh and ready to return to the job. Sexual labour, much like maternity, is a duty that women must carry out with love, but most importantly without pay. Thus is born the two categories of women: the respectable and honest woman on the one hand, and on the other, the perverted, the deviant, who refuses to carry out this work for free, especially when it comes to sex. This dichotomy confines women to domestic labour while depriving them of wages and of power over their working conditions. In this context, the criminalization of sex workers is an essential part of the application of these policies.

Sex work has long been a means of survival for many women, and by extension for their children. However, the control of this activity by the State is relatively recent: according to Silvia Federici, the historical transition from light industry to heavy industry3 in Europe and North America renewed Capital’s interest in controlling women’s sexuality.4 In essence, this new form of industry required workers who were in greater health and therefore able to work in more difficult conditions. Women’s domestic labour became essential to the reproduction of a disciplined workforce able to withstand these conditions. Sexual and gendered norms, previously associated with the domestic lives of middle-class and bourgeois women, were imposed on working-class white women and eventually on racialized and Indigenous women as well. It was no longer socially acceptable for a woman to work in the factory, go to taverns, occupy public space, and especially to neglect the reproduction of the workforce. The maternal instinct, love, and self-sacrifice came to be seen as important feminine qualities, encouraging State intervention into family life.

Colonization also played an important role in the categorization of certain sexualities as deviant. According to Cree-Métis professor and researcher Kim Anderson, Indigenous women are seen through the lens of the Virgin-Whore complex, translated in the colonial imaginary as the “S*5-Princess.”6 On the one hand, the princess image invokes the “virgin frontier, pure border waiting to be crossed”7, most popularly associated with the character of Pocahontas. Over time, as Indigenous women refused the “princess” label, the colonial power structure instead imposed that of the “s*”, a lazy, obscene, and immoral woman. In both cases, however, the imposed image was a sexualized one that increased patriarchal, colonial domination. Anderson points out that the invention of this stereotypical figure legitimized the removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities and their placement in residential schools and foster homes. These images, she argues, «are like a disease that has spread through both the Native and the non-native mindset»8 and have no connection to any lived reality.

It is therefore to the great advantage of the capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial State to control women’s sexuality and to divide them into “good” and “bad.” Through this process, it ensures the reproduction of its workforce and its colonial domination.

Photo taken by Youssef Baati during the 3rd March rallye organized SWAC and ISWAC (Indigenous Sex Work and Art Collective)

Precarious and in Solidarity!

Working mothers, they stick together! – Anita

When Rebecca started doing sex work, it was to provide a better quality of life for her children after her separation. Without a diploma, she could see clearly that the jobs available to her would not allow her to make ends meet. “I did my budget and I could see that it wasn’t going to work!”  she says. A friend introduced her to the sex industry, first as a camgirl and then as an escort. This work enabled her to make more money in less time, and to have a more flexible schedule. “I had time to take my daughter to gymnastics at 4PM and spend time with my kids!” The same was true for Chantal. When she was on social assistance, sex work helped her find money to take care of herself and her daughter. “I tried to find a ‘normal’ job, but after a 40-hour week, you come out with $400. I could make $700 in 12 hours at the [massage] parlour.”

All the same, sex work remains precarious labour. For Anita and Chantal, both of whom worked in massage parlours, 12-hour shifts were a problem. Chantal had to find a place for her daughter to stay when she was receiving clients at home. And there is no guarantee that you will make money! And of course, criminalization makes it so that there are no legal protections at work. Faced with these obstacles, sex workers built their own networks of support: “We made arrangements; you take my daughter for my shift and I’ll take your daughter for your shift,” explained Anita. Mutual aid between whores fills the gaps when it comes to atypical childcare needs.

The lived experiences of Anita, Chantal and Rebecca are not exceptions. Women-headed single-parent families are statistically at greater risk of having insufficient incomes.9 This can be explained, amongst other factors, by the fact that a good part of women’s time is taken up in looking after those in their care: in other words, with unpaid labour. In this context, many turn to sex work. The experiences of our interviewees are reflected in the English Collective of Prostitutes’ report, What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Job Like This?10 The Collective compared sex workers’ job conditions with  those of other women and a non-binary person who all worked in largely feminized service and care work jobs. One participant, an unemployed single mother, calculated the hours she dedicated to looking after her children. The unpaid hours dedicated to this task surpassed by far the paid hours worked by the others. Also, women with children are often discriminated against in hiring exactly for this reason. Childcare fees represented half of the expenses of these women. In fact, the sex workers interviewed made the most per hour of all the participants. For the Collective, the question that should be posed in light of this report is not why women engage in sex work, but in fact why more women do not.

Son of a Whore or a Grateful Son?11

Sex work also shapes the experience of children and their relationship with their mothers. Anita and Chantal both have children who are old enough to understand what they do for work. For both parents, sex work opened the door for discussions about sexuality, consent, and sexual and reproductive health. These things are part of their job, and they share their expertise with their teenagers. They also share knowledge about community resources, helping their teens to access condoms, STI testing and other forms of contraception.

Chantal hopes that this open approach will ensure that her daughter won’t go through the same things she did: “My mother didn’t talk to me about sexuality. […] When I started [doing sex work], I was young, I was with a pimp, it was very violent. I wonder if the fact that I’m open with my daughter will help her to be more wise. She has access to all kinds of knowledge that I didn’t!” For Anita, it’s important that her children know their rights, whether they’re working in the sex industry or at McDonald’s.

Their children also, however, experience stigma. Being a “son of a whore” is an insult that hits home differently for the kids of sex workers. “My children always wonder if it’s directed at them,” explains Anita. Their kids have heard people talking about sex work from a young age, given their parent’s activism, but Anita explains that it’s only when their daughter got older that she started to understand what it was all about. “It was important to distinguish what was real from what we see in the movies!” It was hard to figure out how to help their kids manage the information. “You don’t want to say it’s a secret, because you don’t want your children to learn to keep secrets, in case they experience abuse. But it can only be shared with people you trust. You can’t tell it to your teacher, for example.” And with good reason, as the consequences for sex workers and their children of being outed are often severe.

Photo taken by Youssef Baati during the October 7th rallye in front of the Montreal Courthouse
The Housewives of the Nation Coming into contact with State institutions has long been risky for sex workers. The first sex work laws came into force as part of the 19th-century Victorian obsession with moral hygiene. Attitudes to prostitution gradually took on a “scientific” veneer, as the medical profession took on the task of justifying repression against sex workers. In England, the 1864 Infectious Diseases Act instituted compulsory medical examinations for sex workers, who were considered responsible for the syphilis epidemic amongst soldiers.12

Typically feminized professions previously administered by the Church – Catholic and Protestant – were secularized and taken over by the State, and used to repress sex workers. Dr. Nathalie Stake-Doucet, nursing researcher and activist, reports that Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of modern nursing, opined that “sex workers have an inner evil that spontaneously generates disease.”13 In the hygienist understanding of the period, cleanliness was both a physical and moral property. According to Stake-Doucet, Nightingale was also openly in favour of what she thought of as the “civilizing” effect of British colonization of Indigenous territories.

In parallel, the social work profession developed in response to the social problems associated with growing urbanization. Middle-class women became the enforcers of domestic norms amongst the working classes and immigrant families.14 Jane Addams, one of the founders of social work, belonged to the so-called “hygienist” movement.15 In 1890 she helped to found the Home Economics Movement, a coalition of middle-class women who referred to themselves as the “housewives of the nation.” This movement sought to impose new standards of cleanliness and nutrition on families, especially immigrant ones. Addams was also an important figure in the fight against the “white slave trade,” a particularly widely-spread myth of the period claiming that racialized men were kidnapping white women and forcing them to sell sexual services.16

Given the history of these State institutions, it’s no surprise that sex workers still fear coming into contact with them. And once again for good reason: being denounced to youth protection services is a threat constantly used to control sex workers.

When Rebecca disclosed her profession to her mother, she threatened to call youth protection. Because her mother worked in social services, Rebecca was forced to hide her work from all the health professionals in her life: her psychiatrist, her psychologist, her doctor… keeping her accessing adequate care. In the end, her fears were fortunately unfounded: her psychiatrist and her psychologist reacted well to the news. However, her mother informed the father of Rebecca’s kids about her work, and he called youth protection. The file was quickly closed, but it was a very difficult experience for her.

For Anita, the stigmatization started when they were pregnant and went to a treatment center for their drug use. They explained that “when you do street prostitution, everyone thinks that you had no choice, that you were forced into it and are traumatized.” They defended their rights to the healthcare workers: “I was already a proud whore!” A few years later, a psychosocial crisis led them to seek help from a social worker, who informed Anita that if they “fell back” into sex work, she would have no choice but to call youth protection, to which they responded, “It’s saying things like that makes it so that people can’t tell you what they really need from you. If I were in the industry you can be sure I’d never tell you.”

Chantal also had a similar interaction with a social worker. “I was in crisis because my rent was $1000 and my welfare cheque was for $300,” she shared. But her relationship with her social worker was anything but helpful. “He was a pervert: he was always looking at my breasts. When I told him I did massages on the side for extra money, he called youth protection services.” She suspects he wanted sexual services in exchange for his silence. “Maybe by looking at my breasts, he was sending me a message!”

Embroiedery by Melina May

The shortage of family-sized apartments also places sex workers in a vulnerable position. For Rebecca, access to an adequate apartment was a major difficulty that doing sex work allowed her to overcome. “It’s the biggest expense that comes with having kids!” Chantal also experienced this hardship, as the cost of rent greatly exceeded the amount of her monthly welfare cheque. And landlords who find out about the profession of their tenants exploit the information for their own benefit. Chantal’s landlord threatened to denounce her to the authorities if she didn’t move. “It worked. I couldn’t take the risk, so I moved…”

A Struggle for Time

In the light of these testimonies, we can see that the economic precarity of women and queer/trans people is a central factor in the decision to practice sex work, particularly when there are kids to look after. This state of affairs is often used by anti-prostitution activists to defend “the abolition of the sex industry” – which not even the current level of criminalization of sex workers has managed to bring about.

The policies that govern our industry actually increase stigmatization, causing the repression of “bad” mothers who are engaged in sex work. A constantly recurring theme in the testimonies of Rebecca, Anita, and Chantal is that the threat of youth protection causes a lot of fear, but is not accompanied by many resources. After the social worker denounced Chantal, Youth Protection Services didn’t find cause to intervene, but nobody helped her to find an apartment that she could afford.

If engaging in sex work is never a choice free from economic constraints, this is true for all the decisions we make in a capitalist world. As sex workers and activists with the Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement, Juno Mac and Molly Smith argue that “sex workers ask to be credited with the capacity to struggle with work—even hate it—and still be considered workers. You don’t have to like your job to want to keep it.”17

As mothers and as sex workers, claiming our status as workers enables us to demand the resources we need in order to live decently. We’ve named several here: access to an appropriately-sized apartment that we can afford, free childcare adapted to atypical schedules, liveable welfare payments – and why not a salary!

In the end, what comes out of these interviews with Anita, Chantal and Rebecca, is that these sex-worker mothers and parents need less work and more money. As Anita pointed out: “Like other parents, we’re all doing our damnedest to survive and provide for our kids. We want to have more quality time with our kids!”

1. Wages for Housework. (1977). «Housewives & Hookers Come Together», Wages for Housework Campaign Bulletin, vol. 1, no 4, Traduit de l’anglais par Sylvie Dupont dans dans Luttes XXX, Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, 2011, Éditions du remue-ménage. ↩

2.The adoption of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act made sex work illegal for the first time in Canada. This law forbids the promotion of another person’s sexual services, communication in certain public spaces in order to offer one’s services, materially profiting from sex work, and seeking out sexual services, regardless of the context. ↩

3. Light industry refers to the production of consumer goods such as food or textiles. Heavy industry refers, for example, to mining, steelwork, and railway construction. It requires intensive use of machinery and capital. ↩

4. Silvia Federici. (2021). «Origins and Development of Sexual Work in the United States and Britain», Patriarchy of the Wage. Notes on Marx, Gender, and Feminism, p. 109. ↩

5. As settlers, we have chosen not to employ the S-word as used by Anderson because of its pejorative, racist, and sexist connotations. ↩

6. Kim Anderson. (2000). «Chapter Six. The Construction of a Negative Identity», A Recognition of Being : Reconstructing Native Womanhood, p. 99- 112 ↩

7. Idem, p. 101 ↩

8. Idem, p. 100 ↩

9. In 2019 in Quebec, 30% of single-parent households lived under the poverty line, compared to 9% of dual-parent households. 75% of single-parent households are headed by women. Despite higher employment rates, these families are poorer than single-parent households headed by men.
Conseil du statut de la femme. (2019). Quelques constats sur la monoparentalité au Québec. p.17
Secrétariat à la Condition féminine Québec. (s.d.) Les femmes monoparentales. Quelques données statistiques pour l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes↩

10. English Collective of Prostitutes. (2019). What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Job Like This? ↩

11. Referring to the Stromae song, Fils de joie (2022). ↩

12. Frédéric Regard. (2014). Féminisme et prostitution dans l’Angleterre du XIXe: la croisade de Josephine Butler. ENS Édition ↩

13. Nathalie Stake-Doucet. (2020). The Racist Lady with the Lamp. Nursing Clio.  ↩

14. Mariarosa Dalla Costa. (1997). «Mass production and the new urban order», in Family, Welfare, and the State Between Progressivism and the New Deal, Commons Notion, p.9 ↩

15. Idem, p. 99 ↩

16. Nicole F. Bromfield. (2015). Sex Slavery and Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States, Sage Journals
For more on the white slave trade and the racist history of sex work laws see Jesse Dekel. (2022). A Very Brief Overview of American Anti-Sex Trafficking Laws’ Racist History, SWAC Attacks, 2nd issue ↩

17. Juno Mac, Molly Smith. (2018). Sex Is Not the Problem with Sex Work, Boston Review ↩

CatsMTL

Haze of thoughts

Haze of thoughts

Céleste

Choosing to work in this industry brought me first and foremost a job. I could finally work less hours and earn a lot more. In this scene that is shamed and a bit apart from the rest of this reality, some thoughts came to me throughout my experiences. Sometimes it’s teachings I remembered or new perspectives that opened up. So here are thoughts I wrote down during these last few years.

Jesse Dekel

Hope is partly radical openness. 

While trying to keep on living in this rotting world, I search for meaning and hope everywhere. Some glimpses are offered to me in the details of life and in my loved ones. 

I have come to believe that a feeling of hope can emerge from radical openness to the world and others around us. If we can decenter ourselves from what we are experiencing in the moment, it can bring more connection in between others. The lifelong journey of letting go of our biases can only do good to us and to others. Being open to receive anything the other brings without judgment can ease some of the loneliness we all feel. Hope doesn’t have to be total to be there. It can be seen in the thin light of the possibility of continuing or the chaining to continuity. Openness can show us that nothing is over and everything can still happen. 

The best and worst of humanity is intertwined in these spaces.

Like everywhere we look, we can find duality in our human world and imagination. In this industry where clients can fulfill their fantasies and their needs of connection and intimacy, I met the most incredible people. These colleagues were glowing effortlessly. Their passion, curiosity, movements and sensitivity were so strong that I couldn’t look past them. They inspired me to know myself more. They taught me more about empathy and holding space than anywhere else. There is also the worst kind of people in these spaces. Abusers that have no concern for others. People so disconnected that they make no sense to me. Their frivolous concerns for money, appearances, social norms and their ego separates them from others as well as shapes their interpersonal relationships. Men will trust other men for the sole reason that they have had successful financial dealings with each other. They protect their own. They feed their dark emotions so much that it consumes them. it’s easier to stay aligned with these feelings rather than accept another being with their own set views. It was always fascinating and unbearable to me to witness and to be part of a small world governed by money, addictions and heteronormativity in which intimacy and deep connections can bloom anyways. 

X-Rated collage Adore Goldman
Collage: Adore Goldman

Protect your heart.

With learning to be there for yourself, comes finding ways to protect your heart. Anything can take the form of bringing you some ease if you wish it to. Maybe the first way that you found  to protect your heart was dissociating. Leaving this reality to access some peace far away. To be somewhere else can bring you so much, it can help you survive. I got lost in my hiding spot and I feel that what can help save you is coming back to yourself. Be the closest you can to you. Know what soothes you, what helps you go on.

With love,

Céleste

CatsMTL

From Red Light to Quartier des Spectacles

From Red Light to Quartier des spectacles

Cultural and creative industries, sex work, and gentrification

Interview by Maxime Durocher and Adore Goldman, Translated by Hannah Azar Strauss

AM Trépanier is an artist-researcher, editor, and cultural worker. Across their practice, they explore the particularities of different media, technologies, and actions to (re)mediate the discourse around a given situation. Their artistic practices take the form of publications, video, conversation, websites, and exhibitions. In their work, they pay close attention to the tactics used by marginalized communities and alternative publics to build new kinds of spaces, gain access to information, and appropriate various technical tools.

AM collaborated with the Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC) as part of the project dans le souffle de c., which explores the processes of urban gentrification resulting in the re-purposing of a site dedicated to sex work into an imposing hub of artistic and cultural dissemination: the 2-22. We asked them to tell us more about their process and the discoveries of the research.

Adore Goldman (AG) and Maxime Durocher (MD): How did you become interested in the history of the 2-22?

AM Trépanier (AM): In the fall of 2021, I was invited to participate in a group exhibition reflecting from a critical perspective on the notion of value, beyond its definition by the market economy. The curators wanted to create a space that could present various postures taken by artists towards the institution of the economy. 

As a starting point for the project, I did some generic research on the history of the place where the exhibition is located: VOX, a center for the research and dissemination of contemporary images, is housed in a cultural complex called the 2-22, located at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine. While delving into the history of the 2-22, built by the Société de développement Angus (SDA) and inaugurated in 2012, I came across an image of the building that had preceded it there, just by walking around on Google Street View and observing the evolution of the street corner over time.

I was struck by the contrast. Before its demolition, the building on the corner was home to various small businesses right up until 2008, counting among them Studio XXX, an erotic cabaret that offered services like a peep-show and private booths for XXX movies and full contact dances. Basically, the building was primarily dedicated to the sex industry. 

What immediately and organically came to mind was a desire to know what had caused such a transformation of the intersection. What forces had come into play to bring about this change in the neighbourhood, and who were the main actors in this transformation? What positions did these actors – the arts institutions, the media, the municipality, the real estate developers, the community groups, the state – occupy in the history of this “revitalization” of the neighborhood? And who benefits from this change?

Eugene Harberer, «Montreal.Forgaty & Bros. Wholesale and Retail Shoe Factory and Shop, Corner St. Catherine and St. Lawrence main Streets, 1875», Pièce 1979, Canadian Illustrated News 1869-1883, https://tinyurl.com/usineforgaty

AG-MD: When you did your research, what did you discover about the consultation process in terms of the transformation of this area? Were there stakeholders who were for or against the demolition and the new project? How did this process unfold?

AM: All I found in the City of Montreal’s Archives about the demolition of the old building was a resolution passed in 2006 at the City Council to expropriate (with compensation) the tenants of the building of which Studio XXX was a part. There was apparently no publication consultation on the demolition.

However, since the initial project of the 2-22 proposed the construction of a building exceeding the height limit allowed by the Urban Plan of the City of Montreal, there had to be a public consultation in order to get the necessary authorization before proceeding. It was at this time that the different interests of the people and organizations implicated could be identified. The various stakeholders were very divided.

In general, arts and culture organizations, especially those involved in the project and who would gain access to the property through the 2-22, were absolutely supportive of its development. It would provide security, access to a work and dissemination space almost impossible to find otherwise. This is a real issue in the arts and culture community, there’s no denying it. Access to space is very difficult to find for artists and distributors, who have not been spared by the rent increases related to gentrification. So having a permanent venue in the middle of the Quartier des spectacles was very attractive for organizations like VOX. 

On the other hand, heritage and community organizations were less enthusiastic about the project. Heritage organizations were concerned that the SDA’s projects would not integrate well with the historical character of the neighbourhood, especially the sister project of the 2-22, the Quadrilatère Saint-Laurent [today known as Square St-Laurent]. This second component notably threatened to do away with Café Cléopâtre, but they resisted and refused to be expropriated. The case made its way to court.1

Many community organizations opposed the project or voiced reservations – because there is important nuance to this: organizations recognized that there was some value in the project, but they also saw risks, primarily for neighbourhood residents. Several organizations, like Stella2, wrote a brief to express their concerns.3

 Essentially, what they proposed was to be a key stakeholder in the project, to be local actors in the building project of the 2-22, to have a say, to participate in the development of the project, to be consulted. They extended a hand to the project developers, but it was not well received.

Stella had been on the Main for eight years and so knew the neighbourhood very well. What’s more, they had been among the many people and organizations who had to relocate due to poor building conditions. They recognized that it was a neighbourhood that needed care, love, money, and development, but not in the way proposed by the SDA, the company executing the 2-22 project. 

Another thing that I learned reading the brief from Stella was that during the time that they were located on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, they had a display window and organized exhibitions, mainly about sex work and the history of the Red Light district. 

This highlights an important question when we’re talking about cultural policy: what is defined as belonging to the cultural sector, and what kind of practices are given visibility? For example, material related to sex work, like the window exhibitions presented by Stella, would not so easily be found on the walls of the 2-22 because the “guardians of culture” have judged it immoral. This is evidenced by the bylaws of the building. They are not welcome in exhibition spaces, in spaces of cultural diffusion, because for some, these forms of expressions are taboo. But with the choice to avoid offence, we push them to the margins. It’s curious because historically, sex work and the arts have had an intimate relationship. 

What I found also such a shame about this whole process is that by displacing the communities that live in a place, you really break the link between those communities and their sites of work, you disrupt their legacy by pushing them completely out of the center, out of touch with their history. This prevents the ongoing transmission of the place-based histories of these communities of practice. The conversations with SWAC made this very clear. It’s really hard to cultivate the collective memory of a place, of a community’s culture, when the connections are so fractured on so many levels by gentrification.

Another interesting thing about the brief produced by Stella is that they had compiled a list of negative impacts already observed in the area since its rezoning, even before the 2-22 project was presented to the public. During the period when the gentrification process was in its early stages, as the Quartier des spectacles was first being constructed, they did a field study which showed that not only were sex workers (SWers) already being displaced to other areas, but at the time there were increasing police inspections, constant police presence in the area, and an increasing number of fines being given to “undesirables”. This resulted, as with the demolition of Studio XXX, in job loss, the loss of SWers networks, and an erasure of their collective memory in the neighbourhood. This was a very live issue even before the 2-22 came along. 

Wikipedia. (s.d.). Terrain vacant du 2-22 en 2008, récupéré de https://tinyurl.com/terrainvacant

AG: In the new project, did you find rationale for the need to revitalize the area?

AM: On their website, the SDA uses a number of catchphrases and images to introduce their projects, and one term that comes up a lot is “revitalize,” in this case to “revitalize through culture”.4 It really gives expression to the phenomenon that I have been investigating while working on this project. What it says is that the neighbourhood was “dead” and they needed to revive it by replacing the local culture with a different, more controlled and profitable one. 

MD: They saw it as dead, but it certainly wasn’t. There was activity, but they didn’t acknowledge it. 

AM: Yes exactly. Often they were invisibilized or illicit activities, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Actually, in an interview, Gérald Tremblay, the mayor of the City of Montreal at the time of the construction of the 2-22, said that he was sick of seeing boarded up buildings. There’s this desire to make the area profitable at all costs, but not to provide access to housing, to health clinics or things that could really serve the population. You can’t just make art spaces, offices, entertainment and consumer spaces; to allow people to really inhabit a place, to live well, you have to diversify its activities. 

Collage: Adore Goldman

AG-MD: As part of your process, you conducted an interview with several SWers, including activists with SWAC. What emerged from this about the relationship between gentrification and sex work?

AM: I think that question is best answered by the collective itself. So I’ll share some of the highlights.

What stood out to me the most in the conversation was that gentrification as a phenomenon is not just about space. It starts with the displacement of communities, yes, but the effects go beyond that. Particularly for SWers, there are the psychological and relational impacts, since displacement affects their ability to offer mutual support. 

What’s so impressive is that despite this, SWers find ways to rebuild their connections, to develop new ways to support each other, to be there for each other, and to share the resources they need to do their work. I think that’s really what SWAC is all about. 

Something else that often came up in the conversation, is that the more that spaces dedicated to sex work are destroyed, the more isolated SWers find themselves, everybody working alone. This makes solidarity and collective struggle more difficult, but can’t stop it completely; efforts always persist! 

These displacements also underline the importance of common spaces, connected to shared professional activities. We can see that it’s in these spaces where exchange and sharing is possible that bonds can develop that transform the spaces into sanctuaries. 

A critical issue is that so long as sex work remains a criminalized activity, there is a limit to the safety that sex workers can find in their places of work. They make their own safety, showing incredible resilience despite the ever-increasing urban transformation that hinders their search for security. 

What also came up during the exchange is that in Quartier des spectacles, there is a vicious and ironic process of relocating working communities and then taking advantage of their language, their symbols, their tools of representations, to promote the sanitized new district and increase its value. For example, the glass façade of the 2-22 building is apparently a reference to the dancers who stripped in the windows of the Red Light District. The symbolics of these communities are being exploited, while they are denied access to their work, are capitalized upon via the criminalization of their work or simply by their legal exclusion, as we saw with the 2-22.

In addition, by gentrifying and displacing communities and shutting down their places of work, we also reduce their access to services they need. For example, Stella was forced to relocate because of gentrification, which has had a negative impact on SWers’ ability to access the essential, front-line services Stella provides. 

I’ll finish by saying that overall, gentrification invisibilizes all these marginalized practices by pushing them further and further from the centre towards more isolated areas, removed from the sight of the rest of society. This puts people in danger, because the more invisible they are, the more at risk they are for violence and abuse. It is a profoundly disturbing impact of gentrification. It’s violence sanctioned by the authorities.

« Le 2-22 en 2015 », Wikipédia.

AG-MD: Are you the only artist who has been interested in the building that predates the 2-22?

AM: I did find other artists who were interested in it and wanted to document the existence of the peep show, before it was demolished.

One is Mia Donovan, a photographer and documentary filmmaker who spent her early career documenting the sex work milieu. During that time, she made a series of photographs with SWers at the former Studio XXX.5 As far as I know, these are some of the only images we have of the interior of the space before its demolition.

Another is Angela Grauerholz, also a visual artist, who shot a video of the intersection in 2005. At that time, we could see an overhead projection of two dancers in the window of Studio XXX, on the corner of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine.

These artists have documented the existence of these SWers by foregrounding them in their places of work. They were really interested in the physicality, the incarnate presence of the bodies of the SWers in those spaces, and not just the building itself. That made a big impression on me. It’s my hope to delve into the connections, of which there are many, between sex work and the arts. Many sex workers make art and many artists do sex work. I think we have a lot to learn and share.

dans le souffle de c. was presented at VOX Contemporary Image Center, from September 9th to December 3rd 2022 as part of the exhibition The Radical Imaginary II: Reclaiming Value. 

You can find other documentary resources that informed the project on its web counterpart: https://tinyurl.com/danslesoufledec 

1. To learn more about the fight for Café Cléopâtre: Wikipedia. (s.d). Café Cléopâtre, from https://tinyurl.com/cafecleopatre ↩

2. Stella is a community-based organization that seeks to improve quality of life for sex workers, to raise awareness and to educate society at large about the realities and forms of sex work so that sex workers have equal rights to health and safety as the rest of the population. For more information see: https://chezstella.org/ ↩

3. To read the brief produced by Stella: Stella. (2009). Mémoire sur la requalification du Quartier des spectacles, from https://tinyurl.com/quartierdesspectacles ↩

4. Société de développement Angus. (n.d.). Le 2-22, from https://tinyurl.com/le2-22saintlaurent ↩

5. This photo series was presented at Monument National in 2008 as part of the exhibition Le Coin produced by UMA, la Maison de l’image et de la photographie. The three selected artists were invited to document the intersection of St-Laurent and St-Catherine streets, on the cusp of its transformation. To learn more about this exhibition: UMA, la Maison de l’image et de la photographie. (2008). Le Coin, from http://www.umamontreal.com/lecoin/ ↩

Rights not rescue panties sex workers
CatsMTL

Open Letter La Paix des Femmes

Open Letter in Reaction to
La Paix Des Femmes

Maxime Holliday, Translated by Julia Thomas

La paix des femmes is a play written by author Véronique Côté in collaboration with abolitionist activist Martine B. Côté. Together, they sign this work as well as a related essay (Faire Corps), both published by Atelier 10 editions. The play was presented in Quebec City at La Bordée in the fall of 2022. One month before the performances began, Maxime Holliday, activist from the Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC), published this open letter to denounce the play which, according to her, makes a crude, alarmist and dangerous representation of sex work. Speaking directly to the author, Maxime called for more diverse voices from the community to be brought into the play, thereby attempting to clarify (again) the difference between consensual exchange of sexual services and sexual exploitation. Following the distribution of the letter, a dialogue between Maxime and Véronique led to the latter withdrawing a line from the play and proposing that part of the written exchange between the two women be printed and displayed in the theater hall. During the first performance, pro-sex work activists interrupted, standing and carrying red umbrellas, to chant “my work, my choice” before leaving the room.

Rights not rescue panties sex workers
Embroidery by Melina May

Hi Véronique, 

 I’m writing to you today to discuss your play, La Paix des femmes. To start, I want to say I have much respect for your body of work – both the literary and the theatrical. You directed me twice during my time at CÉGEP, and I adored you. I will never forget when République: un abécédaire populaire came out, and you canceled our rehearsal to take us to the cinema to see it. I thought it was so beautiful, so rad, I promised myself I would always live up to the energy and passion you shared with us. I read S’appartenir(e) and La vie habitable. I saw you in Mois d’Août, Osage County and Laurier Station: 1000 répliques pour dire je t’aime. I went to see Scalpée because you were the director. I was never disappointed. You are right and you have a gift for touching people.  

When I heard from friends earlier this summer about La Paix des femmes, I was excited. Because prostitution is a subject I’m passionate about and one that I know well. A little background on my life – after CÉGEP I did a bachelor’s degree, traveled, worked in restaurants and bars, and started playing music. I got a second college diploma and moved alone into a beautiful apartment with an old, adopted cat. During the pandemic, I meditated, worked on art projects, met a wonderful person with whom I share a deep, loving relationship to this day, and moved to Montreal. I ended my career in food service after being hostile with two customers in the same week. I was stretched to the max after eight years in the industry and knew myself well enough to pull back before I snapped. In 2021 I started working at an erotic massage parlour, which I still do today, as well as working from time to time as a nude dancer in bars. I love it. My life is balanced and dynamic. I am a curious, politically engaged, caring person. I make art with my friends, performances and I take care of myself, my family and those around me. I read Martine Delvaux and Judith Lussier and listen to Angèle Arsenault. 

My friends are aware of my work in the sex industry, so I quickly heard about your play being published. I was told it was a dialogue between an abolitionist and a pro-sex-work scholar. I was told it was nuanced and written from multiple perspectives. I was skeptical but eager to read it because you wrote it. That is until my mother wielded your text at me to convince me to stop doing sex work. My poor, terrified mother, who has brutally invalidated me since I first wrote to her almost a year ago telling her about my work. My own mother, so freaked out that she can’t even hear or listen, much less trust me when I try to tell her about my experience. My mom emailing me your play. And my stomach in knots because, at that moment, I realize that the play confirms all her most sordid fears about my existence. At first, I’m so exasperated I tell myself I won’t read it. Anyway, she has refused to read anything I send her for a year. But what I needed the most was to be considered and heard. So I chose to open a dialogue by offering her a reading in exchange for a reading, which she eventually accepted.  

 So I read your play. While camping in the Jacques-Cartier Valley with my lover. I understand that your writing comes from a feminist impulse, a place of benevolent sisterhood, but I find this text hurts. Because it’s not a dialogue. It’s a lynching that rehashes all kinds of clichés about sex work in which exploitation, human trafficking and prostitution are all the same. The conversation occurs between a young woman (Alice) who decides to brutally confront Isabelle, the former feminist studies teacher of her sister (Lea), dead of an overdose six months after having started to prostitute herself. Alice blames Isabelle and the feminism she upholds for having caused her sister’s death, relying on an aggressive and dismissive abolitionist rationale. The character of Isabelle, who supposedly bears the pro-sex work argument, is discredited in the blurb on the back cover and tends to make dubious statements. She keeps waving “agency” as the solitary white flag to defend sex work in her discussions. And yet it is this same agency that we lose when she suggests that, as sex workers, “it is all we have left “1 and “they can’t take that away [from us].”2  Such claims strip sex workers of our agency, victimizing us and painting a bleak portrait of our reality. The story of Lea, dead after being recruited into a trafficking ring, inspired by the real lives of women who have been victims of coercion, extortion, abuse, and assault – is valid and alarming. We do need to talk about this reality, to denounce it. To shout out loud that as women in a misogynist and oppressive patriarchal system, we have lived and continue to live through appalling sexual violence. In this system, violence, as you say, is everywhere. It is intersectional. But I am so angry that these stories of exploitation are systematically used to represent prostitution in general, invalidating all those whose experience of sex work is ordinary or even straight-up positive. Ordinary experiences generally aren’t reported publicly or are labeled as isolated cases, creating an unbalanced and distorted image of our lives. Because If we are shown reports from Radio-Canada on “sugar babies” being manipulated and abused or women getting assaulted and killed, they also need to show us the story of the 45-year-old woman who has quietly worked for 20 years, and those for whom sex work is a means for empowerment and a good life.   

 Clarifying the difference between the consensual exchange of services and sexual exploitation, once and for all, would allow us to better combat pimps and fight to curb human trafficking more effectively. At the same time, SWers would benefit from improved working conditions to organize themselves and ensure their health and safety at work. Because this is indeed an intense job, and it is not made for everyone. The cliché of quick and easy money is totally absurd. Sex work is work. There are many security challenges, and strong relational, communication, and entrepreneurial skills are a requirement. It seems evident to me that all the energy used to discredit SWers and try to make them disappear would be much better used to help them obtain better tools for their trade and establish an empowering and safe social and legal framework. You infantilize a person when you suggest you are better at making choices about her life than she is. The worldwide abolition of prostitution is a legal and theoretical fable that only works on paper. I fail to see how the state could control the individual agency of SWers and their bodies without falling into repression and totalitarianism. And while it is indeed urgent to find ways to help women in extreme poverty who prostitute themselves to survive, it must be recognized that social and economic precarity would persist even if prostitution were made wholly illegal and/or magically disappeared. We can only make the lives of sex workers more difficult by stigmatizing them and working against them and their clients. Like with abortion, which can never be totally eradicated but can undoubtedly be dangerous when practiced under the wrong conditions, I believe that prostitution in Canada should be decriminalized 3 ; to allow SWers to self-organize according to their needs, which they know best, and create shared spaces, training opportunities, and unions to foster the improvement of their working conditions.

 La Paix des femmes, unfortunately, still contributes to the deliberate conflation of consensual exchanges of voluntary sexual services with human trafficking. Because if I understand correctly, the play was written based on only two testimonials (K. and C., thanked at the end of the book)? It seems that a sample of two individuals is not enough to get an accurate idea of how a whole environment, which one has not directly experienced, works. The contribution of your friend Martine B. Côté, student researcher and abolitionist activist who has worked with victims of exploitation, was no doubt highly relevant. If the play, and the attached essay, claimed to be about exploitation and sex trafficking, that would be fine. But because the works claim to speak “for women and against the system that exploits them” 4 about the concept of prostitution in general, I find the gratuitously violent and shocking images conveyed in the play to be shamelessly ridiculous and crude.  5

 It seems to me that this willingness to see using one’s body in a sexual way as automatically dangerous, painful, dirty, dishonourable, and shameful is a throwback to the outdated Catholic thinking that once controlled sexual morality. Suppose we believe today that women have a right to their bodily autonomy and sexual freedom. Why should “dislocating your jaw from giving blowjobs”6 (which already strikes me as either a horrible experience of sexual violence or a stylistic exaggeration but not a frequent consequence of practicing fellatio) be a worse scenario than destroying your lungs by breathing in chemicals in a factory, blowing out your vertebrae by lifting people to wash them in a hospital or ravaging your mental health as an overworked teacher in an elementary school? The patriarchal capitalist system exerts economic and social pressure and dominance on all women and all workers, regardless of their field. I am trying to demonstrate how our system threatens the physical and psychological health of so many of us. The working conditions of migrant people are often compared to modern slavery. The average household is being held in a chokehold by the ever-increasing cost of living. In this context, prostitution can easily be, for some people, the most practical and appealing way to pay for rent and groceries. It can also be an appealing occupation simply because sexuality and social work (because I assure you that sometimes we do act as social workers in lingerie) interest and stimulate us more than working in a hardware store, making sushi or being an administrative assistant in a production company.

Pancarte la criminalisation tue
Photo taken by Youssef Baati during a rallye organized by SWAC on October 7th 2022

For almost two years, I have worked with ordinary women, self-employed workers in the industry. Students, mothers, sisters, lovers, nurses, graphic designers, musicians, cashiers. For some, it’s a side job; for others it’s full-time. In the staff room, we tell each other our stories, we talk about our clients. Sometimes, we work on our computers in silence while waiting for appointments, sometimes, we share snacks and laugh loudly. In the strip club dressing room, we chat with the bouncer while putting on deodorant and take dinner breaks. We work where we choose to work and on good days, we earn a very good salary. I have many friends who work online, others who are independent escorts. I know a male escort for women too. Everyone, regardless of gender, needs physical contact. You’d be surprised how many people around us use these services but remain anonymous for fear of legal repercussions, stigma and shame. 

 Why is it still so inconceivable today that it is not necessarily humiliating and traumatic for a woman to get paid to dance naked or offer sexual services? Why is it automatically offensive to imagine a woman performing multiple blowjobs in one day? As far as I’m concerned, the end result of the feminist sexual revolution is to recognize the traumas we have lived through and to give ourselves the means, however diverse, to heal from them. Our great-grandmothers and grandmothers, required to sexually satisfy their husbands and produce children even when they didn’t want to. Our grandmothers, our mothers, and we live in a society where scientific research on female sexual organs is woefully behind that of male sexual organs. Our mothers, sisters, daughters, and we ourselves, who still have to research contraception for ourselves and fear that abortion rights will be revoked here too. Can we acknowledge our sexual trauma and work together to heal and liberate ourselves, all while respecting each other’s pace? Live and let live. I understand and appreciate that some women may feel repulsed and threatened by the kind of sexuality instilled in us by the hetero-patriarchal system. Because this model is indeed abusive, restrictive, and threatening to us.  But all while recognizing this, could we also be capable of caring for each other inclusively and respectfully, allowing each of us the freedom to manage the use of our body as we see fit? If I enjoy offering sex, paid or free, with my own body, which I take care of and which belongs to me, who am I hurting? My body continues to belong to me after my workday. I ride my bike with it, I pet my cat with it, I eat with it, I listen to music that I like with it, I work out with it, I have a glass of wine with it. I have sold a service but not my body. I find that getting paid to perform femininity and heteronormative sexuality is also a way to infiltrate the institution to bring it down from within. Because it recognizes that women never owe men anything. No sexual and/or relational work. No care work and no extra mental workload. That there are people paid to offer this kind of service, as far as I’m concerned, contributes to a return of power. To avoid the exploitation insidiously victimizing all of us in societies that teach us to fulfill men’s needs for free because “it is due to them.” 

 Coming back to the play, I also want to mention the things I liked: first of all, the fact that it raises questions about bodily autonomy in the context of egg donation. This is a topic I knew little about until recently, and it is pertinent to reflect on. And secondly, I liked how the client archetype was humanized through the character of Max. Well, what I remember is that the couple doesn’t communicate very well and that Max betrayed his girlfriend. He’s not the hero of the story, let’s say. But I’ll take that as a jumping-off point to say a word about clients. Before working in the field, I thought clients would all be big drunk macho jerks or old perverts. In the end, those clients do exist, but they are not the majority. And just like massage therapists, osteopaths, or tattoo artists, after an unpleasant appointment with a bad client, I make a note to myself not to take that client anymore. In reality, the majority of my regular clients are ordinary people. Neuro-divergent people, people with disabilities, recently divorced dads, insecure young people, old widowers, veterans, terminally ill men, and newcomers who have difficulty meeting someone because of cultural and language barriers. People with human needs. People who want to cuddle, who want to come and be validated. The patriarchy harms male-socialized people too. Everyone needs to be educated and to heal. I believe in the capacity of people and societies to learn from their mistakes and to improve themselves. I think there are many ways to change people’s behaviour and stop exploitation and violence against women. But just as I don’t think banning the sale or purchase of sex teaches men to respect and care for women or themselves, I don’t believe that it is prostitution that prevents women from having the same privileges as men. Misogyny is everywhere. In the price of feminine-gendered products, fatphobia, systemic racism and rape culture. It is within our intimate relationships and marriages. It is in the justice system, deficient when it comes to defending survivors of sexual abuse. Violence exists far beyond the concept of prostitution, and I think the day that society respects and cares for prostitutes as for any other woman, we will all have won something. 

 You carry your feminist fight through your art, and so do I. There are many feminisms and truths, yes. But to read comments like Francine Pelletier’s, quoted at the end of your play, which suggest that women are being inconsistent by choosing “to look like dolls”7 or “choosing to stay home and raise their children”8 revolts me. To think that women cannot perform an ultra-feminine gender identity or decide to dedicate their lives to their children at the risk of harming the feminist cause is binary and outdated feminist thinking. It still puts all the pressure on women, as if society will always hold it against them no matter their choice. As for my feminism, I update it constantly, and I fight for it on all fronts. In my personal and professional life. On the streets, in my bed, and on social networks. My songs are about our emancipation, and I use my workplaces as a space for direct intervention. I work with my legs, armpits, hairy pubis, shaved head, and sometimes long nails and artificial lashes. I feel beautiful and whole. I always say what I think. I am gentle and tender, but I never overstep my boundaries: I am firm in enforcing them. I resist, educate, and I cum. Sometimes at work and always in my intimate life. I cum. Because I am a woman and I belong to myself. Because I am a rigorous intellectual, a passionate artist, a faithful friend, a committed lover, a staunch feminist, a caring sister and a gifted and proud sex worker. If I am accused of inconsistency, I would say it is more a matter of freedom. Cultivated and nurtured through adversity.

 Reading your play, Véronique, I felt uncomfortable and bitter. It upsets me even more to think that the play will be presented in September at La Bordée. I can’t see how presenting this work will do anyone any good. But I can see how it will hurt many people. This play exudes fear, helplessness, rage, and pain but does not offer real solutions to improve anyone’s well-being. This play conveys all sorts of feelings that I share facing the injustices and violence experienced by women. Still, it approaches this complex subject in such a superficial and one-sided way that its impact is already being felt negatively in my personal life, as it will inevitably be felt in those of my friends and colleagues.  Even if I do not share your opinions on the future of prostitution, I would like to highlight all the good you and Martine are undoubtedly doing by listening to and helping victims of sexual violence get out of violent situations and rebuild their lives. I sincerely thank you for being there for these women, but I also urge you to consider the impact a play like La Paix des femmes can have on the collective imagination. For if the three of us are initiated into the subject of prostitution and human trafficking, the average person is entirely ignorant of the reality and issues involved. To present such an alarmist and unnuanced work will have, in my opinion, damaging moral repercussions on the cause of SWers and women in prostitution, particularly in Quebec City and the surrounding area. Therefore, I am addressing this letter to you, Véronique, and the entire production team to ask you to act by opening a healthy and diverse dialogue with our SWers community and integrating other points of view and informative resources from our community into the presentation of your play. We really need safe working conditions, to be listened to, consideration, inclusion, justice and respect. 

I am sending you this letter through the SWAC, a self-governed organization in which I am an activist, to maintain my anonymity. Thank you for respecting my anonymity, even though you may have recognized me by the very personal tone of my letter.  

 Thank you for reading my words. 

In the hope of awakening reflection and compassion. 

 Maxime Holliday
25 juillet 2022 

1. Véronique Côté. (2021). La paix des femmes, p. 90 ↩

2. SAME ↩

3. Like in a certain area of Australia, in New-Zealand and in Belgium since June 2022. ↩

4. Véronique Côté. (2021). Faire corps, back cover ↩

5. I want to reiterate that I speak from my experiences and those of my colleagues and whore friends. I am in no way discrediting the experiences of the women who have spoken to you, which are also very real and valid. ↩

6. Véronique Côté. (2021). La paix des femmes, p. 90↩

7. Francine Pelletier. (2018).Le corps d’une femme, Le Devoir quoted in Véronique Côté. (2021). La paix des femmes, p. 127 ↩

8. SAME ↩