Sex workers don’t need to be rescued
【2009.06.03 】
MAP: Australia
Organisations that capitalise on the suffering of the people they are supposedly helping can learn a great deal from the recent Salvation Army apology, writes Scarlet Alliance president Elena Jeffreys.
“An advertisement has run in the Sydney Telegraph this morning… certainly has offended those working within this particular segment within their community. The very last thing that we would want to do is to distance ourselves from any person in need and so as a direct result we pulled the ad from our public media,” Major Philip Maxwell of the Salvation Army told a horde of media gathered in the Salvation Army cafe on Albion Street, Surry Hills.
Sex workers had spent several hours negotiating for an apology, and had a strong presence at the launch, holding red umbrellas and signs including “Salvo’s Pimping Sex Workers”, “We don’t need to be rescued – We Need RIGHTS”, and my favourite, “Salvo’s = Ugly Mug”.
The offensiveness of the ad comes from the stereotypes and stigma it perpetuates. The ad speaks about a male sex worker who is ‘saved’ by the Salvation Army. The stereotype is simple. Sex workers are victims of an immoral world, the Salvation Army are our liberators. Readers’ first thoughts are “Yes a sex worker is saved by a religious charity, all is right in the world”.
It is always more plausible to understand sex workers as victims than it is to understand us as intelligent, articulate and community-minded.
The proof that stigma and discrimination is so rife is that people will believe and accept an unusually dramatic story over and above the banal day-to-day reality of paying your rent or mortgage through sex work. The bigger insult was that the Salvation Army chose a obscure anecdote (and all the prejudice it embodies) over hundreds of thousands of other examples of sex worker community strength and resilience.
“We don’t believe that it is the case that the majority of sex workers are working in the industry without choice,” Scarlet Alliance CEO Janelle Fawkes told Gemma Snowdon of The Wire last Friday.
“We have a large membership of both organisations and individual sex workers, and we have been in existence since 1989, and our organisation is in fact made up of sex workers.
“So actually what is reflected by our membership, and the sex workers we and our membership interact with on outreach in Australia, is that the majority of sex workers have made a choice to work as sex workers.”
Perhaps the prejudice would have been more obvious in the first instance if it was about homosexuality. If the headline had read “To help Rick with his sexuality, we had to resort to brainwashing” I believe even the newspaper would have had second thoughts about running it.
If the ad had capitalised on community misunderstanding of sexual assault issues in Indigenous communities I hope it would not have been run: “To prevent sexual assault in an Aboriginal community, we had to resort to removing their children”.
Community attitudes have changed in regard to the stolen generation.
The recent advertisement was a sad reminder to sex workers and supporters: we still have a long way to go. The Salvation Army misread what is acceptable regarding sex workers’ portrayal in the media, and they did apologise for it, but it doesn’t change the reality that a committee of people in uniform thought societal unease about sex work a worthwhile brand for their charity.
Sex workers responded: “Just because we are discriminated against doesn’t make it OK to discriminate.”
Generally people seem open to evidence-based, mature and non-hysterical approaches to sex work.
The Scarlet Alliance membership represents a strong community of peer educators, spokespeople and representatives who are more than capable of providing services and support to our own community when in need, and identifying prejudice when we see it.
Tens of thousands of occasions of sex worker peer education are shared within the sex worker community every year. We use condoms for sex. We enjoy good workplaces. However in some states and territories we are not covered by anti-discrimination laws, still criminalised, and subject to misunderstanding and prejudice. On the up-side we have the best occupational health and safety of any sex industry in the world, and we argue strongly for human rights in all possible forums.
Sex workers need solidarity not hand-outs if we are going to keep getting it right in Australia. And there is so much to celebrate. The Salvation Army’s Major Philip Maxwell recognises that as well, and concluded Friday’s media conference thus: “We do have an ongoing relationship as far as working with people of all levels and spheres within life, I confirm that as an ongoing commitment.”
Sex workers look forward to it as well.
International Whores Day is celebrated annually on June 2. In Sydney this includes a protest outside Parliament House, Melbourne and Canberra are having sex worker only social events, and Adelaide commemorates with a public march on June 5.
Elena Jeffreys is the president of the Scarlet Alliance – the Australian Sex Workers Association.