#decrim and LGBTQ sex workers

#decrim and LGBTQ sex workers

Queer sex workers are not a monolith but this International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers we at Feminists For Solidarity have decided to amplify the voices of a few LGBTQ sex workers to address the diversity of sex worker experiences and intersecting identities as well as to see what queer sex workers have to say about the Swedish LGBTQIA+ movement’s track record when it comes to sex workers’ rights. A survey of 124 sex workers in Sweden from 2011 revealed that over half of the respondents identified as something other than heterosexual. Of the male sex worker respondents, 53% described their sexual orientation as gay and 21% as bisexual. For women sex workers only around half were straight, with bisexual women making up the second largest proportion at 41% (HIV Sweden and Rose Alliance 2014: 36). Clearly LGBTQ+ sex workers are not a small minority here in Sweden, yet sex workers are broadly excluded from other political movements such as womens’ rights, LGBTQ rights, workers’ rights, migrants’ rights etc despite the fact that the struggle for sex worker’s rights overlaps with these movements and many sex workers occupy a space of intersectional oppression. As such, sex workers are often marginalised from the very communities that are supposed to support and nourish them. Feminists for Solidarity considers sex work to be a queer issue, a feminist issue, an intersectional issue, a human rights issue and a workers’ rights issue.

Currently in Sweden, selling sexual services is legal but the clients, as well as all attempts to improve safety, are criminalised. Many sex workers are affected by poverty, sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia and ableism amongst other forms of discrimination. As a queer feminist collective FFS supports the full decriminalisation of sex work and is committed to the struggle to increase rights, protection and opportunities for marginalised groups, instead of further restricting them as these current Swedish laws achieve so successfully. The economic, political and social reasons that prompt many to exchange sex for payment cannot be addressed through continued de facto criminalisation or policing but instead by a restructuring of society. It is unacceptable to promote laws that directly and purposefully harm people belonging to multiple vulnerable groups to avoid tackling the underlying issues. Instead of trying to “end demand” via various forms of criminalisation, efforts and funding should be focused on harm reduction and changing social attitudes to sex work to reduce stigma, provide individuals with realistic alternatives to sex work and offer support, healthcare and protection for those who continue to work within the industry.

Let’s meet our LGBTQ sex workers!

• Please briefly introduce yourself.

Ophelia: I am a cis femme queer woman and I work as a full service sex worker. That means I provide sexual services including intercourse, oral sex and kissing for payment. I have been doing this job for about 5 years and it’s my only source of income. Even though I’m from Sweden I work there very rarely since I don’t feel as safe there as in other countries that are available to me.

Sangoma: I am Zimbabwean born sex worker and I’m also a transgender woman. I face triple stigma and discrimination being a black woman in a white infiltrated market in Sweden as well as being an immigrant and being transgender; what the clients would call not having “an original pussy”.

Angelica: I am a 24 year old sexworking bisexual woman born in Sweden. I have sold sex for 1.5 years. I am doing escorting, mostly girlfriend experience and fulfilling people’s sexual fantasies. I have also done bachelor parties and solo porn. I really like that. I prefer hotels, but I mostly see clients at their homes or sometimes in their car. So far I have only had male clients (aged between 22-65, both rich and poor) but I would be happy to have female clients too.

Antonietta: Hi, my name’s Antonietta and I am a transgender sex worker. I started to have sex to secure my living situation when I was 14 and then started to have sex for cash when I was 16. Ever since I’ve been selling sex every month.

Ellie: I started doing non-full service sex work as a teenager, now I’m in my late 20s and have been doing full service sex work on and off. Without sex work I earn below the minimum subsistence level as I am self-employed. I’m queer, although feeling alienated from the queer movement at large in Sweden has made it difficult for me to identify this way. It took a long time for me to identify as a feminist because the mainstream feminist movement still frowns upon sex workers.

• What (if there is one) is the relationship between your LGBTQ identity and being a sex worker?

Ophelia: For me this connection is quite strong. Being queer, I had already broken so many sexual taboos before starting sex work. Not just because of the genders of my sex partners but in the kind of sex I was having. The queer community is open to and invites more types of relationships, sexualities and practices. To us sex doesn’t necessarily mean something that happens in a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman who are in love. It can happen in many different ways including casual hook-ups in a dark room, in a BDSM dynamic at a play party or with good friends while watching cartoons. So when doing sex work we are only breaking another in a long line of sexual taboos. In fact, I was introduced to sex work by queer friends.

Sangoma: For me there is no relationship between being a sex worker and being transgender. Being transgender is my identity in life and a manifestation of my true self, whilst sex work is a profession – just like being a teacher or a stripper.

Angelica: As a woman with a queer sexuality I had to question the morals of society saying I had a “bad” sexuality and “dirty” sexual fantasies. When I had questioned those morals I think it was easier to also question other morals in society, for example Swedish morals around sex work.

Antonietta: Being a young transgender person, my family and relatives left me as a kid. They were working class and sometimes they did not have money for food and I remember giving my mother the money I had earned so that she could buy food. There were so many of us kids and I brought a big shame on the family because I was transgender. So I disappeared from their lives, and they from mine. If I would have been a straight cisman or ciswoman I probably would never have become a sex worker. Many cisgender women in my family have been sex workers but because of drugs and stuff like that, and I hate drugs so I don’t think I would have become a sex worker if I were cisgender. Maybe if I were a cisgender gay man because then my family might have been disgusted by me, but never if I were a cisgender woman, no matter if I were lesbian, straight, bi, whatever. My family never had any problems with queer ciswomen. I would still have been in a shitty financial situation but it probably wouldn’t be as urgent because I would have had a family to try and help me out etc.

Ellie: Like many queers I grew up with destructive family relationships and I wasn’t very politically enlightened until after my 20s; I was busy rebelling against my family.

• How do you feel about the LGBTQIA+ community’s support for the movement for sex workers’ rights?

Ophelia: Frankly I find the lack of support from the general LGBTQIA+ community quite appalling. We know that LGBTQIA+ people have been doing sex work throughout history: from lesbians in the 1800s who used it as a way to support themselves instead of getting married, to homosexual men who provided services to their closeted brothers during the many years of criminalisation, to the many young trans people in the past and today (yes, even in Sweden!) who see sex work as their only way to make money. Sex workers have been part of the LGBTQIA+ struggle from the beginning but now, when it’s suddenly “ok to be gay” in some parts of the world, privileged LGBs throw all us less respectable queers under the bus in order to be embraced by the world as “normal” and thereby worthy of rights like marriage.

Sangoma: There is a huge gap when it comes to the representation of sex workers within the rainbow family. We are controversial in terms of our profession being called a “bedroom fantasy” instead of work. A lot of funding is going to projects which have been done a thousand times but the real issue in Swedish LGBTQIA+ politics is that we need to lobby and advocate for sex worker issues and visibility. I am highly disappointed by the lack of progress here; we need stakeholders to have the guts to sponsor different sex worker affiliated projects.

Angelica: Sex workers exist in every part of society – we are mothers, friends, migrants, students and many of us are LGBTQI etc. So every part of society should include us. Yet there was barely anything about sex work in the last Stockholm Pride seminar programme.

Antonietta: For me it is normal to be LGBTQ and a sex worker. However, the LGBTQ community is Sweden is generally very middle class and doesn’t know anything about sex work. They care more about slut shaming, when capitalism is the system that’s killing us. Before I got in touch with them, I assumed that all transgender people were sex workers like me and that all sex workers came from the lower working class or below, but to my surprise none of these organisations represented me. I know so many sex workers here in Sweden who are from other countries, either European or refugees from other parts of the world who are abused in the industry by stupid Swedish men who are “helping them” (pimping). For me, I sell sex to survive, not because I choose to. Personally I wouldn’t have been a sex worker if I would have had the opportunity to be a doctor or cleaner.

Ellie: I feel like the Swedish LGBTQIA+ movement is rubbish at supporting sex workers. It’s weird because the relationship between queerness and sex work is acknowledged worldwide. I think it has to do with the mainstream feminist influence here in Sweden that is very good at silencing sex workers and people who speak out for us. It’s definitely an uncomfortable subject that will get derailed into focusing on the clients and their needs, instead of our health and safety.

• What legal changes would you like to see in Sweden to ensure the well-being and rights of LGBTQI+ sex workers are respected and protected?

Ophelia: The Laws in Sweden make it dangerous for all sex workers to work but for groups that suffer under multiple oppressions it is many times worse. For example: as a white straight-passing cis person with a Swedish name I can walk into a hotel and work without much suspicion. A migrant sex worker from Thailand or a trans woman walking into the same hotel would immediately be profiled as a sex worker and the police would be called. As hotels are off limits they are often forced to work in unsafe conditions: on the street, at a client’s place, for a boss or in massage parlours for low pay. Those are the immediate effects of Sexköpslagen (the neo abolitionist law criminalising clients) in Sweden. That law should be thrown out! Also, providing safe and legal ways for migrants to come and do sex work in Sweden would make them less vulnerable to unsafe/unfair working conditions and trafficking.

Sangoma: The parliament should make an effort to protect the rights of everyone including sex workers. A good government is measured by how it articulates its constitutional policy by handling all issues using norm critical thinking. We have been silenced for so long but if the government is not going to just address our needs, in particular having our work ethics respected, I for one am gonna march into the government and make some noise! I’m tired of being underpaid because clients know that the government is never going to recognise the value of a sex worker.

Angelica: I want sex work to be decriminalised – not legalisation or criminalising the client. For me the fact that my clients are criminals is bad because few of them want to send me their real name, contact details or photo before I see them for the first time. They are afraid that someday the police may get hold of this information. And I understand this fear, but it is much less safe for me to go and see them when I can’t even tell a friend beforehand where I will be and with whom. Also my clients confirm my belief that they aren’t doing something evil (the Swedish law reinforces that buying sex is bad/rape, but I see sex work as work). The worker creates the boundaries and decides what is allowed and what is not ok. Many clients want me to prove that I don’t “need” the money, which of course I do, but they think there is less risk in me claiming rape if I don’t “need” the money… Come on Sweden! Some critical thinking please. Sex workers are complex just like everyone else! Some clients ask me to work for less pay because they want it to be genuine and not only about the money. That is a problem, because I need money to survive. Many Swedish clients are like this yet when I speak to sex workers who have experience working in both Sweden and other places with different laws, they say that clients in other countries view my sexual services as a job and are less reluctant to pay for it.

Antonietta: I want to work together with other trans sex workers, but I can’t because it is illegal in Sweden! If I get beaten up or even raped when working in my apartment I can’t report it because the landlord will kick me out due to the Swedish laws. I would also like to see the pimping laws reformed to differentiate between a genuine couple relationship and exploitation.

Ellie: Decriminalisation is not the end or only final solution but it is crucial to improve our health, working conditions and safety. The state needs to stop deporting migrant sex workers in the name of anti-trafficking!

• What other changes in society would you like to see to improve the lives and working conditions of LGBTQI+ sex workers?

Ophelia: Obviously we just want to be respected and treated like anyone else in society. But I think this change in attitude is nearly impossible without first changing the law. Currently we are seen as victims without any ability to make choices over our own lives. Surveys have also shown that since sexköpslagen was introduced, more and more Swedes would like to see a law that criminalises sex workers as well as buyers. As neither victimhood nor criminality is something that comes with much respect I think our fight for acceptance is doomed without a law change.

Sangoma: We need the health sector to have a deep felt sensitivity and understanding of the lives of sex workers and how they should be treated. When we go to the hospital we do not feel safe to disclose details of our lives because of the Swedish healthcare sector’s judgemental eyes. We also need an alliance of strong movements of sex workers who can win over political leaders to lobby our concerns in the government and in wider society. Lastly we need stakeholders and private donors to fund projects which mainstream sex workers’ rights regardless of colour, creed, gender identity or sexual orientation.

Ellie: Mainstream feminism needs to stop excluding us and pretending that we don’t exist like yesterday, already! Authorities continuously exclude us from seminars and meetings about us no matter how loud we speak. We need everyone else to sit down, listen to us and amplify our movement!

Feminists For Solidarity would like to thank APNSW, CHANGE, DAVIDA, HIPS, ICW, KESWA, NASTAD, NSWP, Sonke Gender Justice, SWEAT and SWOP-USA for their All in for #decrim Blog Carnival initiative and extend our solidarity to them this International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Check out the hashtag #decrim this week on social media for more great content about decriminalisation!

Feminists For Solidarity, Sweden.