Last week's episode left us with a lot of thoughts. Here's a little bonus episode about getting involved and doing your research and the things that we learned from Siân and Chantelle's conversation. We'd love to know what you think so why not drop us a line on Twitter or Instagram?
Transcript:
Introduction
Hello, and welcome to The Revolution Begins at Home (bonus reflections podcast). My name is Cerys, I’m the producer here at The Revolution Begins at Home and, after each episode, I’m going to be sharing a couple of things the episode made me think about whilst I was helping to make it.
It’s me, back again, thinking about things and then saying them to you now.
Episode
In last week’s episode Chantelle interviewed Siân Docksey. Siân’s a comedian – you may have seen her on the BBC, in a sketch about witches, or on Instagram, pole dancing her way through the pandemic. She told us about her experience of stripping whilst searching for a City job in post-financial crash London.
I think that Siân and I left uni around the same time. I got quite lucky as I moved straight onto a postgraduate course whilst my friends applied for hundreds of grad schemes. It’s a demoralising process and time-consuming and, often, fruitless. Siân described this culture where…
Siân 19:16 you can be working and exhausted all the time and just not touching any money… And the time from where you're hired to when the money actually hits your bank account is so nuts… like I was in the final interview stages of four different jobs and was needing to like create all this stuff to get hired and things and it was like, this doesn't work. I need to get paid now.
Which was, in part, why she sought work at a strip club called Metropolis in Bethnal Green. And Siân’s experience is not unique – Chantelle also talked about her own experience signing up to an Escort Service, again out of financial necessity.
But money is only one part of the story. The conversation also focused heavily on street harassment and the kind of sexual and sexist verbal assault that is commonplace in other fields of work, like the serving industry. Siân talked about how moving from serving in a bar to dancing in a strip club took her out of an environment where her superiors refused to do anything about catcalling and unwanted touching and put her in one where the rules were clear and strictly enforced.
Siân’s experience of sex work, which she describes as 70% bad, 30% good is, obviously, not universal. She made it clear that her experience benefited from certain privileges, like being able to find work in clubs that had things like no touching rules and knowing, and being friends with, other sex workers.
But, it was still useful to hear about the world of Sex Workers’ rights through Siân’s story because, as Siân explained in the podcast, we often abstract the issue and forget that there are real people involved. This process allows for those in the debate, whether they are arguing for the Nordic model, regulation, or full or partial decriminalisation, to transform Sex Workers into many things – fallen women, bad feminists, victims, instead of listening to Sex Workers as their own advocates. Siân made her point very clear – when you are talking about Sex Workers’ Rights, you are talking about Sex Workers who have their own stories, their own arguments and, crucially, a long, long history of organising.
History of Sex Worker Activism
The history of Sex Worker Activism is the history of workers’ rights, it is the fight for unions and acceptable working conditions. But, also, it is the history of police protests, to the end of stop and search and of prison abolition. It is the fight for trans rights, disabled rights and migrant rights. It is anti-capitalist and anti-racist, as well as feminist[1] because Sex Worker activism intersects with many other forms of activism because Sex Workers are affected by so many of the structures of power that create discrimination and poverty and violence.
When we asked Siân about the history of Sex Worker activism she quoted from Juno Mac and Molly Smith’s book Revolting Prostitutes:
Siân 45:34 So Juno Mac writes: sex workers are the original feminists, often seen as merely subject to other's whims. In fact, sex workers have shaped and contributed to social movements across the world. In medieval Europe, brothel workers formed guilds and occasionally engaged in strikes or street protests in response to crackdowns, workplace closures or unacceptable working conditions. 15th century prostitutes arraigned before City Council's in Bavaria asserted their activities constituted work rather than a sin. In 1907 200, prostitutes marched in San Francisco in what's been called the original women's march to demand an end to rustle closures. A speaker at the march declared, nearly every one of these women is a mother or has someone depending on her, they're driven into this life by economic conditions. You don't do any good by attacking us. Why don't you attack these conditions?
The Point
I find this history fascinating. I was about to say “we owe so many of our rights to sex workers”, but, I mean, you’re only included in that “we” if you yourself are not a sex worker engaged in campaigning for, for instance, sexual health education[2] or immigration reforms[3] or community support for rough sleepers[4] amongst many other things.
And that seems like a pretty sweeping generalisation given what we heard in last week’s episode. I would like to be able to quote to you statistics on how many people in the UK have, at some point or another, engaged in Sex Work, but they’re quite tricky to find. Even though Sex Work is legal in the UK, many aspects of the way that people practically engage with Sex Work are illegal and it’s still heavily stigmatised so not something that many people would feel comfortable, say, checking a box about on a national survey, not that they could even do that – no UK based national surveys actually ask this question so realistically quantifying the proportion of people who have been or are Sex Workers is kind of impossible[5].
But just because we’re not counting them doesn’t mean they’re not there. (There I go again, with the “they”s and the “we”s.) I think a really important thing that came out of Siân and Chantelle’s conversation is how so much of the conversation around Sex Work seeks to side-line Sex Workers. To separate Sex Workers out as something different. It’s an uncomfortable truth but an important one, that activism isn’t perfect and that just because a movement calls for equality doesn’t mean it includes everyone. Or, as Chantelle put it, when talking about feminism specifically:
Chantelle: … we have to have to understand the ugly side of feminism, like this is part of feminism, like part of feminism contains whorephobia… it hasn't always protected the most marginalized by feminists, feminism has got a long history of upholding patriarchy, but also serving women that have got the best class position, I think it's really important just to make clear that that's not my argument - Professor Allison Phipps talks about this like… I feel like there's definitely a crossover with the trans exclusionary radical feminists as well. And like, exactly like the again, is this consistent consistency, like not protecting the most marginalized women, gender non conforming people like because the status quo suited their class position, it suited what they what they want. And it's deeply it's deeply troubling…
It is important to be critical of the movements we are a part of and to ask ourselves who are they serving, how and why. Not just that, we have to look at who gets to speak and who doesn’t. So, if you’re listening to a politician advocating for the Nordic model, when the leading Sex Worker organisations in the UK are demanding decriminalisation, you need to ask yourself who’s voice is more important.
Call to Action
Siân explained how the current conversation around Sex Workers rights in the UK is fraught with tension and, I imagine, it can feel like a difficult thing to get involved in, especially if you don’t want to support people or organisations that don’t have Sex Worker’s rights at heart (or, you know, think they do but are badly misinformed). Siân had this to say about what you can do to start supporting the cause.
Siân: in terms of everyday things that people can do to be more in solidarity with sex workers and fight for sex worker rights, fighting for decrim is the main concern like that is, again, it's not the silver bullet that will solve all the problems by any means. But it would definitely make a huge, tangible difference. But what I mentioned earlier about the stigma is something that everyone can change a little bit. So for example, if people are like, telling an anecdote or a joke, where the punchline is someone ending up having to like prostitute themselves is a phrase that people use, and that being really degrading, just kind of question that, you know, and be like, why is this the example you can think of, or when someone would be at their rock bottom, and also just things like, I don't wanna be like a language bore, but like, yeah, just being mindful of using language in and around sex work that kind of perpetuates harm towards people. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there is the bigger thing of like, sex worker activism and poverty relief are tied up. So I think just kind of seeing those connections a little bit more. And if people are talking about a sex worker, and like, oh, guy fell on hard times, whatever. Like, just getting people to think a little bit more about that. That's a human that's a human with probably lots of different plates that they're trying to spin. What are their conditions that mean that they resorted to this? Is it because they exhausted all other options? Maybe this is work that they like, maybe this gives freedom, independence, maybe it's a line of work they enjoy and, and, you know, I know sex workers who are very happy in their jobs. I know sex workers who are absolutely fucking miserable in their jobs. But yeah, I think that I'm more mindfulness about the kind of bigger picture of why people are sex working…
She also suggested some organisations that you can follow and support for trusted information on Sex Workers rights here in the UK. Organisations like UK Decrim Now, SWARM, The English Collective of Prostitutes and National Ugly Mugs. There are links to all these groups in the show notes.
What I have learned from this episode, and what I hope you have learned also, is that it’s not enough really for your heart to in the right place, especially if you’re privileged to be able to support from the outside. You have to do your research and, to push the metaphor, have your ears in the right place also (geographically speaking, they can be anywhere you want them to be on your body) to make sure you are staying informed and helping in a way that people actually want to be helped.
If you want to see what Siân’s up to, you can visit her website siandocksey.com and you might want to check out her new podcast Pole the Other One! Which is all about pole dancing.
[1] https://prostitutescollective.net/verso-are-sex-workers-the-original-feministsa-brief-history-of-uk-sex-worker-activism/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/12/sex-workers-fighting-for-human-rights-among-worlds-most-at-risk-activists
[3] https://www.bl.uk/womens-rights/articles/english-collective-of-prostitutes-occupation-of-holy-cross-church
[4] https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/EWHF%20Case%20Study%20Report%20Aug%202020.pdf
[5] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/842920/Prostitution_and_Sex_Work_Report.pdf pg. 37