Intro: wvp. Book. Bi apple, Tony. Sx work. Spread/swa. Media training. Iwhc. Sex worker lit.  

10 tips for people who want to get involved but arent sure how. Tactics not tools! The tools are up to you, there’s more than enough written about social media how to. 

1. Lurk! I know a lot of people. It’s because I’m a lurker. Listening and learning, though it’s invisible except as a page view in a website’s stat counter, is the most important building block of activism. Really listen. Read/watch/listen to stuff you don’t understand or don’t agree with, and try to understand other people’s perspectives.

2. If you have a blog, podcast etc Interview people you admire. Write fan mail! Write reviews of books and documentaries, not just sex toys. 

3. Offer to help someone you admire, but approach them with a plan to fulfill a specific need that you’ve perceived. Bad: “I would love to help you with anything that you don’t have time to do” Good: “I noticed that you have an email newsletter but you don’t send it out on a regular schedule. Can I help you with that?” copyediting is a great thing to volunteer if you’re good at it. So is event promotion and event set up/help.   

4. Be opinionated but don’t get upset when you’re wrong or someone calls you out (if they’re nice about it). Thank tem for sharing their perspective. If they’re mean, don’t take it personally. General a persons hate/rage is more about their problems than their problems with you.   

5. Tactfully call people out on things that are fucked up. Private messages and email are sometimes best, consider using public forums carefully. There are LOTS of teachable moments, if you’re pesonslly not up to it, don’t feel like you’ve failed. Check in with yourself before you decide to jump in. Internet warfare can be brutal and upsetting.   

6. Go local. How can you help with local issues? Bridge gap bt online and offline. Help offline activists get their stories told online. They don’t necessarily need a blog – be their conduit to the online world. Don’t forget to report back to them about yr success/impact: cut and paste nice coments, emails, retweets. 

7. Go outside the online sex bubble  Find out who your local representatives are and what they’re up to. Read local news and comment, write letters to editor, blog about local issues and ask other people to do the same.  
 
8. People and relationships are your strongest asset. Meet people. If you’re shy (I am) send intro email/fan mail if you know you’ll be in the same space. tell cool people that you want to say hi. Interview people you admire. ! Do it, remind them who you are, keep it short.   Write fan mail

9. Promote work you think is great. Tell other people about what you’re checking out. 

10. Not sure what you personally have to say/do/contribute? Not sure yet what your personal cause is? Become a producer

In short: listen, support, make community, ask for help/ask to be included.

[nb these are notes, pasted directly from my iPhone into this post. I will edit the post and make it nicer with complete sentences and stuff a little it later]  

The participants of the workshop went through an application process and we’ve found a really great first crop of 10 present and former sex workers from all corners of the industry. Most of the participants are New Yorkers, but we’ve also got people coming from Virginia, Toronto, and Rhode Island. After we’re done with them, the group will be ready to take on the world both as media-makers and savvy interviewees. We’ll be releasing them into the wild with Flip video cameras and a bunch of new skills, plus ongoing support from the staff of Sex Work Awareness and each other.

Join us this Saturday evening at a cocktail reception to meet and greet this group of extraordinary sex workers. Immediately after the wrap-up of the training, we’ll be convening at XES in Chelsea, 157 West 24th Street between 6th and 7th avenues. We plan to be at the bar around 5:30. Please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, the event is open to the public.

Being a feminist was the first identity I knew absolutely belonged to me (or vice versa), when I first heard the word and understood its meaning(s), I felt a pull. Yes. That. There are lots of other identities I feel a pull towards, but the words are kind of fluid and remain open for debate/interpretation (queer vs. bisexual, non-monogamous vs. polyamorous, etc etc). I have remained steadfastly devoted to being a feminist and using the damn f-word.

Since my teen years, I’ve taken feminism for granted as part of my identity – and even when a college hero of mine, Karen Finley, started using the phrase “post-feminism” I didn’t question the place of the word or the movement in my life. Feminism was significant, the word was important, I was a feminist and no one could take that away from me.

Then I went public as a sex worker, and all mayhem broke loose. In the late summer of 2004, I began to write Waking Vixen, in which I detailed my thoughts about my personal life and relationships, as well as my struggles with graduate school and my career trajectory, and my experiences as a sex worker. In January of 2005 Rachel Kramer Bussel interviewed me for Lusty Lady, the sex column she was writing for the Village Voice. The piece got picked up by Feministing and other blogs in the feminist blogosphere, and I faced the intense realization that many feminists not only weren’t okay with how I’d chosen to make my money, but didn’t at all consider me a feminist, even though I’d been one long before I ever worked in the sex industry.

This broke my heart. Seriously. Even a year and change later, when I was interviewed by Debbie Rasmussen for a big article about $pread in Bitch, I got choked up when I talked about the reaction of feminists, women who I thought were my people, to my work in the sex industry and with the sex workers rights movement.

I’ve spent the last few years almost entirely ensconced in the world of the sex industry and the sex-positive sex blogger communities. In many ways, that’s been great and nurturing and awesome. In other ways, it’s been maddening and weird and crazy-making. But with my new job and the growth of my work more generally, I’ve been feeling this pull into larger, more mainstream feminist communities. And that’s been making me wonder whether I’ve really been shut out of that world or if I’ve been standing timidly at the edges because I’m afraid of a big hard sad rejection.

The fact is that I’m sick of that fear and anxiety, and – fuck it, I’m going in. Bolstered by my newfound status as a professional feminist (seriously, I still can’t hide my smile when I’m in a meeting at work and the word feminist is used in context – it’s one of the best things ever), I really feel like it’s time for me to step up and take the risk of rejection from the feminist tribe. I want to be part of the picture, not a fringe voice. Well, I’ll probably always have a fringe thing going on, but it’s a goal of mine this year to have more conversations with people who make me uncomfortable (and vice versa), but to have the conversations themselves not be uncomfortable. If I’m going to grow my activism, my career, my sense of meaning in the world, this has to happen. It has to happen because I am tough, but I take a lot of this stuff personally too, and there are holes in my heart that only feminism can heal.

At the end of February, the International Women’s Health Coalition did an Advocacy in Practice training for fourteen youth sexual rights activists from around the world, in which we gave them tools and strategies to lobby at the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women (watch a video of three assessments of the experiences here. I was really impressed with this group, and also hit really hard by the powerful ideas expressed within the youth movement. First of all, it’s impressive that there is a youth movement, and there’s lots of language within it about empowerment and respect and giving youth the space to speak up for themselves and influence policy decisions that affect them.

On March 3rd I went to the International Sex Worker Rights Day potluck dinner in NYC, at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. Now that I’m working in the non-profit world, plus getting older and not involved with the sex industry in as intimate and difficult a way as before, I’m gaining a lot of perspective on the movement building aspect of sex worker rights. It is difficult to build a sex worker rights movement, to say the least. I frequently hear people make cracks about sex worker rights organizing being a lot like herding cats, and there’s a lot of truth to that. Sex workers are frequently independent-minded, competitive people who sometimes have a hard time playing well with others.

Between these two events, plus listening to youth speak up at Kink For All, I had this kind of eureka moment in which I saw the parallels between the sex worker rights and youth movements. And of course, the fact that sex workers are often youth underscores this even more: the sex worker rights movement essentially is a youth movement because sex workers are young and quickly cycle out of the biz, essentially aging out.

Although it certainly takes a large effort for youth to get their place on the world stage, especially when it comes to formation of policy, there is a language and support for this. And like I said above, it’s about empowerment and voice and choices – and when it comes to sexuality rights and education, there’s a good dose of talk about consent, information, and resistance to exploitation. Embedded in discussions of youth rights is the notion that youth are capable of being autonomous, free-thinking, and bad ass.

But when the sex industry is discussed in activist, policy, and feminist circles, this same language seems to not apply. What gives? Both youth and sex workers are disenfranchised groups – their rights and legal status (especially when it comes to issues like consent to sex) are constantly called into question. But the youth movement is years ahead of the sex worker rights movement in convincing policy makers that support is needed and valid, and that that support must enable youth to step up and state their needs. The language of victimhood built around people in the sex industry is frustrating at best, damaging and oppressive at worst.

At core, I think that this boils down to patronizing ideas about “women and children” – this of course assumes that all people in the sex industry are women (or at least, that the sexual exploitation of women is “worse” than exploitation of men or trans folks). The youth movement has done a lot to send a jolt through the systems of assumption about what it means to be young (and “dumb” and possibly also “full of cum”). The sex worker rights movement can do the same, and I think we’re on our way to doing so, but we need to put pressure on people who write about the sex industry to shift away from victimhood language. Even when people are exploited in the sex industry and are coerced into doing work that they don’t want to do, their autonomy and ability to speak for themselves and own experiences should be respected and encouraged.

Public education is just one part of the work of Sex Work Awareness. We also aim to train sex workers to safely respond to media requests, craft a message, and make their own media products. To that end, we’ve created a workshop: Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker (click to read more about it and download a PDF of the application form).

I’ve taught several versions of this workshop over the past few years, but I’ve never gotten the chance to teach a day-long version of it. On Saturday, April 18th, my co-facilitator Eliyanna Kaiser and I will be doing just that here in New York. The workshop will cover topics like when to say no to media, outness, crafting your message, interview techniques, and basic skills for creating text, video, and audio.

This is a day-long seminar in which meals will be provided. The workshop is limited to ten participants on the basis of a submitted application; each participant will receive a Flip camera and a $50 stipend. Only self-identified current and former sex workers are invited to apply, to ensure that all feel comfortable during the seminar. The workshop is lead by two English speakers, so participants must be fluent in English.

I know lots of people will be bummed that the workshop isn’t in (fill in place). We can’t offer to cover travel for anyone coming from outside NYC, but we have a limited amount of space to put people up if theydecide to shoulder travel costs. We are planning on traveling to other cities eventually, so if you are not in the New York City area but are interested in participating in a future workshop, please get in touch. We have limited time and resources, so if you truly want us to come to your city to do this workshop, your community needs to be invested in helping make it happen.

This workshop is financially made possible by the fundraising efforts of the Sex Blogger Calendar and the generous support of all our sponsors, especially Njoy. I know $20 for a calendar doesn’t seem like much (and now they’re actually on sale for $10 each), but it has made a huge difference for the ten sex workers and former sex workers who will be able to attend this workshop and get the training and support they need to seriously kick ass.

Deadline for applications is March 10th, and we’ll inform people of acceptance on March 17th. Please circulate this widely!

PJ Starr has been playing around with video as an activist tool for a while now – her work lives at Vimeo, a video site that a few other activists appear to be calling home as well. RH Reality Check, for one, has started to host all their videos on the site as well.

PJ’s latest work, Sex Workers Do Harm Reduction, is a great insight into the culture and tools of harm reduction as it relates to sex workers. From the video nerd perspective, this video is awesome because it presents interviews in an engaging way. Its pretty challenging to put together interviews in a way that is visually interesting – even really nice looking people sitting in front of a camera and talking can be boring. Also, she makes positive use of the din of the crowd behind whoever is speaking.

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On a not entirely different note, I wanted to point my media and press-inclined readers towards a really cool opportunity. The Women’s Media Center is offering a media training program called Progressive Women’s Voices. They are doing three cycles of the program in 2009 – the Deadline for the first cycle in December 15. Here’s some info – click the link above to get the full deal and request application materials. I would really really love to see some sexual health and sex worker rights advocates attend – that would be valuable personally, for the movement, and also as a way of connecting with women who work on other issues.

We are “changing the conversation” by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers. For the women chosen to participate in our 2009 Progressive Women’s Voices program, we provide intense media training sessions in New York, with weekly follow-up briefings and continued training, as well as support and resources for media bookings.

I gave a talk at WAM called Sex Workers and Media Representation (click to see notes for the workshop), and questions during and after the talk made me realize that many people are curious about the sex industry and want to support sex workers in their struggle for rights, but they have no idea where to start. This site is an attempt to fill that gap in public education in an approachable, easy to understand, and engaging way – it’s also the first public education project from Sex Work Awareness, a new non-profit in NYC founded by four $pread staff members. Sex Work 101 is meant to add to public knowledge about sex work and to encourage discussion about the issues sex workers face.

Participate in Sex Work 101! I’m looking for questions non-sex working people want answered and their perceptions of/thoughts about the industry, as well as posts from sex workers who want to share stories about their work (a day in the life, how I got into the industry, reposts from personal blogs, etc)

The official email for the site is ask[at]sexwork101.com but people can also email me at dacia[at]wakingvixen.com. I’d also love to hear from people who want to help with the site – writing posts, answering questions, etc.

My talk notes, with links to articles I talked about are here.

And here’s Amber’s live blog of the talk:

The event was hosted at Arena Studios in SoHo, and was well-attended by a group of very supportive people. I shot a seven minute video featuring three of the founders of the organization talking about what we hope to accomplish and what is driving us to do it. Also included are statements from elected officials NYS Senator Thomas K. Duane and NYS Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, who were in attendance and are very supportive of our mission.