SerpentLibertine

Sex Worker, Activist, Antagonistic Sympathizer

Another great article from Rachel Rabbit White which I interviewed for…

Is it Ok For A Married Man to Sleep With Sex Workers?

Sooner or later I’ll get back to blogging eventually, but I’m too busy to even breathe these days. In addition to organizing this sex worker film fest for August, I took over as host of “The Chicago Sex Tours” for the Discovery Center (like the Learning Annex). My first tour is next Sunday…who knows how it’ll go..but I have an awesome co-host in Jay Very, founder of Tongue -in-chic gallery here in Chicago.

Other projects in the works-

* Development of large scale industry questionnaire regarding trafficking w/ Megan Morgenson

* Partnering on PSA’ s on youth/sex worker harassment with local youth activist organization Gender Just

* Development of PROS Network for Chicago, grant writing

*Attempting to go back to school for my master’s degree.

Help.

Please do come to the film fest if you are in Chicago.

Sadly, I woke up to the news today that Tura Satana, star of my favorite film of all time Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! has passed away. That film, and Tura’s character Varla has been such a huge inspiration to me over the years since I first saw it as a college student. I’ve dressed as Tura at parties, used “Varla” as my original dominatrix name, and a few years  ago, I was lucky enough to meet and interview Tura at an art event here in Chicago. Really neat lady, very friendly and appreciative of her fanbase. I still have the interview, slightly unedited, but hopefully I can find time time to cut it as a tribute to her.

At that event, another filmmaker cut this awesome tribute to here which I watched over and over. Love it!

And this? Just my favorite scene in any film ever.

Several years back, I did an interview with Tura when I wrote for the webzine Sex-Kitten.

Here’s Roger Ebert’s fitting tribute to Tura.

She will be missed.

I released my new video today, a PSA that addresses those who aim to fight sex trafficking, which seems to be such a such a hot button issue these days. About a month ago, the idea to do a PSA came to me while taking a shower…seriously…and I got so excited about this that I emailed nearly all the activists I knew, asking for their input on this. Writing it was somewhat of a frustrating process, which involved several brainstorming sessions that had us veering in different directions and not finding a clear focus on who our audience was. Originally, my goal was to create a PSA aimed at sex workers and clients on what the best way to report a case of suspected trafficking was, but this became a bit of a challenge that we still haven’t resolved.  I still intend to make that PSA, but it will most likely require another brainstorming session.

After a long night of wine drinking, arguing, and back and forth discussion, one of my favorite people and activist buddies (Love this lady!), Megan Morgenson, and I churned out the script for this PSA, targeted at groups fighting trafficking that often conflate all sex work with trafficking. A big inspiration for this was the press release written by the amazing Kimberlee Cline (who appears in the video) “Sex Workers Stop Traffick.” With permission, we used some of the statements included in that, as well as others contributed by various folks active in the sex worker rights movement. So this was truly a collaborative process, and I had the script proofread and looked over by various respected leaders and longtime champions for sex worker rights.

Most of my friends are getting a bit tired of me hounding them to be on camera for my various videos, so I really must extend gratitude for everyone who agreed to be on camera for this and read the pre-written script with little time to memorize. Since I myself am too chickenshit to go on camera I really have to give props to everyone who participated.

The truth is that sex workers and our clients are the ones most likely to come across trafficking victims in our field, but it becomes this “us vs. them” battle in finding ways to lend support for these victims. Hopefully this is a start in helping anti-trafficking organizations and sex worker rights organizations working towards resolving some if these issues.

I generally spend most of December planning this event, so please attend if you are in town. We are lucky enough to have found the perfect host for this in the Jane Addams Hull House…

So looking back at most of my recent posts on this blog, I’ve come to realize that I rarely blog about my work in the industry anymore, rather more about my activism and other sex work related news. However the current rash of “faux” sex worker bloggers and industry “dabblers” that then claim to be experts on all forms of sex work has got me thinking that I need to be sharing my stories of the REALITY of sex work. No disrespect y’all, but it seems for such a maligned profession, sex work has become awfully trendy over the past few years. Everybody wants a piece of the pie so they can sell their salacious story to the highest bidder or gain the most followers on Twitter. It’s all so boring to me.

And who am I? Let me re-introduce myself for those who don’t know. I’ve been a sex worker for over 12 years, in a variety of capacities. I started out as a dominatrix, moved on to escorting (which I prefer) and also do sensual massage, as well as some casting and camera work in porn.  For the most part, I love the work and have very few complaints about it or my clients, whom I rarely bitch about. The truth is nowadays I have very little to complain about regarding my work in the industry. Has it always been like this? No. I have had quite a few negative experiences in my years as a sex worker and almost exclusively, those experiences were when I was working for other people. Managers, agents, agencies, pimps, panderers, whatever you want to call ‘em, these people are almost always fuckin’ lazy assholes who seek to profit off women’s work.

This brings me to a situation that I dealt with about a month and a half ago in which I was dealing with a young girl who had been working for an escort agency out of Des Moines, IA. She called our hotline from the lobby of a motel and said the agency had flown her in from out of town with the promise they would pay her travel expenses back home. She’d been taking calls at the motel all week and after each client left, a gofer for the agency would come and collect all the money, leaving a small amount for small expenses like meals. She had told them earlier in the day that she was ready to return home, but they stopped taking her calls and refused to bring her the money she was owed or provider her with funds to get transportation home. Yeah, it was a fishy situation, but the agency seemed to prey on young girls with very little experience in the industry, who didn’t know any better about how a decent escort agency would be run. She’d never worked independently before, didn’t know how to advertise for herself. When she finally got someone from the agency on the phone, they said they planned to “pick her up and drive her to another city to work.” These people basically had a mini-trafficking operation being run through several states and one look at their website (a free WordPress blog, no less) showed what kind of creeps they really were. They had a “bad escorts” page with photos of about a dozen women that had supposedly “ripped them off”, but the reality was most likely these ladies had taken their money and never looked back, like I was trying to encourage this girl to do.  Over the course of two days, with a lot of help from others in this community, we had gotten the agencies website pulled, their Paypal account frozen, and got this girl on a bus back home. Regretfully, it was a loooong two days for this girl, who ended up placing a lot of hotline calls but finding virtually very little resources for a trafficking victim in a smaller Midwestern city. And it made me think back to my agency days where a worked for people who promised the world, but instead played games with your livelihood.

Soooo, back to the beginning. I became interested in this type of work through a roommate I had who’d returned to Chicago and  found work as a pro-domme in a dungeon that was run out of the basement apartment of a disgusting, obese submissive with an uncanny resemblance to Tiny Tim. He’d call our house numerous times a day and leave messages on our answering machine or engage me in conversation if I picked up. When i lost my job as a dog walker, I inquired to him about working there and he told me to come on in and meet him. After a brief conversation, he proceeded to lay under my feet and smell my toes, later giving me $75 with the promise “that he would out me on the schedule.” After weeks of phone calls, he never did and just played phone games with me…and my roommate, who quit working for him and had to press charges against him for phone harassment after her called her up to 20 times a day for several weeks.

I still was intrigued by the work and wanted to try my hand at it, so I then went to work for one of the largest “commercial” dungeons in town,  a well-known operation her run by a pseudo-mobster complete with a neck-warmer haircut, Mike Ditka-moustache, and a framed photo of a stack of money in his office (like one of those you’d win at a county fair). By this point in time, hundreds of women have worked for his operation over the years and most of the stories remain constant. This guy was a d-bag to a “t”, but it seems over the years his behavior has gotten more and more abusive to the pro-dommes that work for him. When I was there, he was just a jerk who recorded our conversations and videotaped sessions without the knowledge of clients, and instilled ridiculous rules and regulations for behavior on our downtime. He also tried to tell the women who worked there that we couldn’t hang out together on our days off for fear that we would talk shit about him and his operation in our socializing. Of course we would. I finally quit in a huff after he threatened to “suspend me” (like in high school?) when I offered a  disgruntled client a free enema as part of his session. Apparently, he just couldn’t part with $50 in a gesture that was intended as a good faith measure. If anyone in that dungeon deserved a good ass-whipping, it was him.

Another dungeon I worked for was managed by the boyfriend of the namesake dominatrix, who told us we needed to split our tips 50/50 with the house, a ludicrous request if there was one. While him and I had some major personality differences, I was lucky to walk away from that establishment fairly unscathed. Sadly, a few of my friends who worked for him at a later time were sexually assaulted by this man, who at last report now appears to be practicing law in the suburbs somewhere.

Oh, and the escort agencies. Where should I start? See, when I started out, there was no internet advertising, or at least I wasn’t privy to it. The upscale escorts worked for agencies that advertised out of the phone books or in weekly publications that ran adult classifieds, Er, kinda like Craigslist. It was common practice for escorts to work for a few agencies at one time, in order to maximize your potential to see clients on any given night. Many agencies accepted credit cards. Some ONLY accepted credit cards…a sure way to control  the escorts money by allowing them to fine you for things like not answering  a call, showing up late, or any old reason they could find. Paydays were erratic and usually involved meeting some random person late at night or in a out-of-the-way location after numerous phone calls were placed. Most agencies took a 50/50 split at that time, meaning if you did a call for $300, you got $150 of that. Whenever I hear agencies complain about being ripped off, I remember how I’ve been ripped off by nearly every agency I worked for. I certainly don’t shed a tear for them.

One agency would hire two drivers to pick up all the girls on call at 6pm and require us to drive around with them all night long, until 3AM, dropping girls off to calls in various faraway locations in the suburbs all night. Some of the escorts never received a call and just rode along, sleeping in the backseat until we were given a green light to go home. The phone operator was crass and abusive to everyone and I later found out they were notorious for not paying on credit card calls. I never did receive my check from the one call i did for them, nor did I continue to work for them after the one night of hell I went through.

Another agency refused to pay me for several jobs I did after I stayed a few minutes over with a client and didn’t “call out” at the exact 1 hour mark, thinking I had collected money on the side from the client for an extension. This was typical protocol for agencies…another reason for guys who don’t like “clockwatchers” to use them. If you ran five minutes over, they wanted the client to pay for a whole second hour.

Or the Canadian guy who wanted the escorts to run to the bank the next day and deposit the money into his bank account who accused me of being “on crack” because I didn’t make my deposit the next day. I remember reading a news article some time after I stopped working for him about how his agency got busted up and the cops had obtained the bank account information from one of the escorts who got arrested. Still, he remained in business, manning the phones from Canada where it was unlikely he would ever face arrest here. Many of these people were pretty clever in running their operations in different cities than the ones they resided in, leaving them free from any sort of accountability of anything ever happened to the escorts working for them (physical harm or LE wise).

With the exception of the agencies that were run by former sex workers themselves, most of these were run by lazy-ass guys who probably had pimp fantasies and thought running an escort agency would be a cool way to make some extra dough by doing as little as possible. They had no understanding of what the escorts went though, expected you to show up to calls at the drop of a hat, see asshole clients, and then meet with them so they could collect their cut of the money as soon as possible. For awhile, I ran my own small agency with the intention of treating the workers how I would’ve wanted to be treated on the job, but in the long run, it just made more sense to me to strike out on my own as an independent.

The best thing the internet did for sex workers was allowing us to stop depending on these pimp-like agents and establishments and work independently. We no longer needed these people do do our advertising, answer the phones, and pretend to do some sort of screening process that we had little knowledge of. While agencies still exist, they are becoming more and more a thing of the past, and yet those that are still in existence are still pulling shady shenanigans like the situation I dealt with last month. Whenever I can, I encourage young workers to strike out on their own, but many times those that are new to the industry feel more comfortable working with an agency to arrange all their appointments and do their screening. I can understand the need for this, as I did it for years. However, unless the agency/establishment someone is working for is treating them fairly and with respect, I tell people to walk away. These places need workers more than the workers need them. Once the “training wheels” are off, sex workers should work for themselves. Let’s stop putting money in the pockets of disrespectful, abusive assholes who we don’t need anyway. We CAN and SHOULD be running this show ourselves.

In addition, one of the reasons I’m against legalization of prostitution is that the brothel systems we have in place here in Nevada are generally as exploitative as the illegal agency models that I worked for. All one has to do is watch an episode of “Cathouse” and see what a pimp-like asshole Dennis Hof is, it doesn’t matter what he’s doing is legal. Friends I know who have worked in the brothel system say the same things. The owners instill all sorts of rules and regulations and workers are treated no better than if they were working illegally. So obviously, a decriminalized system that would allow workers to work independently is the only way to go. I could never work at a brothel and I’ve already worked for enough of these establishments to know that the people who run them are full of shit.

So yes, I understand that people love to hear the sex worker sob stories and I do have quite a few.  My life hasn’t always been peaches and cream and while I’ve never been physically abused, I have had experiences that have been emotionally and psychologically abusive. I found a way to eliminate those from my life and never will I work for any type of agent, manager, or establishment in this industry again. This is what made the difference from me being a scared, depressed sex worker to a emotionally stable and fully independent worker who loves what she does.

So yeah, the conference has been over for several weeks now, but I honestly haven’t had the time or been in the right head-space to write this blog until now. It’s been a rough month, to say the least, and I’m finally getting back into the swing of things. Kinda. The event isn’t as fresh in my mind anymore, but I have some good memories off it, as well as some really bad ones. However, I’m not gonna do a flippin’ video podcast detailing all my gripes, because let’s face it, I’m not that kind of person. Moving on…

I’d say this year’s Desiree Alliance Conference was the biggest one yet, with big name keynotes, 4 full days and 5 “tracks” of presentations, a decent hotel in Vegas to stay at, and over 250 attendees. Much bigger than our Chicago conference a few years back, which had more of a DIY vibe goin’on. The planning process for this took the better part of the year so I think we had a lot of time to think things through and plan them accordingly. The event kicked off with a keynote from former Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who detailed the “5 C’s of leadership”- clarity, competence, control, confidence, and something else I forget, but I encourage you to click the link to watch her whole speech. She is by far the biggest name we’ve had speak at one of our conferences and she vowed to defend the cause of sex worker rights as a human rights issue, but I still think she skirted around the issue when Amanda Brooks asked her if she’d be willing to take our message to the media. Either way, it was brave of her to come.

Truth be told, some of the lesser known keynote speakers were my favorites, that of Deon Haywood of Women With A Vision, and escort and performer Kirk Read. Deon’s organization does harm reduction work in the New Orleans area and she talked about LA’s “Crimes Against Nature” law that requires prostitutes to register as sex offenders. Talk about fucked up. Every time I think about the battles we are going through in Illinois…they’re nothing compared to what these women have to go through in Louisiana. Her stories really painted a portrait of the challenges of doing harm reduction work in a post-Katrina New Orleans.

The most entertaining keynote however, was Kirk’s. I remember seeing him at the Sex Workers Art Show several years back, where he did a performance piece called “white cotton panties”, in which he spun this story of a client who wanted him to wear a specific kind of underwear. It was the performance I remember most vividly from that show and I was excited to finally meet the man, who  I think is a storytelling *genius.* His speech had the room in hysterics, as he labeled himself a “full service” escort and told the tale of him getting out of jury duty by announcing in a courtroom full of people that he was a prostitute who had police officers as clients. It was pure gold. Kirk was definitely one of my favorite people I met during my stay in Vegas and it’s been cool to exchange Facebook messages with him over the past weeks. he’s one of those community members whose work you admire from afar and then feel so privileged when you can actually refer to them as a friend.

Unfortunately, most of my time during the conference was spent rushing around, videotaping presentations, and being stressed out in general. I retreated to my hotel room one night in tears, only to emerge to a pool party that I felt entirely out-of-place at and then on to a street-action in front of the Venetian hotel which I’d wanted to enjoy more, but hadn’t been quite in the mood for. That day, my co-presenter had announced she might not be able to make in in town for our presentation the next day and I’d spent all day disappointed and worried about how I was going to re-work what we had planned to do. She did make it in, though, and the next day we led our “Ethical Sex Worker” round-table discussion, which was productive and well-received. We talked about a range of issues, but mostly dealing with how we feel about ourselves, our clients and our peers within the industry. One woman came up to me afterwards and said it was her favorite panel she’d attended at the conference (who was that??? please contact me because I didn’t get your name.) Another woman came up to my co-presenter later, saying “that was just what she needed to hear” after finding out another escort from back home had committed suicide that day. It was pretty emotional. It’s stuff like that that reinforces why we need to be doing this work.

In the end, things worked themselves out, but I’m sad that I spent most of the conference running around like a madwoman and didn’t get to meet or talk to as many people as I would’ve liked. Next time around, I’m scaling back on my duties at the conference and am not going to get as wrapped up in the organizing process as I have been. We had thought we’d put on a wonderful conference that inspired a lot of new faces to get involved, but as soon as we all returned home, the shitstorm started. Somebody on the media team was yelling at me for posting the videos online (this was always our intention), another person accused me (and others) of speaking to her so harshly that she was brought to tears, an incident I don’t recall at all and am still not sure ever happened. And, worst of all, I had people in Chicago calling me out for not having a response letter prepared about the End Demand bill that’s sitting on the Governor’s desk. There was no escape from the post-conference shitstorm of whining, criticism, and drama. One complete nutjob even made a YouTube video about the Conference host hotel saying it was “racist, sexist, and thieving,” an experience nobody else had there (and no, I’m not gonna link to it.) I lost a lot of sympathy and respect for a lot of people in the past few weeks, some of which I had previously looked up to as leaders in the movement. I’ve reached my limit as to what I’m willing to put up with and am tired of apologizing to people.

I did have some good times in Vegas- riding the NY NY rollercoaster twice, doing all the rides at the Stratosphere, and seeing the Beatles “Love” Cirque de Soleil show at the Mirage were some of the highlights. I went to that crappy “world’s largest gift shop” and only bought a postcard. It also seems like we have a lot of new faces in the movement that want start organizing all over the country, so hopefully they won’t read this blog. I can’t comment on too many of the other presentations, but I’d say there were definitely some really well put-together and fascinating ones. I got to have dinner with “Belle De Jour” and drink a bacon martini, which I later traded in for some “ass juice.” Good times.

The last few weeks since returning have been hell. I’ve been doing to majority of work on this End Demand situation and a meeting with the Governor’s office a few days ago went rather poorly for reasons I won’t discuss. Work has been rather slow, I barely have time to work out resulting in weight gain, and I basically feel like shit.

But you know, I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing. That’s just me.

Here’s a link to all the Conference Keynotes. if you have some time, they’re worth watching.

I highly encourage all anti-sex industry feminists to check out this video…

Just finally settling down now after the whirlwind month that was April. April showers bring May flowers, I guess and I’m finally reaching a place where I can breathe, take it easy, and work on some unfinished projects, such as a new podcast which is long overdue.

I was honored to be one of the chosen participants in the Speak Up! Media Training in NYC last month held by the amazing folks at Sex Work Awareness. the two-day intensive training for sex workers looking to gain more knowledge about various aspects of media. We went over such subjects as podcasting, documentary filmmaking, storytelling, crafting a message, dealing with journalists, building campaign strategies, and honing our interviewing skills. Really, really useful material and an amazing opportunity to meet some other cool activists from around the country. Unfortunately, I became ill with a horrible bronchitis that took me three weeks to shake and drained my energy halfway through the training. Even so, New York was a blast and my girls Bebe and Paige came along with me to raise some hell. Had an adventure each night and did a lot of sightseeing, including visiting the Museum of Sex, two doors down from our hotel. I highly recommend visiting the next time you are in New York. Also attended the Pleasure Salon, which was so, so amazing! Really got me thinking about ways to re-invent and re-invigorate the Chicago event, which is seriously lacking in energy and attendance as of late. Thinking perhaps a change of venue might be in order, but we don’t have anything here nearly as cool as the Happy Ending Lounge, a former massage parlor turned bar. Waah!

I returned home thinking another trip to Springfield would be imminent, but HB6195 failed to pick up a Senate sponsor for a few weeks, keeping us on pins and needles as to what to do next. We started a conversation thread about the potential impact of the bill on one of the local message boards and the local provider/hobbyist community blew up like bomb in Times Square. Guys were calling me on the phone asking what they should say to their local Senators, others were just assuming the bill had already passed, potentially making them felons, and even more were scared to voice opposition at all because they didn’t want their names attached to er, well, being opposed to such legislation. Providers were warning others to stop talking about the bill altogether in fear that guys would stop using the services of escorts altogether. Whoa people! It’s important to not let your enemies win before they’ve actually “won.” Panic in the streets is exactly the result legislators and the bill’s advocates want to see. I’m a big advocate for informing people about what’s happening in the stage where they can actually put up a fight against something and not after all is said and done and there’s nothing that can be done. Others seem to feel differently. I’ll leave it at that.

In the end, the result was unexpectedly positive. The president of the Illinois Senate picked up sponsorship on HB6195 with the intention to “shell” the bill, or strip it of its language after another section of the bill was added to a similar bill (part of the “End Demand” campaign) concerning juvenile prostitution. The language concerning raising penalties for patronizing adult prostitutes was removed…for now. While there’s no guarantee that another form of the bill won’t return at a later session (the Illinois assembly is on vacation until November), the bill is basically dead for the time being. Whoo! An actual victory of some sorts. Can’t say we had much to do with it, but it was a great learning process for us and we gained a lot of great allies while organizing against it. And probably some enemies.

Speaking of enemies, it seems SWOP-Chicago has been rejected from the Gay Pride Parade again for reasons that have been undefined to us. Three years ago kittenINFINITE made an attempt to get us in but was rejected by the old-school misogynist organizer who proclaimed, “I have a legal right to reject you from the parade.” This year I had one conversation where he said “he’d get back to me” after consulting the organizers of other Pride parades and he has since ignored all phone calls and emails requesting an answer from him. Seems this time he doesn’t want to have that conversation. I say we wage war on this fucker. Last year I watched the garbage man, Sheriff Dart, McDonald’s and a whole host of other non-gay participants march the seemingly endless parade while the sex workers, a largely queer population, gets rejected?

Ok, let me cool down now.

Well summer’s almost here and I’m damn determined to spend my June birthday jumping out of an airplane skydiving. Anybody care to join me?

Well shit, what a week this has been. I’m trying to process this all as I’m writing it but my mind has been racing in 50 different directions this week and I’m finally able to collect my thoughts on all this and put them down in a blog. So here goes…

I’ve spoken about the “End Demand” campaign here before, the one that proposes to mock the Swedish model of prostitution by increasing penalties for pimps and johns and decriminalizes prostitution. The first stone in this campaign was cast a few weeks ago with the introduction of Illinois HB 6195 which increases penalties for solicitation of a sexual act, soliciting for a prostitute, soliciting for a juvenile prostitute, patronizing a prostitute, patronizing a juvenile prostitute, and pimping by one class. Most significantly, it increases the penalty for patronizing a prostitute to a felony. Now most people may say, “hey, it’s about time they start cracking down on johns as much as they do the workers”, but there’s already laws on the books for that. They’re enforced in a very biased manner with the female prostitutes usually ending up with the bulk of arrests and convictions. It is my understanding that this campaign wants to stop that. Which is great. However, coming down harshly on clients/johns/hobbyists/ whatever you call them and giving them a felony on their first (non-violent) offense could lead to potentially very damaging results for a lot of people. There’s a big difference between a misdemeanor and a felony and with a felony conviction a person could lose their job, professional licensing or bonding, and face jail time or a hefty fine, which looks to be what most of the convicted first-timers will likely face. That’s not to mention how much prosecuting felony convictions will cost the state. But all this is neither here nor there. It’s like arguing for/against the death penalty. Does it prevent violent crime? No. Rather it’s about letting the punishment fit the crime. Does this punishment fit this crime? In the majority of cases, no. It will also NOT end the demand for prostitution.

This bill’s been moving a lot faster than we expected, which is the point of these bills…to get them passed before anybody knows they’re even being read. I was keeping tabs on it, though, and reached out to some other organizations in support of opposing it. An amazing ally of SWOP’s hooked us up with another totally rad all with  the Tamms Year Ten Project and she suggested we go to Springfield for the hearing this past Monday if we wanted to have any success in fighting the bill. So last Saturday night I rounded up the troops and spent all day Sunday preparing our pitch statements and cheat sheets for the Representatives on the Criminal Law Committee (they need sheets handed to them to tell them exactly what the bill is all about and why you’re against it.) Monday morning we all packed into my car and made the 3 1/2 hour drive to Springfield, a sad, boring tip that really shows you that the state of Illinois has very little to offer outside Chicago. And no, I’m not interested in driving to see what the other half of the state has to offer either. Springfield’s nothing to write home about either.  I imagine it’s hard for these legislators to talk about “the great state of Illinois” when they’re standing in a capital city that could only be compared to a ghost town that hadn’t been updated since the 70′s. Even finding a place to eat was a challenge and we had to choose between a Bennigan’s (remember those?) and an Italian joint that had no windows. We chose the Bennigan’s.

But I digress. We arrived a tad early and were forced to do the rounds at all the Representative’s offices, but most were in transit or already in session. We did catch Representative Golar (D-Chicago) in her office and she agreed to speak with us, which we later found out was because she had thought we were from another Chicago organization called SWOP that does some pretty amazing work on Chicago’s south side. Either way, she was gracious and we engaged in a really productive conversation with her in which she expressed her concerns over prostitution in her neighborhood, yet she seemed to insist that the pimps/johns were “sexual deviants” and the women were all victims. In her district (which includes some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago), there is no doubt a lot of truth to this. We tried to get her to see this as an enforcement issue, in which the most highly marginalized neighborhoods being targeted for arrests and more and more people losing jobs and unable to move forward. She even thanked us, as advocates, for doing the work we did because most of the Reps. “have no idea what half these bills are about” until people come forth and tell them what their position is. She also noted that her email box was full of emails telling her to “oppose HB 6195″ and none telling her to vote yes. It seemed like we had her on our side. For at least a little while.

We then made attempts to page the other committee members out of session, but none of our requests were successful, for reasons we can only guess at. Rep. Golar later came up to us as we were waiting and announced that she had received information that made her change her position on the bill. Specifically, she cited CAASE’s study on Johns in which Johns were asked “what would make you stop using the services of prostitutes?” and they replied “harsher penalties.” It should also be noted in that same study that “87% of the men thought that women should be able to choose prostitution just like any other job.” I sure didn’t hear any of these people talking about that. Rep. Golar encouraged us to pull up some statistics about pimp and john arrests in Chicago, as well as statistics from other countries and use them in our testimony at the hearing. Despite the fact that she didn’t side with us, I’d say she’s a very nice lady who seems genuinely concerned about her constituency.

The only other Rep. were were able to lobby before the hearing was Rep. Annazette Collins from Chicago, who was also very friendly when approached refereed to it as “the pimp bill” which seemed to be what the nickname for this one was. She even jokingly asked “are you with the pimps?” But of all the Reps, she “got it” and immediately said she was opposed to most bills that raised penalties.

At the hearing, the bill was read right after another bill that had been introduced to raise penalties for those involved in juvenile pimping, which passed unanimously 6-0. Obviously, this would be a hard sell. One thing I noticed is that most bills go uncontested in hearing and most are green-lighted through with very little thought process of the legislators involved. If an actual person isn’t there to contest a proposed bill, they assume everybody is for it. When the reading of HB6195 came up, I got up to speak on behalf of the opposition. Three of us had signed up to speak, but they only made time for one person so I read our pitch sheet with the concerns about the costs of enforcing such penalties, what communities would be targeted, the potential loss of licensing for professionals, as well as announcing that “sex workers are opposed to this legislation.” Some groans and laughs could be heard and when the floor was opened for questions and discussion, one republican Rep. said “pardon me, but if I found out my doctor was using the services of prostitutes, I would want him to lose his license.” Another Republican Rep. said, “this may sound very old white man of me (har, yeah), but what is this about military and people losing jobs, licences, etc?” (look, I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like that) Only Rep. Collins actually raised legitimate concerns about why men use prostitutes and asked about legalized prostitution in the US, specifically in Nevada.  In the end the bill passed the hearing, 6-1, with Collins being the only opposing vote.

Another point to be noted about this bill is that it raises the vehicle impoundment fine for those arrested for said crimes to $1000, with “$500 of the fee shall be deposited in the Violent Crime Victims Assistance Fund and shall be used by the Department of Human Services to make grants to non-governmental organizations for services provided to prostituted persons, persons encountered in the course of investigating any of the described violations, and victims of human trafficking.” It’s pretty obvious that what’s happening here is the organizations that introduced the bill are looking to gain some financial benefit from this. So now, who’s pimping who?

The trip may not have been a success on our part, but it was important for us to be there and show opposition and at least introduce these people to our organization, which they seemed curious about. They especially wanted to know if we provided services for people to get out of the sex trade and I’m sure if we did, we’d be able to get some of that grant money they’ll be raising left and right. Or not.

The Bill passed the House yesterday with a vote of 93-0. It moves to the Senate where the process starts all over again. The only thing I can encourage people to do is speak out against this and meet with your local state Senators if you’re an Illinois native. Springfield, we’ll be back…

My friend David, who accompanied us on this trip, also wrote an excellent blog on this. Says everything better than I could have.