The Global Fight for Sex Worker Rights: The surrounding circumstances and historical precedent of the union activism of "Live Nude Girls Unite!"

I have become very interested in union history and current activism, and so I was very happy to see the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite. Live Nude Girls Unite tells the story of how workers at the Lusty Lady Peep Show sex shop to organized themselves into a union in order to seek there rights. One of the things that kept being noted in the film was that they were the first sex worker union in the United States. Having been aware of sex worker organizing in other countries, I started to wonder about the history of sex worker rights in global context. This blog is the result of my research.


In 1996, sex workers in New South Wales, Australia founded, or at least registered, the world's first sex workers union.

In a world first, sex workers have formed their own union, registered with the ACTU. About 100 years after Australia's first unions were formed, the struggle for sex workers has only just begun. ...Operating under the umbrella of the Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers' Union (LHMU) sex workers are busy negotiating their demands. As well as fighting unfair dismissals and mistreatment, union officials are pushing for an award wage, holiday, sickness, annual and maternity leave occupational health and safety provisions, overtime, superannuation and meal breaks. Work conditions union officials say all Australians take for granted.MORE

But sex workers had been organizing and protesting and collectivizing a hell of a long time before that. The ever-useful Wikipedia comments that:

The sex workers’ right movement emerged in the 1970s as the prostitutes' rights movement. A key event occurred in 1975 when 150 prostitutes took over the main church in Lyons, France, to protest about the unsolved murders of local prostitutes, exorbitant police fines and multiple arrests. The movement spread to other parts of France as prostitutes joined the strike and took over other churches. In Paris prostitutes demanded their full rights as citizens and called for the introduction of a non-punitive tax system that would provide them with the right to pension and welfare benefits like “every other French woman”. They also demanded to be nationalised as civil servants of sex. The prostitutes challenged the notion that those who sold sex were deviant and claimed that sexual commerce was a “job determined by the sexual needs of one part of society” – the client who always went unpunished. The strike lasted seven days and ended with the police invading the churches. The strike drew worldwide attention to the conditions under which prostitutes worked and spurred the creation of the French Collective of Prostitutes and the sex workers’ rights movement in France. Similar groups subsequently formed in many parts of the world, including early on in Latin America and India,^[3] as well as England, Australia, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Canada and in major US cities.^[2]MORE

Spread Magazine, a publication for sex workers by sex workers in the USA and Canada, give a USA and Canada based timeline here:

We have largely focused in on the U.S. and Canada because of our experience-base and that of our readership. We have, however, taken the opportunity to emphasize the very real impact of a globalized movement on the U.S. and Canada, with entries on the Netherlands, India, South Africa, Mexico and Taiwan, to name a few.

They start their timeline from the year 1966:

August 1966—A group of transwomen, hustlers and street queens, many of whom were sex workers, effected a riot in the Compton Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin when a police officer known for assaulting transwomen initiated an arrest.

Feb. 4, 1967—42 bunnies of the New York Playboy Club launch the Bunny Strike of 1967 in the midst of a blizzard. The Bunnies staged a walkout on a busy Saturday, after the breakdown of union contract negotiations.


...

1975—The English Collective of Prostitutes came together under the International Wages for Housework Campaign. In 1979, a sister organization begins in the U.S. PROS, coming out of the New York Prostitute’s Collective (NYP), a group of black sex workers and black women supporters.

June 1975 – More than 100 working ladies of the French city of Lyon occupy the Church of Saint-Nizier for over a week in protest of their prostitution convictions. The occupation triggers multiple protests, occupations and strikes throughout France, with hundreds turning out in Paris, Marseilles, Grenoble, Montpelier, the Riviera, Cannes and Nice.MORE

Researcher Laura Agustin whose magnificent The Naked Anthropologist blog I have been following for a while, gives the following history lesson in her furious rebuttal to a anti-prostitution campaigner Note to anti-prostitutionists: Sex worker movements are nothing to sneer at

Eurocentrically, Ekman focusses on a few countries near Sweden, but this rights movement has roots all over the world: Empower was founded in Bangkok in 1985, AMEPU in 1986 in Uruguay, the New Zealand Collective of Prostitutes in 1987, Rede Brasileira de Prostitutas in 1987, among numerous examples. Many of these groups were set up before the Internet made it easy to ‘network’, advertise or disseminate information on problems and principles. DMSC, founded in Kolkata in 1995, now has 65 000 sexworker members from the most disadvantaged social classes. AMMAR has been part of national labour union CTA in Argentina since 1996.

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And kickass activism is by no means slowing down. Turkey's sex workers are working to establish a union In 2007, some Indian sex workers launched the magazine Red Light Dispatch in English and Hindi, that chronicles life in some of India's biggest brothels.

Launched six months ago, the magazine is a platform for the collective memories, nostalgia and dreams of the sex worker community and an attempt to wean their children away from the profession, said editor Anurag Chaturvedi.

In addition to that, the sex worker organization SANGRAM is fighting to secure equal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support as well as claiming broader rights on a whole:

Based in a rural community in Indias Maharashtra State, SANGRAM works to ensure equal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support: Over 6,000 women in rural India have participated in HIV testing as a result of these efforts. Drawing on 15 years of work to empower marginalized communities to claim their rights, SANGRAM is becoming an increasingly strong advocate nationally, and globally for health policies and programs that are responsive to the real-life needs of local communities.

On a recent trip to India, International Women's Health Coalition staff collaborated with SANGRAM and local sex worker advocates to produce IWHCs first short documentary:

SANGRAM: Sex Worker Organizing in India

Another way in which sex workers raise awareness for their movement is through the yearly International Sex Worker Rights Day on March 3.

The day originated in 2001 when over 25,000 sex workers gathered in India for a sex worker festival. The organizers, Dubar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a Calcutta based group whose membership consists of somewhere upwards of 50,000 sex workers and members of their communities. Sex worker groups across the world have subsequently celebrated 3 March as International Sex Workers’ Rights Day.

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (2002): “We felt strongly that we should have a day what need to be observed by the sex workers community globally. Keeping in view the large mobilization of all types of global sex workers [Female,Male, Transgender] , we proposed to observe 3rd March as THE SEX WORKERS RIGHTS DAY.”

The Honest Courtesan adds a little more info

March 3rd, on the other hand, originated in India in 2001 as a festival organized by the sex worker rights organization Dubar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, and attended by 25,000 sex workers despite efforts from prohibitionist groups who tried to prevent it by pressuring the government to revoke their permit. In celebration of their victory over those who wish to criminalize and marginalize sex workers, DMSC proposed it as an annual, international event the following year:

We felt strongly that that we should have a day what need to be observed by the sex workers community globally. Keeping in view the large mobilization of all types of global sexworkers (Female, Male, Transgender), we proposed to observe 3rd March as THE SEX WORKERS RIGHTS DAY. Knowing the usual response of international bodies and views of academicians and intellectuals of the 1st world (many of them consider that sex workers of third world are different from 1st world and can’t take their decision) a call coming from a third world country would be more appropriate at this juncture, we believe. It will be a great pleasure to us if all of you observe the day in your own countries too…We need your inspiration and support to turn our dreams into reality.

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The DMSC now has over 65000 members comprising male, female and transgender sex workers, and performs activism around areas of concern to their membership including education, health care, culture, anti-trafficking, research and training and sports and other things.



The Commerical Sex Information Service has way more info on many other groups that have been formed by sex workers across the world.

So what else, one wonders, are sex workers fighting for?

I started out by mentioning the Australian workers union demands of better wages and other compensation in the first paragraph of this blogpost. In my wide randing search I came upon these points:


1.Yes on Prop K, Sadie Lune, Artist and Sex Worker at the Museum of Modern Art



2.Laura Agustin again:

According to local cultures and needs, arguments for rights as sex workers are couched differently. Sometimes the argument revolves around sexual rights, as with the South American project Ciudadanía Sexual. Sometimes, human rights are the basis of demands, as with Cambodian activists’ protests against police that force people into compulsory rehabilitation programmes.MORE

3. SANGRAM and others around the world fight for proper health care, against violence by brothel and other sex business employers,clients and members of society; as well as governmental harrassment and police violence, and to have sex workers respected and recognized as workers, and whose voices should be listened to.

4. Moreover, legalization of and decriminalization of prostitution are also on the long list of demands by sex worker activists.

5. And a very informative and, dare I say, pretty comprehensive booklet produced by the Global Network of Sex Make sex Work Projects entitled, Make Sex Work Safe: Sex Work Safe: A Practical Guide for Programme Managers, Policy-Makers and Field Workers originally written in 1996, covers everything from Information Sharing, Ideas for setting up Safe Commercial Sex and a thorough analysis of laws and other means by which sex workers would be able to be less exposed to danger as they work.

6. And whatever issue gets left out in the "Make Sex Work Safe Project" is probably covered in the World Charter for Prostitutes Rights adopted in 1985 and 1986 at the two World Whores Congresses in Amsterdam and Brussels respectively, by the International Committee for Prostitutes' Rights.



All in all, the global sex worker organizing phenomenon is in a healthy and vigorous state, and is making social progress all the time. I hope to see more documentaries by them, about them in near future.


Words I learned: 1. Exotic Dancers Alliance - a San Francisco sex worker advocacy group.

2. National Labour Relations Board - Independent Federal Agency with the authority to protect employees rights to organize and to deal with unfair labour practices committed by employers.

3. Peepshows - An exhibition of people and things or pictures viewed through a hole or a magnifying glass.