“I Want You To Be Nice To Sex Workers”
Last September, sex worker, pleasure activist, and artist Sadie Lune (NSFW) took first place at Tony Labat’s I Want You project at SFMOMA. As part of the contest, the five winners had their images and slogans turned into posters. I’d actually forgotten about that, but I can’t wait to see them go up all over the city. For one thing, it’s great, free publicity for Yes on Prop. K. For another, Sadie Lune’s poster looks fabulous and combines the personal, the political, and the artistic into a provocative political request:
I love that line, “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me.” I think a lot of the prejudice in society comes from a lack of imagination and an inability or an unwillingness to empathize with other people. That ignorance and lack of understanding results in fear of the unknown and then hostility, trying to keep the unknown as far away as possible. When it comes to sex work, that hostility manifests as criminalization, which drives sex workers underground and tries to lock them into jails, where they’re kept out of sight and thus out of mind. It’s the attitude of, “I can’t imagine being a sex worker and so I’ll punish them for making me think about it and feel uncomfortable–I’ll push them away so I don’t have to think about them–I don’t want to think about the issues and so I’ll just vote no on K to preserve the status quo.” “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me” looks that attitude of hostility, fear, ignorance, or just plain apathy in the face and says, “Stop. Think.” The combination of the image and the slogan says, “Stop. Think. I’m a real person, and your decisions affect me.”
“I want you to be nice to sex workers” is another powerful line, because it raises the question of what exactly it means to be nice to sex workers. How does one go about it? Does it mean being a good customer, respecting a sex worker’s rules and paying them well? Does it mean not harassing them? Does it mean not making dead hooker jokes? Does it mean supporting programs that help sex workers transition out, if they want to? Does it mean giving a damn when someone murders, rapes, or robs a sex worker and gets off with a slap on the wrist? Does it mean advocating for sex workers’ rights? Does it mean realizing that sex workers are no more a monolith than any other group of people? Does it mean not privileging the voices of non-sex workers over the voices of sex workers?
Does it mean listening to sex workers when they say what they want?
Questions, questions. The poster challenges the viewer and raises lots of questions. I love that.
Sadie Lune’s “I Want You,” video by activist, artist, and sex worker Scarlot Harlot (video NSFW):
Transcript:
[Organ grinder music]
[Applause]
I want you. I want you to listen to me, even if you think you’ve heard it before or don’t think I know how to speak for myself. I want you so bad, so bad right now–to respect me, and pay me, and understand that I do not sell myself, because I’m still here, and I’ve always been here.
I want you to know that I have your money. And your coworker’s money, and your father’s money has fed my family, and my rent, and my studies, and my habit, and my poverty, and my extravagance. And you might think that you don’t know me, but it’s more likely you just don’t know that you do.
I might want this job or hate it, but your condemnation and your ignorance and your accusations and your locking me down for my living, and your turning your back on my rape, and your knocking me off because you think no one cares, and your using me as the inhuman butt of your jokes–I want you to stop.
I want you to stop punishing me just because you may not be able to imagine being me.
I want you to be nice to sex workers. I want you, I really do. Please vote yes on Prop. K.
[applause]
———————————
I’m not a sex worker, and so although I can write about Prop. K, I’m trying to navigate the boundaries of privilege such that I don’t appropriate the sex worker activist movement or claim to speak for it. On the one hand, I’m writing about Prop. K the way I would write about any other ballot initiative–opining, navel-gazing, and analyzing–but I realize that in our anti-sex work society, my voice is privileged over the voices of actual sex workers. That’s wrong and I’m trying not to replicate that same power structure when I write, so if I fuck up and put my foot in it, please call me on it and I’ll fix it (I realize that asking for that guidance is in itself an act of privilege, but I’m not sure how else to say that I will inevitably fuck up, despite trying not to, and I welcome being told how I’ve fucked up. Perhaps the writer’s tag, “constructive criticism always welcome” would work?)
