Challenging SILK & the Sex Workers Handbook – Male Edition
Sex workers are challenging the accuracy of information about the laws in the recently released SILK resource (Sex Industry and the Law) and the way the information is presented. We certainly challenge the attitudes towards anal sex expressed in the Sex Workers Handbook – Male Edition and we also note that the poor referencing of approximately 15% of it’s content coming from outdated online information for Canadian male sex workers - surely this verges into plagiarism? __
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Workers Hand Book – Male Edition
The following feedback was received from sex workers on the 30th November 2010, the day SWOP launched the resource:
“As a few people noted at the Scarlet Alliance National Forum last week, the new and long awaited Male Handbook from SWOP contains the rather strange advice on p29 that male workers should “Try to negotiate out of anal sex, if possible”. .. In the context of protected sex it should have no relevance.
Also advice is copied directly from a Hook Resource available at www.hookonline.org/downloads/MALEESCORTHANDBOOK.pdf
SWOP acknowledges on the inside front cover that “‘Some handy hints” in this resource are based on a publication by Hook Online.” About 15% of the information contained in the SWOP publication is verbatim from Hook Online. Hook is not an Australian resource and is definitely not a current resource.” Male worker
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“My feeling is the original idea of avoiding anal sex might have been based on the same thing we’d say to any sex worker…. minimise wear and tear on the condom and your body by reducing the time you spend doing penetrative sex…. so spend ages doing hot body contact massage, etc so the client doesn’t take forever to come later…. reduces risk of condom breakage, and you getting too tired during busy shift at work (also use lots of lube) however, without the message being framed within that context, it sounds really strange, sex negative and possibly homophobic, and totally ignores potential impact on sex workers’ earnings by making that kind of suggestion. And I wonder how much of those kinds of problems with the resource is about stealing text rather than doing the hard work of concept development and community consultation to hear about what local male sex workers info needs are. *sigh*” Serena
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“ACON Board and members of the faceless SWOP ‘Advisory Committee’ are surely ultimately responsible for ACON/SWOP publications and the statements within them? Releasing badly flawed resources is no way to try and rebuild the demolished bridges to the sex worker community – ACON/SWOP fuck up yet again and it is such a shame because SWOP used to be respected in the community once. Sex workers obviously need to govern SWOP for themselves; and they sure couldn’t do any worse than ACON.” Debbie Did-I-Really
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Sex Industry Legal Kit
The following feedback was received from sex workers on the 30th November 2010, the day SWOP launched the resource:
I truly believe that many of our peers are simply not well informed or even mis-informed about the impact of the law and even today, many peers that I have spoken with are totally confused about the different laws around Australia. Overall, our local org’s have not been effective with getting this information across and it’s also very disappointing to hear that SILK is not helping in this. If our own local org’s cannot provide us with the correct information on the laws of that State or Territory through peer education, are moving away from employing peers and placing peers in decision-making roles within sex worker organisations, and simply won’t listen to our expertise then it’s understandable why so many sex workers remain confused, particularly when they work and travel throughout Australia. It just all really pisses me off and concerns me at the same time.” Khyiah
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“Not only are there inaccuracies (in the legal kit) which makes it confusing, it speaks at us and about us in ways that are offensive with information and in a language we could easily get ourselves from dropping into any legal aid centre – sex worker voices again stymied”. Darlo Debby
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“ACON is incapable and flatly refuses to respond to the bad media coverage its sex work client base has been experiencing daily and will continue to leading up to the election. Similarly it’s incapable of putting out a decent resource as evidenced by their ridiculous attempt at a male resource and legal resource. If they can’t do anything right, they should employ sex workers who can, or give the money to Scarlet Alliance who ALWAYS do amazing work and have the full support of the peer community.“ GF
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“The SILK legal resource is an absolute disgrace. ACON has a team of lawyers who will not represent me when I follow the inaccurate legal advice set out in this ACON resource and get myself arrested. What use is ACON? Well they’re useful if you’re their client and want to get arrested!” Angela
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Combined Response for both SILK and The Workers Handbook – Male edition
“Feedback such as from those attached to “Nothing About Us Without Us” is an important part of the discussion about the usefulness of distributing information hat is not 100% written and controlled by sex workers. I recognise that the concepts of the resources are a result of years of work by sex workers, notably including Kenn Robinson and Maria McMahon, two tireless and inspiration previous SWOP staff.
Unfortunately in the last section of the process sex workers did not have control, and the outcome is that crucial parts of both the SILK legal kit and the Mens Handbook will confuse, stigmatise and possible dis-engage sex workers from the messages the resources intended to deliver (and in some stand alone sections does).
When looked at in totality, the negatives of the sections of dodgy content in the resources overide the potential positives of having new information available to sex workers. It is incredibly disappointing because of the thousands of hours, years of work, funding and investment that sex workers, SWOP, ACON and the funding bodies put into getting the resources finished and available online and in hardcopy.
The resources can be seen here:
http://www.swop.org.au/download-resources
Regarding the Male Handbook, I too don’t support the “avoid anal-sex” content of the resource. I believe that in our anal-phobic society it doesn’t help to reinforce moral judgements about stigmatised sex acts being harmful to individuals who engage in them. And I don’t agree that less anal sex = less risk. In a sex setting ANYTHING can become increased risk if done incorrectly, but by engaging in anal sex that is negotiated and done well, the risk is NOT increased. I agree with the technical argument of “wear and tear” but if we are going fight anal-phobia, queer-phobia, whorephobia, then we have to be particularly careful with the way we write work resources, and in this case present “Facts” about who is at risk of HIV and who is not.
It is NOT the case that having MORE anal sex puts you at MORE risk.
Its actually the opposite,,,
If you are not having much anal sex and you are not confident/experienced at it, you are MORE likely to put yourself at risk for not really knowing how to use condoms when you need to.
A person who is skilled, able to negotiate, confident in condom use, (skills you would get from being experienced at anal sex, doing it more than a person who is not experienced) then you are at lower risk because you know what the hell you are doing to protect yourself.
Without this kind of disclaimer statements like avoiding anal sex = lower risk unfortunately stigmatises potential resource readers who DO do anal sex and who DON”T avoid it.
After interrogating what is bad about the new resources, I would like to reflect on something good.
It was important that the funded state based sex worker organisation has managed to launch a new website after what has been years of inaction and mis-management. The SWOP staff of swop must recognised for all their hard work in delivering services to sex workers WITHOUT a functioning website for YEARS. The sex workers (past and present) in that organisation are congratulated for the peer education that they deliver day and night in the contacts they have with sex workers.
And sex workers all over NSW were should be rightly recognised for the long term contribution they have made to their state based sex workers organisation
The best current resource on the SWOP website is the street sex work and the law booklet.
http://www.swop.org.au/sites/default/files/SWOP-Street-Sex-Work-Law.pdf
Many many sex workers were involved in community development to write this document and it is really fabulous – they were not involved in the picture design however which resulted in a lost opportunity for graphics that could have enhanced the text. The booklet looked at the law from a sex worker point of view – and reads very differently to the SILK handbook. Queer ‘Bromeliad Bites’ RT Choke
What can you do?
When a resource is funded (like SILK, The Workers Handbook – Male Edition and the SWOP website), part of the funding agreement almost always contains a condition that an evaluation is done. This is to make sure that the right information is getting to the right target group, so your feedback is really important and is what puts pressure on SWOP/ACON to develop resources in a responsible, meaningful way.
NSW sex workers call upon SWOP/ACON to develop peer resources; this means they should be supporting NSW sex workers to make resources for NSW sex workers. They shouldn’t be written by lawyers or other non sex workers; they shouldn’t take material written by NSW sex workers, cut it up and change the langauge, tone and content of the material so it is unrecognisable as a peer resource; and certainly the information in them shouldn’t be taken from overseas websites.
To help NAUWU give ACON/SWOP this message, please send us an email nothing-about-us-without-us@gmail.comwith your comment/feedback/evaluation or place it in the comments section of this page. Your comment doesn’t have to be very long, it can be just a few sentences if you don’t want to write anything more detailed. Alternatively you can give Lance (Manager) at SWOP a call on 02 9319 4866 and let him know what you think of SWOPs resources.
It would be really helpful if you were able to supply NAUWU with your feedback because it means it is recorded and won’t get lost or forgotten if directly reported to SWOP/ACON.
Without constant pressure being put on SWOP/ACON, unless they hear our voice, resources and the other services they are suppose to be supporting NSW sex workers with, will continue to be done the wrong way. We need your help!
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