The [him] moderator has asked Sasha how she came to say Kumjing had anything to do with 'gold' in Burmese. She said there was "perhaps an accent issue". Whose accent?
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Love Bites
Sasha
AIDS 2006: Hangover and heartache in the Stiletto Lounge
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_08.24.06/fun/lovebites.php
I love whores. I love their audacity, their tenacity and their perspicacity. I was so stoked to spend the week of the AIDS 2006 conference (Aug. 13-18) with sex workers from Thailand, Bangladesh, Cambodia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico and Africa, as well as local friends from Stella in Montreal and Maggie's here in Toronto. Learning about their lives first-hand was one of the most inspiring experiences I've had in my 12 years as a sex columnist and as a sex-worker activist.
Monday I find my way through the hustling Global Village to the Stiletto Lounge, where the hookers have booths representing their regions. I locate my colleague Jenn Clamen, an activist from Montreal, who introduces me to women I've only ever spoken to by email and phone and then quickly apprises me of the gossip. Rumour has it that some of the AIDSerati (groan) will be visiting the Stiletto Lounge and the girls have their panties in a collective bunch hoping it's Richard Gere, because they've started an informal contest to get a picture with him in the famous Pretty Woman poster pose.
Instead, it turns out to be BillandMelindaGates™, hotly pursued by a murder of media. I never really planned on seeing Bill Gates in person, so watching him enter a makeshift hooker parlour as a hijra (a traditional, ornate Indian transsexual) was swirling and dancing on a giant bed/stage was... well, let's just say I couldn't imagine a more magical setting. The girls unfurl a banner with a photo of Burmese sex workers being abducted from Thai brothels to illustrate that one of the organizations (the International Justice Mission, or IJM) Bill and Melinda have aligned themselves with is bad news. Khartini Slamah, a Malaysian transsexual activist, elbows past the press and says, "You're dumping your money in the wrong place" upon which Bill and Melinda are whooshed away, all in under two minutes.
To be fair, the Gates have given money to some awesome sex-worker organizations in India, but the IJM is described by Andrew Hunter from the Asian Pacific Network of Sex Workers as "rabidly fundamentalist." He talks about the "rescue and repatriation" tactics of the IJM. After kidnapping sex workers with the help of the local constabulary, they incarcerate them, then force them back to their native countries, one of which is Burma, a military state that a lot of women leave expressly because it's a military state. Sometimes they just plop the women somewhere halfway and they are left with the dangerous and expensive task of returning themselves. This is all done under the auspices of anti-trafficking (oddly, using the same methods as traffickers), though many of these sex workers are not trafficked.
On a lighter note: I don't know who came up with the smashing idea of putting the Stiletto Lounge kitty corner to the Latino Café, where they are serving the most delicious $2 tequila shots, but it certainly speeds up mutual regard among us all.
Tuesday I attend a panel discussion titled "Sex Work, HIV and Politics" where, for the first time, I see Jodi Jacobson, a respected American activist who works with an organization called CHANGE (Centre for Health and Gender Equity). The discussion turns to PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (yes, the conference is a confounding festival of acronyms). In 2003, the Bush government created a policy that forces nations to sign a "prostitution pledge," preventing organizations that empower sex workers from getting US HIV/AIDS funding.
Brazil was one country that refused -- costing them a whopping $40 million. The civil societies stood beside the prostitutes, saying they couldn't do HIV/AIDS prevention and activism without them. Gabriela Leite, a Brazilian sex worker and activist with three decades of experience, speaks of the clothing line Brazilian hookers designed called Daspu, meaning "the whore." All of the models in the line's ads are sex workers -- young, old, fat, skinny, black, white -- and it's been a huge success both in raising positive awareness and money. Fuck you, Bush. Sisters are doing it for themselves!
Wednesday begins at 10am sharp. The women gather in the Stiletto -- bright-eyed despite the open-bar party the previous night hosted by the Open Society Institute -- and lead a demonstration. We are all wearing teal t-shirts from Stella, which read on the back, "Time to deliver sex workers rights." We march around the Global Village yelling, "Sex worker rights are human rights!" Our large and multiracial group stops outside the Convention Centre, then in Simcoe Park, where leaders speak, some through translators, then outside the Convention Centre's media room where we are joined accidentally but enthusiastically by conference co-president Mark Wainberg as USAID reps are seen bolting down an escalator.
Later, the women from Empower stand up in the Stiletto Lounge and make an enchanting political presentation on behalf of their colleagues from Burma who, because of their illegal status, cannot travel. The Burmese women have created large papier mâché dolls, all named Kumjing (a common Burmese name meaning "gold"), each with her own passport -- which they actually made Canada Customs stamp -- and story. Some of the hookers from other groups adopt the dolls.
Thursday is a press conference called "New Findings on the Impact of the US Prostitution Loyalty Oath on HIV Prevention," moderated by Jodi Jacobson. Activists Melissa Ditmore from New York, Gabriela Leite from Brazil and Hazera Bagum from Bangladesh -- who just the night before won a Red Ribbon award for her work with the organization Durjoy Nari Shangha -- are on the panel. The havoc wreaked by US policy is enragingly transparent in all the literature given out by international groups (condom shortages in sub-Saharan Africa; outreach workers in Cambodia fired for treating sex workers; sex workers turned away from clinics in Thailand) but it is Bagum, breaking down in tears when telling of the 16 drop-in centres (DICs) around the Bangladesh capital that have been closed in order to comply with the pledge, who really drives the point home for me. The DICs not only provide a place for thousands of women to get condoms -- the number they're selling now dropping from 73,000 to 30,000 per month -- but somewhere for them to rest, wash and gain literacy skills and moral support. For all the stories and pictures of human rights violations heaped on sex workers the world over, it is the image of a woman deprived of the simple dignity of cleaning up after intimate labour that burns in my heart.
EMAIL SASHA AT SASHA@EYEWEEKLY.COM OR SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO SASHA C/O EYE WEEKLY, 625 CHURCH ST, 6TH FL, TORONTO, M4Y 2G1.
