Tuesday 18 March 2014

Monday 17 March 2014

Criminalizing Clients: Nasty and Unnecessary

In the endless war on sex workers the abolitionists are desperate to ensure that they have law enforcement possibilities to harass us. They are desperate to have the means by which they can disrupt what they consider transgressive sexual behaviour. Whether this trangressive behaviour is women having sex with men, or women having sex outside of marriage, the agenda is to control sexual access to my body.

If I offer sexual access to my body in exchange for accepting patriarchal institutions such as marriage, it is acceptable to some. For others it is my willingness to claim that sex with men for payment is subverting patriarchy that is so provocative and is why they subject sex workers to so much opprobrium.

Criminalizing clients will create huge problems for sex workers as our bodies will become the forensic locale of investigation. The police will have the right to survey my body and invade my vagina for evidence, they will confiscate used condoms and search my phone to see who called me.

So to evade or avoid such harms clients will want withhold their numbers when they call which as all sex workers know is a real danger or the clients will want to contact us through trusted third parties which will make us dependent on such mediators. This is an invitation for exploitation.

Clients will want to take used condoms away with them to avoid them being found by the police. How they will then eventually dispose of these condoms will range from the most careful to the negligent and cavalier.

Finally I can be subjected to intimate and internal examination by the Police to ascertain whether a sex act has taken place.

I find it incredible that anyone can really argue that the criminalisation of clients will make life safer for sex workers, the criminalisation of clients is simply a device for exercising control over who can have sexual access to my body regardless of my desire or wishes.


Sunday 9 March 2014

Meeting the Honey Bees

It is so nice that spring is here so I decided to visit a bee keeping assoc to see them get their bees and equipment ready.

It was really interesting to see how well they look after their bees. fortunately all the bee colonies were in good health after the winter storms. They told me that a few years ago they had lost all their bees after they were infected with parasites!

At least they don't have man eating tigers, in the mangroves of my country the wild honey collectors are often attacked and killed by tigers.

I so enjoyed visiting the bees without having to worry about the tigers :)