Features orld. I have conversations about physics, bout Islam, about computers...It’s quite fun, articularly if you get somebody interesting.” Lily knows that if she compromised her tandards by working longer hours or seeing ess desirable clients, she could make more oney. She doesn't care. “When people come o see me, I have a particular way of dealing ith them on the phone. They just know that ere’s no bullshit. And if they're going to be ifficult or disrespectful, I tell them to fuck ff,” Lily says. “It’s all about taking your per- onal power in hand. I demand quite a lot of espect, and I get it.” Pascal—a 22-year-old, bisexual, francopho- e native of Montreal—stripped at Taboo for e first time two months ago, after losing a et with his friends. He liked the experi- nce—and the money he made—enough to ontinue stripping at the club. “I work here © pay my fees for a massage therapy course at I’m taking,” he says, insisting that he ntends to be a legit masseur. “I'll keep doing t maybe for a year, until I can start as a ther- pist.” 21 year-old Dayanara has stripped all over e world—in places as far-flung as New York ity, Miami, Spain, Paris and Portugal— ince she was 19. Now settled in Montreal, he is working to pay the fees for a dance and usic school she attends. “I'll probably stop hen I am finished my education and have nough money to move on,” she says. Dayanara dropped out of school at age 15. ‘I was reading Nietzsche and the Marquis de ade when I was 12 and the teachers kept say- ng I was weird. They called me a whore and stripper because I wore the revealing clothes at I liked,”she says. “I wanted to do danc- ng and music and read the classics, but the uebec government doesn’t invest in those ings. I’m not good at math or physics, but *m good at languages and dance and music. ‘m a human being and I have potential, and ‘Il do well in whatever I want to do.” Gavin came to Montreal from Ontario hen he was 17—he ran away from home ith a man he met on the internet. When the an abandoned him, he danced at Taboo to ake money for the bus ride back home. er he finished high school, he returned to ontreal and to Taboo. “I did it for about two and a half years,” he ays. “I got sick of it after a year, but I need- d the money to live. I wanted a job, but hen you can't speak French, what are you oing to do? Still, I wouldn't consider going n welfare.” Although he was depressed for more than ix months because of his job, he never esented his employers or clients. “My mployers never took advantage of me. I| ouldnt want to do it again, but I don't egret doing it,” he says. Sex workers’ stories are diverse and fasci- ating—and rarely given airtime or print http://otherpress:douglas.be.ca space. And while victimization and abuse remain serious issues within the sex trade, they have proven unable to crush workers’ spirits. “There is so much violence throughout the industry, so much exploitation,” says Lainie Basman, a member of Stella, a community resource for women and transsexuals who work in the sex industry. “And yet, sex work- ers are capable of resisting. There's so much strength amongst these people, and so much possibility.” RUNNING UP AGAINST THE WALL It is, of course, unfair to paint an overly rosy picture of the sex trade. The concerns and challenges of strippers and prostitutes, for example, are very different. And while many sex workers have found ways to empower themselves within their profession, violence and backlash continue to be heaped upon them. “There's been a horrible increase in the vio- lence against sex workers,” Natasha says, “not just in numbers, but in severity.” “What we have to try and demystify,” says Palmer, “is the idea that it’s part of the job for sex workers to get hit, to get sworn at, to get raped. That's not part of the deal, but a lot of [people] seem to feel that it is.” “They have a sense that justice isn’t on their side,” Basman notes. Having been stigma- tized for so long, many sex workers have internalized the idea that the courts and police are uninterested in protecting them. “When you get in front of a cop,” Palmer says,it depends who you're dealing with— some of them are really okay, but others are disgusting and they just won't recognize that it’s an assault if you're a sex trade worker.” And while sex trade work on the part of con- senting adults is one thing, the involvement of minors is quite another. “Especially with the minors,” Palmer continues, “they're very much exploited by people who are very con- trolling. They get into it by mistake some- times, others by choice as well, but they often don’t use the resources available to them because they're scared that somebody's going to report them.” Most recently, tensions have flared between sex workers and residents of Montreal’s Centre-Sud district, who have banded together and formed a community organiza- tion in order to oust the street workers. “Everyone wants it out of their backyard,” Palmer says. “But in Vancouver they ghet- toized sex work, and look what happened. How many women had to die before they started to do something about it?” The criminalization and stigmatization of sex work, then, have made the industry even less safe for those involved. “The police have expressed the concern many times that they know criminalization doesn’t work,” Natasha says. “They know it only makes it more dan- gerous for the sex workers.” DECRIMINALISATION AND THE FUTURE “It's important that the message of what decriminalization is gets out,” says Natasha. “People are terrified of the idea, they have all sorts of bizarre misconceptions about it. It doesn’t mean that people will try to go out and pimp 14-year-olds or that it will become legal for sex workers to work in your back- yard. It just means that it would be treated with the same regulations as any other busi- ness.” a Those fighting for the rights of sex workers agree that the decriminalization of prostitu- tion would be a crucial step towards ensuring the safety, dignity and legitimacy of sex work. “A lot of women are afraid to go out on their own,” Lily says. “They feel like they would be more secure working for a man— since it’s established, they wouldn't get the serious criminal charges if the shit hit the fan. If they went out on their own, they would. Criminalization is a real barrier to workers organizing and becoming empowered, partic- ularly on the street levels.” But Basman notes that decriminalization alone will not eliminate the many obstacles faced by sex workers. “If this huge stigma and this socially- acceptable violence against sex workers still exists, and then we decriminalize tomorrow, it wont miraculously fix everything,” she says. Decriminalization, then, would be sim- ply one element in a greater societal change that would see sex work as a legitimate job like any other, which would treat workers with the respect they have earned, which would honour sex workers’ personal choices. But workers—and the organizations, like Stella, that support them—can’t afford to wait for the rest of society to come around. The reclaiming of power for sex workers has come in small steps. One influential breakthrough has been Stella’s Bad Trick List, a list compiled from workers’ reports of clients or employers that have treated them disrespectfully, abusively or violently. This list circulates among Montreal sex workers, so that they can more effectively screen their clientele and protect themselves. “There's a real revolution in saying that sex workers can take care of themselves and one another, that they know what they want, and that we can't presume to tell them what they need and want,” Basman attests. “They're capable of creating strategies to resist the vio- lence and exclusion, strategies to build some- thing good for themselves.” “A lot of people decide to [work in the sex trade] as a means to improving their life, to getting out of the cycle of poverty and getting out of shitty jobs,” Natasha says. “I think they're pioneers. I think they've got guts.” January 15, 2003 page 21 ©