Harvey Milk, me and my mom

So this used to be more of a personal blog than a sex worker news worthy piece, so in thinking and overthinking “what should i blog? when should I blog?” i just decided that i work best when i just start typing because typing is so easy for me to do…I just watched the Harvey Milk movie with my mom on Christmas Day. Every Christmas Day we watch a movie together because my sisters spend this day with their partners’ families and historically I have not been partnered up with anyone so I’ve hung out with my mom at the movies!

This youtube thing is very fitting, if not totally inspiring, if we think of Obama as being the representation of HOPE as he has coined himself to be…The “us” es that Milk speaks about…that is me…queer prostitute of color..

It was SUCH an inspiring movie to watch with my mom because it was the best way for me to explain to her exactly what I do as a prostitute activist. I had JUST finished working on the PROP K campaign in San Francisco, and PROP 8 (gay marriage) had just been defeated in CA and Florida which was almost EXACTLY what they were fighting when Milk was running for all the offices that he had run for. The most inspiring thing for me was that he did NOT COME OUT of the closet until after age 40, nor did he START his political career as a historical LGBT activist UNTIL AFTER 40. And here I sit at 32 thinking that I am getting TOO OLD. He had run for offices 4 different times in San Francisco before he won his supervisor seat finally. So, being that we had attained 41% of the vote in San Francisco for decriminalization of prostitution, the first time on the SF Ballot is pretty damn amazing.

During the late 70s instead of talking about gay marriage, they were talking about FIRING GAY TEACHERS. This is pretty ironic for me to hear, since I was a high school teacher for many years, and openly GAY with a big ol rainbow flag behind my desk. I chose to call myself gay and not bi for the purposes of my teaching career because it was easier for me go with extremes than use the hot button word ‘bisexual’ which I felt might read as ambiguous to teenagers. Although, this new generation of queer youth is MUCH more accepting of bi and transgender peers than my generation. I KNOW I was internalizing biphobia, but it was pretty effective for the purposes of running the Gay Straight Alliance in our urban school.

I have met with supervisors (dressed as a street worker) and walked up the very stairs of San Francisco’s City Hall that Milk talked about making a grand gay entrance into, where he was assasinated by Dan White and cried and fought in the very same ways that he did…in the same places…

My mom asked me what the guy I am dating thought about me being bisexual and I said,”I don’t think he has a choice really…it’s not something that you can really control. It’s just who you are.” She asked me why I wanted to watch that movie, and I said, because I’m bisexual, it’s part of my history.

Being the openly gay teacher in the high school that I taught at and getting involved in LGBT youth activism for those years was a replacement for the sex worker rights issues that I had been working on previously to my shift into transitioning out of sex work into the “real world.” The only thing was that I MISSED the sex worker rights movement! I missed the POWER of sex work! So as soon as I finished my first year at that school, I quit and celebrated my reunification with the whore movement…OMG. That was already TWO YEARS AGO.

After watching that movie, I told my mom..”The organization that I am working with…it is VERY SIMILAR to what you see in this movie. The things that we do and what we go through are almost the same.” I said. My mom doesn’t know that I am actually a sex worker. She believes what I tell her, that I am just an ally, a researcher type, a consultant on the issue, not an actually worker. Perhaps she already knows and just consciously buys into the lie because it is easier. But, the important elements of what I actually do are not so important to my mom, because what I wish to share with her about what I do, I AM already sharing with her. I really don’t think it’s important to share the details of the sex work with my mom anymore than I am…Perhaps I might come all the way out of the closet with it, but I don’t think that it is that necessary. When I did the PROP K media stuff, I had to grapple with the fact that my Chinese family in San Francisco would see me on national TV. But the work that I do and the words that I am saying, I have a RIGHT TO BE PROUD OF, and if they watch it and can find some shame to dig up to throw at me, then I will just deal with it then, but no backlash has happened so far. A very few of my cousins know, but not too many. Not many of my extended cousins know about my LGBT activism. I haven’t identified any potentially queer relatives of mine, but there is always one or two that we don’t know we have.

I have worked on my coming out with my mom for many years. I announced being bi to my sisters and mom during some getaway vacation to Napa almost ten years ago. My mom is a born again Christian, it is important to note so progress with her is very different than my dad who is my best friend and supporter of my sex worker politics and of so many things that I do. In the last few days, I’ve been staying at my Dad’s apartment posting Craigslist escort ads and taking calls for work in front of him (going into the other room) but nevertheless..just a glimpse at how very different they are. My dad has read some of my blog, knows about EVERYTHING I’ve done, from the arrest to the brothel and has shipped me books and novels and web links on sex worker activism. Having ONE parent like my dad is enough acceptance for MY WHOLE FAMILY (siblings and their partners included), I am really really lucky to have him. I am learning to love my mother more, as you might infer, we’ve struggled more on our relationship and it has had constant ups and downs through my life, but this Christmas was a symbollic truce of sorts…It was better than watching Nixon or Aliens vs Predator II which is what we watched last year. She says she doesn’t know what it is like to feel discrimination, that she came to this country after the Japanese internment, that she sympathizes with “us” but doesn’t understand what that might be like. I struggle to understand how a woman of color could NOT understand discrimination in this country, but I struggle to understand my mother as well. Perhaps we don’t struggle with each other anymore, we just accept and understand that we DON’T and might not ever understand completely. Perhaps also, she will never know that I consider my fate as a courtesan to be inherited by her, that sexual exchange is passed down from yo mama in many families. I learned how to know that men and their money was the key to my finnancial survival from her, as she had a sugar daddy partner for most of the years of our growing up and that she met my father when she was a hostess in Japan.

prop k on AP video

This is the prop k disguise I’ve been using, although I’m pretty sure you can tell its still me.  I’ve just been coming out the press on prop K simultaneously, knowing that San Francisco is the home to my extended Chinese family and many other people who have no idea what I do.  This interview isn’t the worse that it could be. Kamala Harris, the district attorney of San Francisco says,”It’s not going to be like pretty woman.”  Hahahahahaha.  Almost every sex worker/feminist I know HATES that movie and it’s attempt to represent the desires of prostitutes.

San Francisco PROP K action report

What an amazing experience this has been so far.  It has been really really interesting to be involved with this proposition with all the sex worker activists that I came into this work with during the MEASURE Q initiative in the City of Berkeley that Robyn Few spearheaded in 2004. So much has changed in 4 years with me, my work, my other work, and where I stand in the work.

REgistered to vote in SF, for the first time in 8 years, I initially got excited about this election because I wanted a person of color to be president.  But I think I’ve stepped back from the media machines that both of the two sides are pumping out from the ears at full speed ahead that I’m not listening anymore.  I’m all about PROP K, all the way.

The first time I did this in Berkeley with them, I was pretty negative about sex work, just quitting stripclub stripping and facing that transition which would lead to some difficult times, but then just meeting Carol Leigh and Robyn Few as they started SWOP with Measure Q.  I couldn’t really talk about issues or argue points like I can now.  I was completely inexperienced and not nearly as passionate about things as I am now.

When I am tabling or talking to the people about sex worker rights or SWOP it seems easier in some ways than talking about PROP K because guys will ask,”Are you a prostitute?” and I say,”Yes.” then they say,”No way.  Get out of here.”  and I say yeah, and PROP K is about decriminalizing sex work simply by voting yes.  Then as if following a predictable script comes them hitting on me for sex!

I hate it.

It is far less powerful than sex work itself.

Why? Because on the street, in most normal interactions, I realize that men and patriarchy in general have more power, when talking about sex or sex work because for some reason, they seem to be better at offending women not the other way around.  However, most of the volunteers have reported being criticized to their face about the issue, their perceived gender or sexual orientation I’m sure and it hasn’t really phased them.

dressing like a hooker for activism has always been my specialty..

Every article I’m reading about Carol Leigh quotes that she’s been raped when she was a sex worker in SF.  What a horrible line to have to read and have googled about you over and over over.  This campaign makes all of the sex workers involved feel especially vulnerable!  More vulnerable than if we were campaigning in lingerie like [I] usually do.  In fact,perhaps sometimes the shock value of porn and prostitution and post porn modernism are what make them powerful.

We are deliberately de-sexualizing the issue to appeal to the masses!  (And i just called Obama a sell out, but in similar ways, we are doing the same thing).  Politics is like that,isn’t it.  It’s an interesting thing for me, because most of my activism is in your face, raw stripper aggression removed from the darkened club for post modern effect, but most days I am in jeans, a t-shirt and “pretty” face (make up/contact lenses) awaiting potential client calls for work so I can afford to stay on in SF working on this issue.  But, if there is anything that has been driven home with me getting *detained* for passing out flyers on a college campus about PROP K, and about getting arrested by undercover cops who were milling around the BDSM convention that we were doing outreach at, is that LE and their henchmen are everywhere, and therefore, even if prostitution is decriminalized, it will still be for the most part, done discreetly because sex for most people is a private issue (which is our qualm with the laws in the first place).

Remember that scene in Pretty Woman where she walks through the hotel lobby in her thigh high boots and her buddy the concierge gives her some pointers about how to fit into the straight world?  Well, the reason why dressing like a streetwalker makes good art is because in the real lives of sex workers, you CAN’T and DON’T dress like that in the places that you most often do your work..Keeping it ambiguous is the name of the game, and the reason why you can’t tell how many sex workers there are or how much is actually going down (although I can spot the hos in the hotel lobby right away).  This incognito is not only because of the laws against us.  There are times when you want attention around your sex and times when you do not.

I think the magic of being a sex worker is that it is a form of drag that I can put on and off by choice, and although when I perform I dress in sexy clothing, I am removed from people in that they understand that it is a performance, so most of them keep their distance. In talking to people face to face, they don’t.  You seem to have to find a way to fend off people seemingly sexually harassing you.  The stigma of prostitution is far from removed, and that is what you are dealing with when you are doing these talks.  When I was talking about my fundraiser and telling everyone I got arrested, boy that was wayyy vulnerable times. (Some people felt sorry for me!) I hated that too.  If I was in victim mode, I wouldn’t be going around town hustling donations for my legal fund.

I used to reflect on this when I worked as a stripper at a stripclub (and at Burningman).  I missed the freedom and power of dressing sexy like that so I kept performing sex work through my art and music so I could keep shopping at stripper stores and wear 6 inch heels!

And even though, I am seemingly telling the world through this blog and my music and art that I am a whore, I’m really NOT even telling my neighbors, or the person driving in the car next to me..They might know, or maybe they’ve seen an ad of mine on the internet, but don’t want to say. (because then the vulnerability is on them!)  I don’t always look like a stereotypical whore and when I do, most people wouldn’t even assume that I am sex worker for real because they just don’t go there, especially with people who seem to have self esteem, confidence and ownership of their sexuality..

Tomorrow we are going to talk to people visiting and coming out of jail.  If more people of color were mobilized around this issue..Obama’s not outreaching to the pocs but I am going to!

Dialogue about PROP K is all over the radio and TV.  Having to hear the ignorance that they are spewing is very difficult.  I don’t know where we stand on our fight but we are doing as much as we can.  We could stand to have more people working on this issue and we are definitely hurting for funding, but considering that we are a small, self funded team, I think that we are winning!