One of the things that puts me on edge about the framing of the sex worker experience is that its very polarized: empowered sex-positive people who self-identify as sex workers who chose to work in the business vs. degraded exploited people who are forced into transactional sex (“forced” can cover everything from kidnapping and rape to highly restricted economic options, depending on who is talking).

At my monthly sex worker storytelling event, the Red Umbrella Diaries, I have been working to expand the kinds of stories that get told. It would be easy for me to host an endless array of performers with stories to tell about empowerment and celebration of sexual exploration. But sex work isn’t always empowering. And for most people who engage in it, sex is a means to an end (sex work is work!) and the economic activity of sex work is not at all about their sexuality or freedom of expression. More importantly than the “its not that, its this” argument is the fact that what sex work is/does/means for an individual changes over the course of his/her/their experiences in the industry. It’s not a constant.

I don’t want to only promote an empowered spin on sex work experiences, its not honest. I like the messy stuff, the fucked up but also funny stuff… there’s a lot happening under the surface that is more than worth digging into. With regards to these, the upcoming event on April 7 includes stories from sex workers in Kenya and Uganda (as read by an activist from Kenya), drug addiction and sex work, as well as a story about getting arrested.

BUT.

Suggesting that empowered experiences aren’t real or don’t happen, that people who have positive experiences of the industry are very limited, and that the only authentic stories of the sex industry are the ones with maximum pain and suffering is fucked up exploitative trauma porn. Often the desire for deeply ugly stories is looped in with the notion that the only sex workers who are worthy of this concern porn are cis women and girls (the younger, the more worthy!)  

And so, a message from my inbox:

 I was interested in attending the “Boom and Bust” session on April 7^th as from my initial impression, it seemed like this is being held as a method to educate people about the lives of those who have worked in the sex industry in an attempt to gain awareness and promote justice as well as discourage the view that women are sex objects. This initial impression became confusing as I read the bio of one of the people speaking at this event, as attached below:

 Jincey Lumpkin, Esq. is the founder and Chief Sexy Officer of Juicy Pink Box, a brand that is glamorizing lesbian sex by showing real lesbians in a chic way. The Daily Beast called her the “Lesbian Hugh Hefner”, Out Magazine recognized her one of the most influential gay people of 2010, and Time Out New York named her a “New York City Sex Icon”.   She chronicles her life as a pornographer in her column, “Naked Ambition” for The Advocate. Jincey is a former lawyer, a diva and a lover of breasts.

From this bio it seems to be glamorizing her role in the sex industry, and therefore this bio appears to be contradictory to what I believed the aim of “Red Umbrella Diaries” is. Maybe I am misunderstanding its aim, or else am misunderstanding this bio. I would like to gain some information about the purpose of Red Umbrella Diaries as I am not understanding this very well. 

My response: The aim of the Red Umbrella Diaries is to create space for individuals who have experiences in the sex industry to tell their personal stories. There is a lot of diversity of experience in the industry, and we don’t claim to encapsulate all experiences in every event. Many people have bad and exploitative experiences, but some do not (or do not frame their stories that way). Some of the storytellers actively strive to discourage the view that women (or people in general) are inherently sex objects or only deserve to be treated as such. Others don’t address that issue (or care about it), and still others, like Jincey, are excited about the idea that people can be sexual objects. Above all, its important that the storytellers themselves present their experiences as they see themselves. Sometimes these visions conflict with other storytellers, other sex workers, and the way that the audience sees and receives each performer. The mission is to create space for sex workers to self-define their experiences and reframe public conversations with their input, not to present a unified and unchangeable vision of what the sex industry is and does.