Keeping San Francisco Safe From Prostitutes?

Who really is opposing Proposition K, a ballot initiative now before San Francisco voters, which would forbid the City from spending public funds on arresting and jailing sex workers? Even among sex workers, this ballot initiative is not without controversy. We do recognize one common ground: that so long as sex workers are criminals, sex workers will never have full civil and human rights. Who would oppose the right of sex workers to organize their own labor, to have access to health care, to hold law enforcement to the same standards as other citizens do? Who would say that it’s not important to prevent rape, assault, and even murder of sex workers, if it would risk reducing their property values?

The biggest opposition to Prop K isn’t anti-prostitution feminist groups. It’s “neighborhood associations.” Unlike even the most socially conservative feminists, they never say, I don’t want sex workers to be raped. They say, I don’t want to see sex workers. Don’t want to see them on their front steps. Don’t want to see their clients or “pimps.” Don’t want to see condoms, or syringes. In short: don’t want to see poverty, don’t want to see poor people.

What these groups do, when pushing this image of the mini-skirted tranny with a needle in her arm, seducing the children from their front steps, is to make sex workers seem so alien, so less-than, that jailing them can sound like a step up. I say this not as an expert personally on living and working as a street-based sex worker; I’ve been privileged in my choice of venue and clients as a sex worker. It’s that I’ve been even more privileged to work with community-based organizations in San Francisco that serve the needs of street-based sex workers, including those who use drugs and lack stable housing.

The reality is, street-based sex work makes up the minority of prostitution in San Francisco. For every girl you see working the Polk, there’s a half dozen sharing one of those 500 square foot studio apartments up and down the Lower Nob to give “sensual massages” or to provide “companionship.” Indoor prostitution, where sex workers find clients not through street solicitation but through print and online ads, is the rule, and street work is the exception. Even street workers have sex indoors.

What I did learn from working in the sex trade is that the very people who can most likely afford to hire a sex worker are in the same socioeconomic demographic that rallies against the rights of sex workers. Where are these roving hordes of hookers they rave about? How can you tell that condom or syringe on your doorstep came from a working girl or boy, or from a careless slutty hipster?

What K opponents will never say in public, is that it’s not prostitutes that are hard to live next to — it’s poverty. And when I hear even liberal San Franciscans claim sex workers are making San Francisco “unsafe” for them, I never hear them propose what to do to ensure the safety of sex workers.

A Yes vote on Prop K will not make San Francisco a “safe haven” for pimps. The number one function of a pimp isn’t to get sex workers clients; it’s to keep the cops and others who would prey on a prostitute’s vulnerability at bay. The criminalization of sex work is part of what gives pimps a job. Pimps are not sex workers, and no one would call them that; and in fact, much of sex work takes place without the intervention or control of pimps and managers.

A Yes vote on Prop K will not create an “unregulated” industry where sex workers are in more danger than they already face. Remember: the only publicly-funded body regulating the sex trade right now is law enforcement. In a City where 1 in 7 sex workers say that police have forced them to have sex with them to avoid arrest, cops have as much to gain from criminalization as pimps do. Those who should take the lead in regulating the sex industry — sex workers and social service professionals — cannot when they must compete with cops. San Francisco’s Director of STD Control & Prevention supports Prop K for this reason: if cops are using condoms against sex workers as evidence of intention to commit a crime, how does that keep anyone in San Francisco safe?

A Yes vote on Prop K is a vote for human rights. For the last thirty years, regional, national, and international networks of sex workers and sex worker advocacy organizations have been fighting to protect the civil rights of sex workers. This summer, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon joined sex workers in calling for the end to laws that discriminate against us by making us criminals. Prop K is just one step towards achieving that goal. If you believe your property values are inconsistent with the human rights of your fellow and sister citizens, there’s probably nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. If you’d like to stand for a San Francisco where our most vulnerable citizens are as safe as you are, too, behind your closed doors, then vote Yes on K.