Organizers hope a vigil planned for Friday night in Cal Anderson Park will help to continue raising awareness of violence committed against sex workers. Sex Workers Outreach Project’s Seattle group is organizing the vigil. Details are below. The Seattle PostGlobe recently reported on the underage sex trade in Seattle. One expert the PostGlobe talked to estimated that one third of prostitutes are under the age of 18. The series also provides a look at the violence many local sex workers face.
SWOP Northwest will be hosting candle vigil, procession and community event to commemorate December 17th.
Where: Cal Anderson Park, Seattle
When: December 17, 7pm
December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. This event was created to call attention to hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe. Originally thought of by Dr. Annie Sprinkle and started by the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA as a memorial and vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle Washington. International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers has empowered workers from over cities around the world to come together and organize against discrimination and remember victims of violence. During the week of December 17th, sex worker rights organizations will be staging actions and vigils to raise awareness about violence that is commonly committed against sex workers. The assault, battery, rape and murder of sex workers must end. Existing laws prevent sex workers from reporting violence. The stigma and discrimination that is perpetuated by the prohibitionist laws has made violence against us acceptable. Please join with sex workers around the world and stand against criminalization and violence committed against prostitutes.
Hookers get beat up, yes, it happens. It’s awful, I agree. How about bringing attention to the conditions that would lead someone to believe that selling their ass on the streets for a chip of rock is a good course to take…and no, they aren’t just doing it to get through medical school.
Yes, many people turn to drugs to escape from desperate situations and yes, more attention does need to be paid to that, but that’s really not the point of this vigil. You seem to think that most sex workers are drug addicts and that’s why they are victimized, but that’s just not true.
Consider how any group of people that is routinely stigmatized and marginalized is disproportionately affected by violence and you may start to see the big picture.
Children forced into the sex trade are not “sex workers”. Why are they linked in the article?
How many “sex workers” do so voluntarily and as an expression of their own empowered sexuality? An insignificant minority. Most women are forced into sex work by economics and not a sense of liberation. On those rare occasions when I do meet sex workers, I fully support their decision and their right to decide for themselves. But I gotta say, you folks have done a shitty job of educating about the nature of sex work, the difference between sexual slavery and sex work, and how we can end the violence and exploitation.
Maybe I’m way out there, but this feels like someone walking into a crowd of rape survivors and shouting “Hey, I love S&M and bondage and we need to end rape!”
Leave to a middle class anarchists to confuse belly dancing lessons with sex work and demand recognition of how radical they are.