i've been a hooker most of my adult life in new zealand where we do have decrim. stigma is still a huge thing, but it really does make things better.
a few months ago, i sat in on a meeting with worksafe, which monitors occupational health and safety. decrim has been in place for twenty years, and worksafe was finally in a position where they thought that maybe they could train their staff to be comfortable inspecting brothels and other sex work establishments for health and safety regulations.
worker after worker, anonymous or activist or academic or none of the above, told stories at least as bad as the ones i've had myself: being locked into rooms or buildings, not being allowed off shift, having pay withheld, and of course worse. and what struck me was that the worksafe people invariably understood most of the ways brothel and strip club owners abuse their workers as the same hazards they saw in agriculture or factories: detaining people is a fire hazard. not paying them, or plying them with alcohol on the job to convince them to work overtime, is illegal everywhere.
and with the law in place — with twenty years of proof that sex work decriminalisation so drastically reduced violence against sex workers that it impacted the overall nz statistics for violence against women — worksafe finally felt comfortable with the idea of going into workplaces that still frequently violate absolutely every nz employment law.
fired up strippers is an organisation here that began as unionisation from a single strip club. it's grown since then to do the things that the increasingly complacent parts of leadership at the new zealand prostitutes' collective, founded pre-decriminalisation, cannot do: name the whole system as still broken, and call for structural change that doesn't stop at technical-legal acceptance. they've set up stripper poles outside parliament and had supportive MPs pose with it. they've called for people to show up in the streets and had crowds, ranging from older white professionals in coats through young queers breaking out the sluttiest gear they have in support, come through.
one of the most toxic instincts in brothels is when people see new workers as "stealing money from my family's mouths", as competition. owners encourage that perspective because it makes it a race to the bottom where we'll accept that they don't wash towels or the degrading pleather is giving everyone contact dermatitis or they're pressuring people into providing specific services. solidarity is the answer, on a level more profound than the natural "brothel mom" dynamic that often pops up.
decriminalisation — not legalisation, because if you make something legal the police still get to decide who falls outside that legal box, and their presence still creates fear and violence — is the only solution.
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