on the agenda: Direct Action + Antifascism

18 – 21st Sept 2008
Belgrade, Serbia

www.queerbeograd.org

What does it mean to take action, to take responsibility to actively create the conditions for our own existence? How do we negotiate this with the society around us? How do we shape our own societies so that our actions form and inform the world around us? Queer Beograd is a direct action collective; our roots are in dissatisfaction with waiting for anyone else to make for us the place we need for ourselves. After the failure of the 2004 Pride in Belgrade we decided its enough of being afraid and hiding, of thinking nothing could be done. We judged our tactics to match the situation and we TOOK ACTION.

Now looking around us we see change, change that have been built not by begging politicians to listen to us or to make concessions on our behalf, but by going ahead and doing what we needed anyway – refusing to be silent, refusing to be still, to be invisible. Each time we took action, each time we won against fear, we found our selves a little stronger and with our eyes and arms opened to new allies, new networks. 

But what is direct action?
What are the ways in which we open our society and BUILD that?

There is a common idea – this perception that direct action is only going to the streets, strikes, demonstrations…but we see a wider application. When ever some one takes a positive powerful action to fill a space where there is a lack, whether this is making a library or independent media, forming support groups, holding festivals, direct action is every time we create without first asking permission.

If we cannot find the things we need, we make them ourselves – it is the direct activity of creating a responsible accountable society.

And what about our current situation? Serbia has seen some changes in the last year, a referendum, the ‘passing‘ of the so called constitution, the fall of government, the independence of Kosovo, yet another election. All the time the political climate moves increasingly to the far right neo fascist identity.

It is from this position that we place the agenda for our next festival as direct action and antifascism – because we always want to take the most concrete steps to build bridges to smash borders, to see our liberation linked with every ones. In discussing our struggles and strategies in the context of direct action and antifascism we will also tackle the problem of macho-behaviours, sexism and homophobia within antifascist/alter globalist movement. 

x:talk was delighted to contribute a workshop to the 4th QueerBeograd Festival in 2007. Focusing on the topics of sex work and trans issues, the festival opened up a space to establish visibility and to share experiences. Experiences of being Trans in the Balkans, and experiences of working in /around the sex industry were discussed. The discussion on trans issues was organised in cooperation with the first trans-group which was founded in Belgrade earlier in 2007.

Ava Caradonna at Queer Belgrade, 4th October 2007
Presentation at the panel on Sex Work

My name is Ava Caradonna, I am a queer activist and a former sex-worker. I am based in London where I am active in sex workers rights politics. Over the past year, I have been co-organising a project called x:talk, a project organised by sex-workers and allies, for sex-workers, which aims at delivering free English language classes to workers in the sex industry.
Through the development of language skills and confidence building, our aim is to promote the improvement of working conditions in sex work, as well as the right to change work and not to be forced to stay with the same employer. Through speaking a common language we are better able to come together, organise and empower each other. It means we can talk with clients, health services and our bosses. That’s why, in the first course that we were able to teach last summer, we focused on language which is necessarily or helpful for working in the sex industry. Lessons included topics such as: finding a new place to work, defining what services you do and do not do, dealing with problematic clients, sexual health, and conversational skills with clients.
As workers in the sex industry we are often denied a voice, we are considered only passive victims, we are taught to be ashamed of our work, we are made invisible by discriminatory laws that illegalise us and our work. As sex workers, we are spoken for and about but we are rarely allowed to speak for ourself. As migrants even more so. Sometimes we are not heard even amongst each other, because we don’t speak the same language.
The project is a conscious effort to make contact with migrant sex workers communities, offer a practical and needed service and ultimately attempt to build political alliances and strengthen migrant sex worker networks.

This project is also an attempt to explore and expand the ideas we have developed in criticising the mainstream human trafficking discourse, drawing on insights we have gained from sex workers’, migrant and feminist struggles.

While we do not deny that the issues addressed by UK and EU Anti-trafficking campaigns are in need of attention, we believe that the racist and anti-feminist trafficking rhetoric of ‘protection’ and ‘rescue’ has to be challenged and overcome. Mainstream anti-trafficking campaigns reduce women, queers and trans sex workers to only passive victims, under the control of organised crime or of cruel men.

The trafficking rhetoric denies the reality of women, trans and queer people who are following a migratory project, who want to move to make money, to escape poverty and oppression.
The fact that migration is restricted through high border controls implies that most people have no other choice than entering ‘illegally’, often through the help of ‘smugglers.’ Opposing trafficking to ‘voluntary’ migration as an involuntary and non-consensual form of exploitation denies the fact that exploitation is not unique to sex-work, and justifies the deportation of migrant sex workers (they were forced into migration, ergo they should be better deported ‘home’).

At the same time, this rhetoric increases the criminalisation and exploitation of workers in the sex industry, and it causes the ‘disappearance’ of thousands of migrant women, queer, trans and men sex-workers currently working in the UK. Also, it creates divisions between migrants’ and sex workers’ forms of organisation and resistance.

Our aim is to challenge and change the discourses, polices and regulations around sex-work that criminalise and stigmatise us. We want to change the industry, and improve the conditions of our work. That’s why we embarked on the x:talk project, to create an open and critical space to collectively organise and empower workers in the sex industry.

The x:talk project has been endorsed by the International Union of Sex Workers (GMB UK). The IUSW is a sex workers organisation for sex workers’ civil, legal and workers rights. In 2002 the IUSW became a recognised branch of the GMB. The GMB – Britain’s third largest union – recognises sex work as a valid form of labour and offers union membership to all who work in the sex industry, whether as prostitutes, dancers, film models or actors or in associated occupations (e.g. working in an adult video shop).

We believe that sex work is a job, and as such it can be boring, exhausting, distressing, and, for some more than for others, financially rewarding. Within the sex industry there are very different working conditions, and wages, depending on whom you work for, on your ability to bond with your co-workers, on which premises the work takes place, and on whether the work you do is criminalised or not. One of the aims of our projects is to allow workers to be able to access better jobs within the industry, or to have the choice to leave it. With the IUSW, we share a commitment to change the industry itself, to fight for the legalisation and rights of all sex workers, in order to defy and overcome the stigma attached to the profession. Legalisation and the end of the stigma for sex workers imply the right to be able to change employer, to leave sex work, and it implies the possibility to avoid being stigmatised as a ‘sex worker’ for the rest of your life.

It is indeed through stigma that those of us who are seen as ‘others’ are isolated, rejected, and criminalised. Very often the reason why we are stigmatised is because of our sexuality, or rather because of the use we make of it. In this respect, trans and queer people are ‘accepted’ as long as they pass as biological men or women, or as heterosexuals. Women’s sexuality, when acknowledged at all, is seen as belonging to the intimate, ‘pure’ romantic moment of the heterosexual couple. In the moment when our non-heteronormative sexuality, or transgender identity become visible, we become stigmatised. That’s why we, as queer and transgender people, are very often pushed into invisibility.
Sex workers share a stigma relative to the fact they perform sexual acts that fall fully outside what is seen as accepted, ‘pure’ and intimate sex. Therefore, sex workers are also pushed to the margins, into invisibility, and criminalised.

To conclude, I would like to draw attention to the fact that sex workers are predominantly migrant women, trans and queer people. If instead we think of non-migrant, heterosexual men who sell sex to women, we can understand that the stigma attached to them is quite different from the one of the ‘whore’ and that they are usually not represented as ‘victims’.
Indeed, the rhetoric of ‘victimhood’ and the stigma of ‘sexually deviant’ are usually assigned to those of us who are ‘other’ than the non-migrant, heterosexual men. That is migrant women, trans and queer people.

The aims of our struggle are:
●    to eradicate all stigmas against us, as migrant, women, trans and queer people;
●    to recognise sex work as a legitimate job;
●    to overcome criminalisation, together with the rhetoric of victimhood, that denies us agency, and, in the case of migrant sex workers, brings to further criminalisation and deportation.