'If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together' Sex work is what we do as our jobs, but as sex workers and migrants we are made illegal and stigmatised. Discriminatory laws, racism, unsafe workplaces and stigma result in abuse and lack of control over our work and lives. Being able to speak some English is an important step in asserting our needs, desires and rights. It means we can talk with clients, health services and our bosses. Through speaking a common language we are better able to come together, organise and empower each other. Through the development of our 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. 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 our work and us, and we are spoken for and about but rarely are we allowed to speak for ourselves. As migrants even more so. Sometimes our voices are not heard even amongst each other because we don't speak the same languages. x:talk is about getting our voices heard - with our clients, with our bosses and with each other. x:talk aims to create an open and critical space to collectively organise and empower workers in the sex industry and to encourage and support critical interventions into discourses about gender, labour, migration and human rights. 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. The x:talk project has been endorsed by the International Union of Sex Workers (GMB UK). The IUSW is a sex worker 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 (eg working in an adult video shop). x:talk is funded by the Feminist Review Trust. |