Lucy Blake's Weblog

There’s a play currently in production at Griffin Theatre Company in Sydney. For an explanation please see the link below:

Ugly mugs confidential accounts of rape and violence should never be entertainment

Peta the genius who devised this creation which I describe as “Snuff Theatre” works for The Salvos. Yes the Salvation Army who on a daily basis attempts to manipulate it’s way into brothels all over the country by buying sex workers off with cup cakes and at Christmas time if we’re really lucky.. Mary Jane lip gloss and make up bag!!

Since giving up my career in the welfare sector to be a full time Mistress, the Salvos have been a bit of curiosity to me…. them and Rhed which is pretty much the same as the Salvos except they try and break into brothels by giving away Beppy sponges instead of cupcakes.

Many sex workers are pissed off and focusing on the issue of the Ugly Mug book being used in such a disrespectful and blatantly dangerous manner. Quite frankly as a friend said when we were discussing the blog above it’s more “a cluster fuck of issues”.  Some people hone in on the Ugly Mug, some people the fact that a sex worker is watching herself being dissected in a morgue while a monologue of sex worker death is being read out…. all in good taste I’m sure!

Some people are horrified at the fact that The Malthouse Theatre were approached with a multitude of concerns and chose to ignore sex workers, instead rubbing salt into the wounds by offering free tickets in so we could directly be insulted and afflicted by the bullshit. The Griffin Theatre Company showed a particular level of class when sex workers approached them asking them not to use the Ugly Mug booklet by then turning around asking the sex workers for a few more…. aka I hear you, but fuck you, give me more.

For me one of the things that has really infuriated me is the Salvation Army and Peta Brady. According to Australian Stage

Peta Brady is a writer and actor, who most recently appeared at La Mama in Angus Cerini’s Save For Crying, earlier in 2011. She works for the Salvation Army and as a mobile health alcohol and drug safety outreach worker on weekends.

I’ve worked in welfare with sex workers, in drug and alcohol, mental health, disability, palliative care, HIV/AIDS orgs, Hep C orgs, woman’s refuges, homeless shelters, proclaimed places, youth work…. you name it and I’ve pretty much done it…. EXCEPT I haven’t worked for a religious organisation (they must have prayed on whether or not to employ me and with that direct line to god thing going on, they were forewarned lol). I know in all of the jobs I’ve ever done, I have to sign a confidentiality agreement when I start. When I sign this I basically say I will not discuss my clients, issues, or anything that occurs in the process of carrying out my duties. I am saying I will not discuss any of these things at a dinner party, or McDonald’s when I’m on a hot date and certainly not turn it into a spot of Snuff Theatre!

I am HORRIFIED Peta Brady is still employed at the Salvation Army. Clients have rights. Services actually need to provide booklets/brochure on Clients Rights and one of the first things ALWAYS mentioned in Clients Rights booklets is their right to confidentiality. There are strict legal requirements around client confidentiality so I have NO IDEA how she’s getting away with collecting info from her client base and turning it into Snuff Theatre.

I consulted Google to try and discover their policy on confidentiality/terms of accessing service etc. Surprise! Nothing there but I did find this:

The Salvation Army’s page on “Social Justice”

Visions and Mission_Positional Statements_Guidelines for Salvationists_SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Salvation Army has from its inception applied Biblical principles to the social problems presented by humanity and society, and this continues to be our work. We believe that Jesus Christ is the answer for humanity’s deepest need. The Bible consistently emphasises justice, and particularly social justice:

in how people are treated in the just division of resources

in how people relate to each other

in caring for others (Zechariah 7: 9-10)

Jesus taught the two-fold responsibility – to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,strength and mind, and your neighbour as yourself. The Bible teaches against:

the luxury of the rich and the deprivation of the poor

pride and arrogance indifference to the needs of others

oppression and exploitation of the poor

institutional corruption

It teaches:
responsibility and accountability for others out of our love for God.
(Romans 13: 8-10)

By allowing this Snuff Theatre to go ahead, Peta and the Salvation Army who are well aware of this play – well aware Peta has breached client confidentiality (which is illegal), is well aware of how their “client base” feels about it, they have also chosen to violate every one of the points in their position on Social Justice.

The Salvation Army has been unwilling to hold a staff member accountable for the most horrible sin you can commit when working in the welfare sector. When you breach trust, not only are you potentially committing a crime, but you wound your client. You wound your organisation because your clients will talk to each other and sooner rather than later, none of the client base you are funded to work with will tolerate you in their space…. careful if that happens because your stats will drop off and you’ll have to give your funding back.

I encourage ALL sex workers to boycott the Salvation Army. I encourage you to get the receptionist to take their dam cuppycakes off them in the reception lounge/meet room and then get rid of the Salvation Army workers. Do not talk to them, do not engage with them unless it’s to tell them they have betrayed client confidentiality, support sex worker Snuff and quite frankly you hate their ideology and approach to the sex industry. You do not have to talk to them, you do not have to fear them, you just have to get the cuppycakes off them and get them the hell away from you.

Peta Brady as a colleague I am appalled at your behaviour and if you worked for me in my organisation I’d have you instantly dismissed. No 3 written warnings, just pack your shit and get out immediately. I think you’re death to your client base, you are unprofessional, unethical, you bring great shame on the profession and the organisation you work for. From one welfare professional to another, you disgust me and I would not work with you.

You are a predator who has preyed on your client base, passed judgement and in doing so have made it murky, grubby and grim. You have fed into a very harmful and incorrect stereotype and then sensationalised it with scenes of a human being, a woman, in a morgue watching her own autopsy and directly relating it to her profession. You have in fact blamed her for her own death rather than the person who caused her death. Well done.

Salvation Army…. WAKE UP!

I encourage everyone to let the Malthouse Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company know what you think. You can do this by using the links from sexliesducttape below. I assure you it scares the shit out of them when you start Tweeting and using other social media. It is not a wasted 3 minutes out of your life 😉

Griffin Theatre Company – Facebook – posts on July 30th and Aug 5th show the autopsy scene and a post on July 28th shows a character holding a copy of the closed sex worker only Ugly Mugs publication.  Comments can be added on individual posts or post to page.

Griffin Theatre – Twitter – the Griffin are using #uglymugs to tweet – I would suggest including this but also adding #rightsnotrescue

Malthouse Theatre – Facebook – post referring to “The play’s great achievement is humanizing the victim..” on June 2nd and a post detailing costume design including “working girl” on May 29th.  Comments can be added on individual posts or post to page.

Malthouse Theatre – Twitter – also using #uglymugs to tweet – again would suggest including this but adding #rightsnotrescue to tweets

Griffin Theatre Company (Website) – Ugly Mugs – comments can be added at end of the page.

During the course of updating the NAUWU website, I come across media, research, reports, sex worker blogs and other social media from all over the world. This entry gives an incredible insite not only into what’s happening in Scotland, but what happens when any system besides decriminalisation is in place for the sex industry.
Terrible terrible things are happening all over this world to sex workers 😦
Have a read… live and learn from a very gifted and empathetic writer.

Crap week.

More whorephobic shit from a sex worker. She informed me after I called her on some of her whorephobic bullshit that I was stuck in “parlour mentality”. Like somehow parlours are worse; less than; degrading shit heaps compared to private workers. I am of the opinion that a private worker is no different to a brothel worker, an escort, a street based worker or any one who may be homeless and have to fuck for a hamburger and a place to sleep that night. I’ve been all of these people so I do not what I’m on about.

People who try and set up elitest structures… a hierarchy of cool sophistication, of sex workers who are more worthy, more intelligent and desirable are full of shit. Sex work is sex work. Been stuck in parlour mentality to long. Fucking twat. Twatiest comment of the year to date. Infuriates me that I let this twatty git get under my skin. It’s because she jumps up and down on all your buttons to see which one gets a reaction and then hits you with something humiliating. Unable to communicate as a person, she hammers you with humiliation. Drives me fucking nuts.

Anyway.

I’ve got 6440 minutes worth of website updates to make on a site I do to support the work of sex worker activists. When I see sex workers whore shaming each other, I look at this bloody site and think “why the fuck should I bother?!”. I’m to fightened to work out how many hours 6440 minutes are.

Ok so I have to go to work in another few hours so I’m out.

Before I twaddle off like a good little sub standard parlour whore, I’ll leave you with this… When I’m feeling like a down and out shamed whore or I’m just pissed off in general, I do Christian camp songs to make me feel happy chappy again. WOOT WOOT to my fellow dungeon dwellers who clap along with me when I sing them at work lol. Everyone have a super weekend.

I’m a bit of a masochist because balance is important and I’m such a sadist, it’s important to add a little masochism in for variety and to keep one grounded. So to self flagellate, I occasionally read forums. Usually I just feel my IQ drop 30 points or so, but occasionally I find it goes beyond the loss of IQ and the 5 minutes I’ll never get back, to developing an actual migraine.

I’ve seen/read MANY things on forums that have literally made me want to scoop my own eyeballs out with a teaspoon and stick them in a blender in an effort to get the horror that has been burnt into my retina’s removed. Sometime’s I’ve considered sticking pins in my eyeballs to lessen the pain in my brain. However, I recently read something that drives me to mental anger like nothing else.

I’ve had people call me an arsehole, a maniac, a self obsessed numbnut, a fucktard, a slut, a who gives a shit I forget because I don’t care what others think of me blah blah. I’ve seen people compare the feeling of having sex with a sex worker like throwing a sausage down a hallway… I didn’t have the heart to point out that maybe it wasn’t because she was loose, maybe it was because his dick was so small… but I digress. What I’m saying is I’ve seen a lot of hateful, judgemental, flat out mean and disgusting things said about sex workers. The one thing that is THE MOST HORRID, is what is commonly known as “whore shaming”. Whore shaming or slut shaming is making a judgement about another person (and in this case sex workers) and publicly dumping crap on them based on their identity as a sex worker.

I see posts by activists, feminists etc every day going on about whore/slut shaming. The rhetoric that is usually thrust upon sex workers by non sex working feminists is nasty, judgemental and comes from a place of ignorance. We’ve seen an increase in slut/whore shaming and it’s now actually becoming a world wide political movement that is gaining momentum and power. These haters are now finding themselves standing side by side evangelical’s at prostest marches etc all around the world. They are now being heavily quoted and reported in the media. They thrash social media. This from the month of February 2013 and just an example of MANY.

http://nothing-about-us-without-us.com/war-on-sex-workers-reason-com-february-2013/

http://nothing-about-us-without-us.com/what-feminism-can-learn-from-sex-workers-buzzfeed-com-12-02-13/

http://nothing-about-us-without-us.com/transforming-pornography-black-porn-for-black-women-guernicamag-com-15-02-13/

So with the war on sex workers on, imagine the sheer HORROR when you see sex workers hating on other sex workers on a public forum.

I’ve seen statements about how people who have green hair, wearing little more than a leather thong, standing on the steps of parliament house protesting are unprofessional. Sex workers saying they are “embarassed” to be represented by them, that people may think that is what sex workers are actually like and that makes them want to disown them from the sex working profession. Wearing clothing to a protest that you would wear if working in a brothel is mortifying.

Wake the fuck up! When the CFMEU goes on strike do they go to the strike wearing their workboots and overalls? When teachers go on strike, do they go home and get changed out of their teaching clothes before they attend a protest? Did the nurses take off their uniforms before protestings? When ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD GOES ON STRIKE OR PROTESTS, do they go to the strike wearing their work clothes, or whatever they feel comfortable in? The nurses wore their uniforms as did the CFMEU because wearing their uniform adds to the message, adds legitimacy, shows them as a united group in uniform, gives them an identity. Why should sex workers feel ashamed of their uniform? Why should they forgo what teachers, nurses, people in construction etc are able to do? Why would you discriminate against other sex workers and deny them this right? What a fucking ridiculous thing to base your whore shaming on.

SHAME ON YOU!

Tony Abbot appears regularly in the national media in his Speedo’s lobbying for your vote. Why is it ok for him to be wearing Speedo’s when lobbying but not a male wearing a leather thong (if that ever even happened at all)?

One of the the core messages of the sex worker movement is to have the sex industry considered morally and legally as no different to any other industry. Why then shouldn’t a sex worker wear their work clothing to a protest? We lobby for the site of us to be normalised rather than something that should be hidden away behind doors.

Do we hate on the GLBTIQ community at Mardi Gras because many of the participants are wearing next to nothing but glitter? The Mardi Gras march began as a protest movement and to an extent it still is. Should we shame them for what they wear? Does it destroy their message or what they’re trying to achieve? Does it make the public love them any less? Or do people come to see the colour and movement? To see what everyone will be wearing and how they’ll be shaking their bits while they’ll be wearing it? Mardi Gras is perhaps not the poster child for inclusion these days however as this years sex workers did not have a dedicated float or presence because the Mardi Gras Committee decided sex workers were not exactly welcomed last year http://www.scarletalliance.org.au/library/mgras12

One of the most powerful figures in the Australian sex worker movement (and world wide for that matter) is Elena Jeffries. Elena has multi coloured hair and does not wear conventional suits to any outting I’ve ever seen. When you see Elena talk, she is a force of nature. She is memorable in what she says and memorable in what she wears. She comes across as completely authentic. She is 100% mesmorising. You are enamoured as you watch, learn and listen. If she wore a conventioanal suit, she would not have the same impact, she would not have been as successful as she has been in educating, advocating and lobbying.

Politician’s lead boring lives – read Hansard for the daily grind of their work experience.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Search

When sex workers come to town to lobby, politcian’s are always thrilled to see us. We are different. We bring colour and movement to what is a dull daily experience. We bring a different perspective, a different discussion, a different life. I would not change the way sex workers currently lobby for anything.

When there is a protest, people are only encouraged to wear red and bring a red umbrella if they have one. This is because red is the colour world wide of the sex worker movement and the umbrella is our symbol. I watched a recent protest in Melbourne by sex workers and I’ve watched protests around the country. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t see sex workers covered from head to toe. Literally from head to toe. Sex workers who say that sex workers who attend protests in nothing but their underwear I would suggest are people who’ve never attended a protest, rather rely on stigmatising stereotypes for their information. Again AND SO WHAT IF THEY DID ONLY WEAR THEIR UNDERWEAR?!

When these people whore shame there is nothing about the message that the sex workers were putting across, nothing about why the the demonstration was being held, nothing about the experience, the success or achievements. Only “eew I’m so ashamed”. Again educate yourself if you want to vaguely be able to debate a point.

I strongly recommend anyone into slut shaming/whore shaming read the following article:

http://nothing-about-us-without-us.com/waging-war-on-sex-workers-guernicamag-com-15-02-13/

I once spoke to an activist who has multi coloured hair, who attends all the protests wearing whatever the fuck she wants. I was so cranky that people had named and shamed her and wanted to know what she does when she see’s other sex workers paying out on her or other workers. She told me she just doesn’t listen, she doesn’t respond, she gets on with it because by responding, she feels like she’s attacking other workers. Well she’s a cooler cucumber than I am.

Unless sex workers can show each other a bit of solidarity, we are in serious shit. There is a move world wide to the Nordic Model of regulation for the sex indsutry. The proposed laws which will push thru after the next election in WA are going to be unparalleled in their discriminatory evil. Sex workers in WA are going to be so bent over and ass fucked by the govt, they’re not going to know what hit them. There’s going to be licensing including finger prints, palm prints, brothel closures, clients will be targetted and charged, touring workers (FIFO) will be illegal… does anyone seriously believe that now is the time to be saying they are “ashamed”, “embarassed” of other sex workers? Does anyone really think now is the time to say sex workers should remain hidden behind doors and not be seen? NOW is the time to come together. NOW is the time to stop slut shaming, whore shaming and demonstrating such cuntery in general!

Don’t help ANYONE to bend us over or we will all suffer the consequences! 

let’s have happy thoughts we find it

Bert always wanted a pair of authentic cowboy boots, so, seeing some on sale, he bought them and wore them home. Walking proudly, he sauntered into the kitchen and said to his wife, “Notice anything different about me?”

Margaret looked him over. “Nope.”

Frustrated, Bert stormed off into the bathroom, undressed and walked back into the kitchen completely naked except for the boots. Again he asked Margaret, a little louder this time, “Notice anything different NOW?”

Margaret looked up and said in her best deadpan, “Bert, what’s different? It’s hanging down today, it was hanging down yesterday, it’ll be hanging down again tomorrow.”

Furious, Bert yelled, “AND DO YOU KNOW WHY IT’S HANGING DOWN, MARGARET?”

“Nope. Not a clue,” she replied.

“IT’S HANGING DOWN, BECAUSE IT’S LOOKING AT MY NEW BOOTS!!!!”

Without missing a beat Margaret replied, “Shoulda bought a hat, Bert. Shoulda bought a hat.”

AHAHAHAAA NOW DON’T SAY THAT’S NOT FUNNY!

hope everyone’s having a laughy anti crap day 🙂

WOOP WOOOP

Hubba HUBBa

yeerhaaas some more