“Sex work is work!”

by Amandine Bollinger, Vienna, July 2010

“Sex work is work!” was a slogan much repeated throughout the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

What does that mean? Presumably, that sex workers deserve the same respect as any other individual earning ‘respectably’ their livelihoods? But is it really comparable? Sex workers sell sex, they trade their bodies for money and in doing so, they presumably disregard their self-respect. Also, how can sex work be equally respected as work when it’s so linked to drug addiction, sex addiction, violence and people trafficking?

Enter Fatimah: Fatimah is a sex worker from Malaysia. She goes by a number of different names. She is Papati to her mother, Fatimah to her husband but actually she likes to be called Selvi since a transgender gave her this suave ‘name’. She hardly fits the sex worker stereotype: she doesn’t wear a mini skirt, she doesn’t use drugs and she is at least two decades past 20. Fatimah wears traditional clothes and is a mother of five children. She speaks with kindness and respect. When she handed me her piece of paper for her presentation at the WNZ, I had no idea the woman in front of me was ‘selling her body’ as she herself calls it.

Selvi lost her father aged 5. Life with her mother and relatives was hard; she was regularly beaten up and given gruelling chores. At 15, she ran away with a man who turned out to be a violent alcoholic. She had five children and worked as a cleaner for $7 a month. She slowly followed her boyfriend’s sister into sex work, working for his family in exchange for food and clothes. Selvi was raped twice: once by her brother-in-law and once by a gang of five men. She wouldn’t report the gang rape to the police because she was scared her family might find out. One night, a client paid for a room in a hotel where there were other sex workers who took her in. She brought her children with her and settled down there.

Selvi was leaving her children with her neighbours to go to work for $1.50 a trick. She worked in brothels, on the street, and with pimps. “Working with pimps is actually a good thing, people often confuse pimps with traffickers, but in my experience, pimps take care of you while traffickers force you into sex and beat you up”. Trafficking is a huge issue in Malaysia but as Selvi explains, there are also many women from Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan who just want to migrate, come to Malaysia on a tourist passport and pretend to be trafficked when they get arrested. Selvi also explains how widespread sex work is in Malaysia. “For sure, there are women addicted to drugs, but there are also many ordinary women who sell their bodies. We all need money. I have ‘friends’ who are college students, nurses, lawyers, and university students. You make more money as a street worker, so everybody does it in Kuala Lumpur’. Many of them are married and still work as sex workers. Their husbands know.”

Selvi did not know anything about condoms. For all these years she had had unprotected sex. So, when two social workers invited her to a health centre and explained about infectious diseases, out of fear, she didn’t come back for her results. After several months, she went back to the clinic and was diagnosed with gonorrhoea that was quickly treated. Since then she’s refused to have sex without a condom. Attracted by the love and respect she got at the social centre, she decided to start working there.

Selvi was lucky. One of her clients felt in love with her and asked her to marry him. She said yes after two years. Hindu by birth, she converted to Islam as her husband is Bangladeshi. She says that her husband gives her respect, support and understanding.

Do you still work as sex worker? “Yes. But now I’m expensive, I’m an office girl” she says half joking. I charge $50 to $70. Your husband knows? “He’s not a problem. When we argue, I say no sex tonight otherwise you have to pay. And he pays. You need to joke to sustain a relationship.”

Selvi’s husband supported her in her work at the centre and also as a bus driver – a long-held dream. She is now on the advisory group of ANWP (an Asian network of women sex workers), and she has travelled widely throughout Europe and Asia, seeing what it is like for sex workers in other countries. “It was really sad when I visited Cambodia, because it’s even worse than Malaysia. Women are arrested on a regular basis, they have no rights and even the police are involved in trafficking”. “That’s why we need a network, so that we can support each other across countries.”

Selvi wants to start her own NGO to address the hypocrisy that surrounds sex work – sex work is punished by three years of imprisonment and much abuse takes place. Many brothels have been closed forcing sex workers onto the streets where it’s less safe. She also wants to help sex workers to know their rights so that when they get arrested, they can defend themselves.

As we are finishing the interview, my eyes catch one of the red umbrellas that are the symbols of the sex workers’ organisations at the Conference. It says: “Only Rights can Stop the Wrongs”. Wrong here is not sex work, it’s the abuse, violence, lack of respect, lack of support and love that sex workers face. It suddenly seems so clear: human rights for sex workers start by not criminalising sex work. With their earnings, sex workers are feeding their family, educating their children and paying their mortgage. Legitimising sex work would mean greater safety, the ability and right to denounce rape, violence and any other abuse, the end of extortions and arbitrary detentions, and access to healthcare and health education.

Sex workers say “we are not victims, it’s our choice so don’t rescue us!” In other words, legalising rather than victimising since after all, sex work is work.