Writing Experiments With Stephen Boyer

Friend of SWOP-LA and fabulous writer and facilitator, Stephen Boyer, will be lending his talents to a new group for writers! Join folks from SWOP and the community for this fabulous workshop.

Stephen’s workshop will meet 10 consecutive Wednesday evenings, from 7 to 10 p.m. The dates: November 4th through January 13th (with two weeks off for the holidays). Cost: $200 with a $50 deposit by October 28th. Balance of payment can be paid throughout the workshop.

In the past, the workshop has filled up quickly, so if you’re interested, do contact Stephen promptly.

Most weeks students will be assigned a short take-home writing experiment which they will share with the class the following week. Assignments will range from cut ups to exploring bodily sensations. Assignments are geared towards the class dynamic, so they may eventually drop away or they may continue for the duration of the class.

Each week we will also critique longer pieces by two to four students. Students may bring in anything they want (up to 20 pages) for the longer critiques. Depending on the length, these longer pieces will be read aloud in class or handed out a week ahead of time. Though this class will have a prose focus, it is cross-genre, and poets are welcome. The class is limited to 10 students. Lots and lots of personal attention. It takes place in Los Angeles, in my Los Feliz apartment, which comes complete with snacks and lots of books to browse through.

This is a good class for poets wanting to play around with narrative or prose writers wanting to open up their prose.

About me: I performed in Marc Arthur’s performance art event “The Key”. Kevin Killian has asked me to act in two of his plays, “Geyser!” and “Gossip Girl”. I’ve performed work at the Center for Sex and Culture as part of the Queer Arts Festival. An EDITION of mine was published for the show ANDMOREAGAIN at 2nd Floor Projects in San Francisco. I’ve been published in two anthology’s “Cool Thing: Best Gay Fiction” and “Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism”.

If you’re interested, please email Stephen by clicking here with work samples, etc. Or–if you know anybody who might be interested, please pass this email along to them. If you’re interested do contact me promptly. Preference given to those not currently enrolled in a grad writing program.

Escorting Without A License

As the Olympics come upon us we have
heard much about surrounding
communities “gearing up” for the
anticipated influx of sex workers.
While our hearts go out to the real
victims of trafficking, many of us
who are in this work voluntarily are
proud of what we do and do not
appreciate being portrayed as
powerless victims.

What these slick anti-prostitution ad
campaigns fail to highlight is the
labor organizing going on in the sex
work industry and the fact that
what most continues to victimize
us is the legal system itself!
Mariko’s Trial

Come on out on October 22nd to show your support for sex worker activist and founder of SWOP LA, Mariko Passion. She will be in court to request an early termination of probation with a goal of dismissing her hearing. Mariko has chosen to represent herself “pro per” without the assistance of a lawyer. Here is why:

“I feel that only I can best represent to the court and the ruling judge how being on probation has affected my ability to find sustainable legal work and housing. By law, I can convert my remaining 1 year of probation into an estimated 3 days of county jail.” says Ms. Passion.

In 2008, Ms. Passion was lured into a vice sting operation setup off of Craigslist, arrested and jailed for a night in county jail. After fighting her prostitution charge for almost a year, she settled for 18 months of probation and a charge of “escorting without a license”.
Although she would have liked to pursue
fighting a not-guilty charge she was
obligated to fold due to lack of financial resources.
SWOP LA invites you to support Ms. Passion and learn for your own benefit about how a sex workers is treated in LA County regardless of having the privlidge of being a first offender, having founded a non profit, and possessing a Masters Degree!

Will the judge and court decide that Mariko needs 3 days in the slammer to teach her a lesson about the ills of prostitution or will he release her charges entirely?

Get a front row seat and support Mariko by attending her trial. Please call Ofelia at 1-877-776-2004 x606. Due to the confidential nature of the case description above, we only want compassionate supporters and will screen for such.

POWER EXCHANGE: SWOP-LA has a new director!

2009 director Ofelia Corazon and founder Mariko Passion

There have been many changes going on at SWOP-LA headquarters. The most notable is that our beloved founder, Mariko Passion, will be moving on to develop her career as a performance artist. After over four years of pounding the pavement for sex workers rights she will be passing the torch to another.

It was no easy task finding a suitable candidate to fill Mariko’s (albeit tiny) five inch heels, which is why she began her quest for a new leader over a year ago.

While representing SWOP USA at the 2009 World AIDS conference in Mexico City, Ms. Passion met Ofelia Corazon a Los Angeles sex worker and organizer from the LGBT community. The two met back stateside it wasn’t long before Ofelia began co-organizing  alongside Mariko. So when Ms. Passion decided to make a career move, Ofelia was the obvious candidate for the position.

Mariko will remain active as a member of SWOP-LA and will be helping to write grants, produce the updated legal resource guide and continue to fight for sex workers rights as an individual activist around LA, but putting creativity and music at the center of her mission first.

EROTICA-LA 2009 report

 

a very diverse crew indeed! photo by Rancy DeTroit

Well, after many hours of gruelling work, we pulled in about $490 after feeding ourselves for 3 days, parking and other basic incidentals.  I was totally stoked after the show closed because lots of vendors were throwing me sex toy and DVD donations and I was getting a good armful of booty to raffle off at future SWOP-LA fundraisers.

BUT SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED!

A box with all the t-shirts we just ordered, my $350 video camera and my neon open sign was not put into the car and was lost, stolen or forgotten at the LA Convention Center.  

we were just at the break even point for the table (the non profit rate was $500) and did okay with the amount of contacts that we made at the show.  About 25 mailing list additions were lost on a clipboard inside that same box..  People who were supporters, as always, are usually pretty passionate about the subject of decriminalization.  Those are the ones that buy the t-shirts.  we average about 6-10 shirts per any event.  The rest of our $$ comes from hustling donations in a jar!  This time however the “Granny Tranny” Adult stars candy and Annie and I were all giving back rubs on a massage table with oil!  $1/minute!

I was extremely proud of our crew and all the work that we put in.  It’s a shame that we lost the most important box..The tradeshow was great experience for Candy and Annie and we met Randy DeTroit who is a long time TS/TG photographer and videographer and is quite connected to the TS/TG activist community that I am already involved in..

Working with Annie, who is 62 years YOUNG was a sheer delight, HoneyBuns candy seems to have a fan following in the adult world as she sold her used and dirty panties for $80 in the adult auction..!  Even if we hadn’t lost that box with everything of value in it, I’m not really sure if it would be worth it to do again unless we had a grant that specifically alotted $500 for us to do this kind of outreach without the pressure of having an overhead to meet…It was excellent leadership and team building experience for all of us.  If some tradeshow would give FREE booths the way they do at the Global Village at the AIDS conferences…(100% profit from your product sales..unbelieveable).

we are all depressed about the loss so if you are reading this and can donate, now would be a great time.  Even donating screenprinting, blank t-shirts, a broadcast quality 3 chip camcorder…wishlist…wishlist…

Whore-A-Palooza Fest featuring SWOP-LA members

Mommy Fiercest and Mariko Passion takin over El Rio SF for Whore a palooza.  Camera work by Honeybuns Candy!

Reflections of the Sex Worker Festival from SF, the City Of Hottie Queer Workers::by Mommy Fiercest

Until last summer I didn’t know any other sex workers…

 I’ve been an activist and organizer in the LA queer and trans community for years but aside from the  partners I was doing sex work with I knew of no other workers. I had seen and been titilated by old flyers for the sex workers art show at the private college where all the rich white people I dated went*.  

Where could I find these feminist sex workers? I’d read about $pread in Bitch Magazine and then forgotton all about it until I was in Mexico City last summer on my honeymoon. My crazy activist husband signed us up to volunteer for three days at the World AIDS Conference.

That’s where I met Mariko and found out about the Sex Workers Outreach Project and that there exhisted a chapter in LA.  After I became involved in SWOP LA I began to reach out to the queer community to see if anyone I knew was closeted and to invite them to join our meetings. It was through this coming out amoung my peers that I was able to find out that four or five friends

 

 and peers were already doing sex work and were just as closeted as I was. 

The stigma around people who do sex work in Los Angeles is a lot stronger than in SF or  perhaps it just the way it seems  on account of beautiful and safe feeling environment that was created this week at Sex Worker Fest by all the beautiful performers and organizers.  

This summer I had the opportunity to befriend and perform with the woman I want to be when I grow up, Carol Leigh (aka Scarlot Harlot) MCing “Whore-A-Palooza” and meeting hundreds of beautiful, talented, creative and kinky sex workers. It seems every queer person here has loved someone who was a sex worker and couldn’t help but think “How could someone not want to be a part of this beautiful city?” 

From San Francisco,                                           

Mommy Fiercest

www.mommyfiercest.wordpress.com

* which is incidentally the same place I heard the word “queer used”.

our booth at Erotica LA

 

We have a booth at Erotica LA this weekend…We have about 3 tickets to sell that would help to benefit the organization better than having people work for $8/hr at gay pride..we have 3 former adult stars at our booth doing photos and signings..We did Adultcon in September of 2007, and it is a similar venture.  Mostly adult film stars but LOTS AND LOTS OF MALE CONSUMERS OF SEX WORK.  As well as porn stars who we would like to have join our movement…Will we see you there?

Yes, we have some SWOP-LA members that currently will do and have done between 27-300 movies to their name, but now their primary income is through “illegal” sex work that doesn’t include a camera and 10 people watching.  We are at this convention to talk to the consumers of sex work, but also to outreach to those that feel like because they are LEGAL ADULT PERFOMERS that they are NOT sex workers, or because the LAW does not consider porn work as sex work or even prostiution (because of a famous 1971 lawsuit), SWOP-LA does want to bridge the gap between illegal and legal workers and support all of them in the similar issues that we do share regardless of our legal status.  We understand and acknowledge the many adult performers who are marketing themselves SECRETLY as escorts or have a few select clients because their contracts will not allow them to do illegal sex work, so most have to go on a gruelling feature stripclub tour to make the rest of their income while they are NOT shooting videos.  And if they don’t want to strip, can’t dance or are simply not that kind of performer then they are expected to not escort?  I have even met some adult industry people in videos and web think that for some reason (referring to that 1971 Friedman lawsuit) they are “real” sex workers and we are not..(just prostitutes, which they are not).

Candy will be auctioning off her “granny panties” and starting off the auction that they are going to be doing..

If you want to see the debauchery that we got involved with check out the adultcon video on our blip video site:

www.swopla.blip.tv  

                                        and look for the adultcon video.

                                                     Madness.  Testosterone.  Fundraising and Advocacy. Join us…

DAY 2: postcard to LA from Candy

Hi, This is HoneyBuns Candy

In San Fran feeling bored once i get some pussy and some dick and money ill be OK. This is your bubble butt adult ts star saying the movie was nice, Everyone had fun but little me. I got into my shy 80’s  mood.  If someone would have said,”Lets fire this bowl of kris and gave me so pussy or dick that would be a good thing, but they didn’t..

Oh, Well..This is Candy saying,

“Eat you later, baby!”

Mariko’s TRIP DIARY: Sex Worker Fest DAY 1

Annie Sprinkle, Mariko Passion and our adopted Kumjing migrant worker doll "Janey"

If the names Carol Queen and Annie Sprinkle ring a bell for anyone out there, then yesterday’s Belle Bazaar was where you wanted to be.  It was a tabling and craft fair for artists and photographer who wanted to clean out their closets and sell their own or the work of someone else, get in the swing of the festival and donate to CSC.

I performed an emotional monologue and blues set, and so did Ckiara who was a new spoken word artist who read from her book, “Song of Men Slaves.”  Rock band Lipstick Conspiracy was also there, and SWOP-LA was able to represent by selling some shirts.  I sold artwork to one of my mentors in “post porn modernist” artifact making Annie Sprinkle, who I am standing next to.  I sold her a piece from my 2001 collection for a giveaway price of $50!  Indeed, cleaning out the closet and selling artwork for any amount of money is STILL just as satisfying as always, reminding me that I am actually a part of San Francisco’s sex activst culture and that I need to continue making work!   Art is a clear and obvious way to connect social movements and causes where our vocabularies and language barriers cannot do the job..I marched in the May 1-May Day march in downtown LA and wished I had thought to take Janey there…

Janey is my adopted friend from Empower, a harm reduction worker led theatre troupe in Bangkok, Thailand who is one of a series of 100 infant sized migrant worker dolls that will be adopted and installed in new lives and locations of fellow activists that Empower has befriended along the way.  Empower is a sex worker led education group that I had the privilege of finally meeting in the International AIDS conference in Mexico City last year.  I decided to take my Kumjing to San Francisco, and especially to make sure she was able to meet Annie Sprinkle!  My Kumjing has changed her name to Janey, and I will be blogging the adventures of the 3 LA representatives that have made it to this festival.  Candy is an intersex, 55 years old streetworker and adult movie star, and is from our Skid row needle exchange group “Tricks of the Trade.”  She read about the festival in a $pread magazine that I gave the group as an incentive and called me on the 877 line to ask me about it.  I was able to fund her one way ticket to SF using the Tides Grant that was intended to build leadership and motivation for sex workers who are injecting.   This is what SUCCESSFUL OUTREACH looks like!  SWOP-LA and $pread magazine making it happening in that barely funded revolutionary grassroots way that only we know how to do best.  Exposing new activists in the movement and having them want to be a part of the action without you having to push them in the right direction.  She’s very excited about the trip, to say the least.

Craigslist Criticism–Am I being too harsh?

Check out the original article, if you have time and read the
comments.  Make your own!

Craigslist Xes out sex ads
Without the erotic services section, where will sex workers turn for
work?
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/14/craigslist/index.html

Tracy Clark-Flory

May. 14, 2009 |

The World Wide Web’s most infamous red light district, and its array
of virtual window girls and purposefully miZspellD cuuum onZ, is being
shuttered. After relentless pressure by a team of state attorneys
general — not to mention the recent high-profile case of the
“Craigslist Killer,” who allegedly used the site to lure a woman to
her death — the classified service is eliminating its erotic services
section across all U.S. sites within one week. Its replacement will be
an “adult” area, where ads cost $10 a pop and are strictly screened
for illegal services. Until now, the site’s been the go-to advertising
channel for agencies that promote sex workers, and independent
prostitutes, especially those in the lower tiers. The question that
has to be asked is: Where will these women find johns?

“The streets,” says Robyn Few, co-director of San Francisco’s Sex
Worker Outreach Project. “The Internet took a lot of sex workers off
the street and created the entrepreneurial age of sex work. Now, it’ll
drive them right back to where they came from.” This is a terrifying
possibility for many providers: Screening clients from behind a
computer screen is inherently safer than working the corner. It also
allows workers to negotiate the “what, when, where and how much” of
the transaction without having to rush to avoid being spotted by cops.

Mariko Passion, who calls herself an “educated whore, urban geisha,”
predicts that some sex workers will take to the streets, but she
doesn’t expect a mass exodus. “Sex workers are smart” and will turn to
alternative free online services like Backpage and Redbook — but
those don’t command even a fraction of Craigslist’s audience size, not
to mention diversity. Scores of sites offer adult services
classifieds, but posting on many of them, like Eros Guide, costs a
pretty penny. In a number of ways, Craigslist was able to lessen the
class divide found in nearly every other shadowy corner of the sex
trade.

Passion, who lives in Los Angeles, advertises her services on
Craigslist and through agencies that also advertise for her on
Craigslist. (Anything to reach a larger audience and compete for
attention.) At $85, advertising in the L.A. Weekly is prohibitively
expensive, so she’s partnered with two agencies that spam the erotic
services section with ads featuring stock images of sexy girls. When a
client calls, the agency refers them to whomever is on-call and
available — no matter whether the girl in the original photo has
drastically different measurements, hair or even skin color — and
later takes a cut of the profits. As it is, she says, “you don’t have
control over how many calls you take and they throw you into dangerous
situations.” Agencies just might become increasingly reckless as they
become more desperate for business.

Workers are rattled by this seismic shift in the landscape, but there
isn’t a consensus on whether Craigslist — or, more specifically,
founder Craig Newmark — is the good guy (for resisting for so long)
or the bad guy (for ultimately buckling). Passion sneers that the
company has simply “caved once again,” while Tracy Quan, former sex
worker-turned-Salon columnist and author of “Diary of a Jetsetting
Call Girl,” is more sympathetic. “My heart goes out to the people at
CL who are being harassed by these cynical public officials. The
Craigslist witch hunt isn’t fueled by concern for the safety of sex
workers,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The way I see it, a cynical AG is
exploiting the death of a working woman to enhance his career. It’s a
cheap, easy way to add some sex to your political CV without taking
any of the risks associated with selling erotic services.” On a
similar note, Fews says that she doesn’t blame Newmark for giving up
the fight — after all, the “Craigslist Killer” coverage has “got to
be weighing heavily” on him.

Of course, there’s the irony: The campaign against the erotic services
section was buoyed by those frightening tabloid headlines — but, if
workers are forced from the virtual to the literal street corner,
it’ll only expose them to more danger.

– Tracy Clark-Flory