Media Storm - This Is How You Do It: Bristol Sex Workers Collective

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Media Storm hosts Mathilda and Helena meet their mainstream media matches! In this crossover bonus series with The Guilty Feminist, they interview journalists and activists trying to make their imperfect industries a little bit less so, about their noble goals and - you guessed it - the hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine them! Brought to you by The Guilty Feminist, every other Thursday. This week, we speak to Amelie, Layla, and Scarlet from Bristol Sex Workers Collective (@BristolSWC), about the end of a two year battle to keep Bristol city centre's strip clubs open. Media Storm first reported on the proposed ban of the venues in a Series 1 episode - so make sure you pop back and have a listen if you missed it! The dancers tell us about celebrating the decision, what they would change about media reporting on sex work, and why community is so important in the industry.  The episode is hosted by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). For more information on The Guilty Feminist and other episodes: visit https://www.guiltyfeminist.com tweet us https://www.twitter.com/guiltfempod like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/guiltyfeminist check out our Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theguiltyfeminist or join our mailing list http://www.eepurl.com/bRfSPT For more information on Media Storm: Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm is brought to you by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. The Guilty Feminist theme by Mark Hodge and produced by Nick Sheldon. This Is How You Do It theme by Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Thank you to our amazing Patreon supporters. To support the podcast yourself, go to https://www.patreon.com/guiltyfeminist Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Malinson and we're the hosts of Media Storm, the podcast that hands the mic to people with lived experience and calls out what the mainstream media could be doing better to report on marginalised groups. This week we have some very special guests. You may remember them from our Media Storm series one episode on sex worker rights. If you haven't listened to it yet, just pause this, have a listen and come back. We'll catch you up here too though. In the episode, we went to Bristol where the city centre's strip clubs were under threat and facing closure.

After a few years of indecision, public consultations and, as we heard in our investigation, political motivations, A decision was made on whether or not to ban strip clubs in Bristol. And fittingly, this bonus series is called This Is How You Do It, because, well, this is how you do it. Bristol's Sex Workers Collective and other groups fought for the sexual entertainment venues to stay open and won. And with us now are three dancers from Bristol Sex Workers Collective. You may remember Amalie and Scarlet from our episode. And joining them is Leila. Hi, everyone.

I'm going to introduce you one by one so that listeners can identify. your voices. Hi, Emily. Hello. Scarlett. Hi. And Layla. Hey, yeah. Right, everyone remember those voices. We're really happy to have you guys back. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having us again. Also, I kind of notice, Amelie, you and I are wearing

the same thing. Oh yeah. I'm all about grand-plat t-shirts. We didn't get the memo. You didn't get the stripy memo. Well, first of all, I just want to start by asking really, how do you feel now the decision has been made to keep the clubs open. I imagine a huge sense of relief. Yeah, I think it's, yeah, we see we're massively relieved. We're like, we're not losing our jobs. But at the same time, we're like, is it that much of a good news? Because at the end of the day, nothing's gotten better. Like, this is not

an improvement. We've just managed to, like, avoid a worst case scenario. So now for us as like activist and trade unionists, this is when the real work happens. This is when we can try and push for better working conditions in our workplaces. So will you just fill us in and tell us what Bristol Sex Workers Collective is and what it does and why it's needed? We are a grassroots org in that we're completely separate from anyone who could profit from sex workers labour, so completely separate from managers and owners. In terms of what we do, obviously right now, we've spent a lot of lot of our time and energy has been fighting with NILCAP, which is a massive shame because we have a lot of members and a lot of amazing projects we want to be able to do in the community.

Rizel has a high proportion of students. That's the group that we really want to be supporting, running just sort of peer support groups, stuff around sexual health. But so much of our energy has been taken up by this consultation at the moment. And can you tell us what happened in the meeting where the final decision was made? Because I was following along on a very Twitter threads and it seemed like high drama yeah yeah did get quite heated at some point where a counsellor was being quite supportive and was saying I feel like some so-called feminist try and quiet down the women that they disagree with like say that we can't make our own decisions yeah one of them just started shouting across the chambers saying like that they never said

this it was outrageous so it just like cool like we're quite coordinated we just all turned and like shushed her and she didn't like it and turned around and um flipped off my friend and like mouthed eff off you know this is reminded me actually because scarlet on our episode you said you have never felt so disrespected than by the people who were opposing you and what you do for a living, those people say that you're being disrespected at work, but you were saying the only time you've ever felt disrespected in this situation was from those people. There's incidents where you feel disrespected at work by customers, by management, whatever, it's a job. Jobs have shitty aspects. But having to sit there for hours and listen

to people argue about why you don't deserve to work, why you don't. everything you have to say is wrong when we're giving like emotional arguments about why we need these jobs why we need our livelihood and having people sit there listen to it and then still decide that we're wrong is so horrible and then for the way that they like into the hostility that was radiating off this group of people was very clear that they really just don't see us as people they the minute they after a decade of constantly winning nil caps were clearly losing the most publicised one that's happened in this country today, they just couldn't take that with any grace.

You know what, though, you guys have changed plenty of minds. And credit to you, because my dad listens to all of our episodes, and he's your quintessential kind of stiff-up-a-lip, British bloke. And his favourite episode, and the one that he says, changed his mind more than anything, was your episode, and the episode on Sex Worker Rights. And on the day of the ruling in Bristol, Council, or the day that you guys won

and the strip clubs were allowed to stay open. I mean, I can see why you say that's not a victory. That's just maintaining something you already had. But when that ruling came through, I woke up to a text from my dad being like, Victory! Have you seen this?

That's so cute. Yeah. So you have really changed people's minds. You talked about how, This is a reality. This is a job people do. Always has been the case, always will be the case. We can either regulate it or not regulated. It's a basic question of safety. And so when you are so much having to take your safety into your own hands, how important is community? And I suppose with Bristol sex workers collective, it's about collectivity. It's kind of like a union. How important

is that for your work? I think community is one of the most important things in this job because being in this industry is so isolating as like strippers we're working nights like you don't really get to have a normal life of like doing things in the day and like hanging out with your friends all the time like you have to have community within the industry and because the experiences that we have doing this job are so unique if you don't have solidarity from other sex workers other strippers it is very lonely yeah i think also because we are such a criminalized industry. I mean, like, I would qualify the current licensing regime for Struck clubs in the UK to be partial criminalisation. If we always have to face state violence,

the only people we can rely on is each other. We have to have those like mutual aid funds and projects set up there to help each other and support each other. I mean, this campaign would not have happen should we if we had didn't have each other because it was long it was exhausting even just having that you know a little group chat where you can vent and say silly things sometimes that's just what you need when times are tough having that support and having a community that supports you is life changing um like financially with your mental health like the physical health this group has always like pulled through for each other but also when things are going well to be able to you know last week. You're able to relax, they're able to celebrate. Well, you never have to watch

what you say with about work. You never have to justify little bits about money or experiences at work. You can just genuinely relax. I think what really struck us when we did the episode was that that kind of constant pushing forward and having to defend yourselves, it's interesting that that still exists when some of the biggest human rights organizations in the world, like Amnesty International support full decriminalisation of sex work. Why do you think people are still surprised when they hear something like that? Partly, it's obviously incredibly poor reporting around sex work always. So most people aren't checking what amnesty are saying about every particular issue all the time.

People aren't keeping up with the narrative except for what they get through the media. So if that narrative isn't being passed down to them through the media and that stigma still prevailing in all the media they get, they're not going to know that this is what Amnesty. are saying, and this is what the World Health Organization are saying. I think a lot of the time, those stances like anti-sex work and anti-discrimination, what amnesty said, also comes from racism, because a lot of these people often are like, all these sex worker-led organisation, they're from the Western world. This is not what happened within the global south.

And it's like, well, look at India, they also support decriminalisation, look at Kenya. does people completely erase all the work that's been done in the global south to fit their agenda and weaponise race? People just can't bring themselves to be like, oh, a sex worker might be right. No matter how much evidence there is, it is always outweighed by their opinion that sex worker brainwashed and stupid. The huge support we had in Bristol, I mean, like 86% of the public

was against shutting down strip clubs. I think it really shows how out of time, touch politicians and policemakers are, like this is an incredibly unpopular policy and so is the criminalisation of sex work in any poll. We'll show you that people don't support it and yet politicians keep on pushing it anyway just because they think it's like an open goal and they're going to say, like, save the world and solve violence against women and girls like this because they just think short term, they just think we need to be elected, we need to have these policies but really they're just not they don't care who it affects how it affects people and yeah it's

also unpopular yeah also in our episode because there was so much to fit in we only really touched on the fact that whole communities such as the queer community are being missed out of the conversation because I think that in these mainstream media debates especially there's such a binary view that strip clubs are places that men go and women work but that's not true right no i think it was really funny at the at the meeting at the council as well the like anti-sex work groups we're trying to weaponize lesbians against us they're like but don't you see the statistics and we're like 20% of lesbians don't feel comfortable with it and we're just sat there like i'm a lesbian what's your point

like we're all gay like the queer community is so massively over-reproperable presented in sex work, because just for a lot of us, just, yeah, the traditional job market just doesn't suit us, doesn't fit us. I mean, there's also discrimination against the LGBTQ community within the traditional job market. So that's why all these reasons why we work within the sex industry. So it was quite baffling to hear them trying to weaponise them, as most likely straight women, trying to weaponise the gay community against us.

It was just quite... Keep the quiz out of it. You know, plenty of female customers come in who are bisexual, lesbian, or questioning. We have customers come in all the time who realise while they're there that after however many years of adulthood, they actually quite like women too.

And it, you know, it makes absolutely no sense to weaponise lesbianism against those female customers. Yes, and also as like a trans person, I felt incredibly like shut out of a lot of the conversations All of their arguments are so binary.

I think that they don't understand that, like, trans people are overrepresented in the sex industry because trans health care is so inaccessible that, you know, the only way that I'll ever be able to afford gender-affirming surgeries that I do want to get is through sex work because it costs so much money to have to do it privately. And these are life-changing, life-saving surgeries that people need or hormones or whatever.

Or, you know, to be able to afford mental health health. because trans people are disproportionately affected by mental health issues. And these things just aren't accessible. To turn around and say that strip clubs damage the queer community is so, like, absurd to me because stripping has been something that I and not only me, like, other people I know, have needed to be able to afford to, like, experience gender. And that's where we're going to take a break, have a chocolate biscuit,

and regroup in a couple of minutes. Welcome back. It's genie time, which means that Helena is magically transforming into a beautiful purple genie. I don't know why purple. I just feel like purple's your colour. It is. Gala, Amalie, Leila. You guys have one wish. This is a really stingy genie and the three of you get one wish collectively. to change anything you like about the mainstream media and how it reports on the sex industry? I think probably stop framing it as an issue with two sides that should hold the same weight

because I don't think you can give lived experience and people with facts and research and say that this has the same weight as someone who just doesn't like it. Legacy media needs to melt away. Sometimes what passes for journalism, for legacy media in this country is shocking and we see that with sex workers reporting

and with all other kinds of reporting being clearly swayed by agendas and biases that are set by the money and relationships that they have behind the scenes and slowly those legacy media outlets are melting away to give more space to like newer outlets like you guys and through different

sort of arena. It's like podcast, news sites and everything and there are loads more options now for us to have our voices heard. We can't rely on legacy media at all. On that note, what are some of the worst slash funniest headlines you've ever seen about sex work? I think one of the funniest bits has been that the scream in crying, throwing up a headline. Oh, tell us. It was a joke. When the response came out that obviously the NILCAP wasn't going ahead in Bristol, the person in charge of our

Twitter account just was really excited and was like, yeah, Neil Cout's not going ahead, we're screaming. Screaming, crying, throwing up in joy right now. And that got shared into like Guardian like every news outlet quoted

that part and we were like we were making a silly funny little joke and everyone has taken it. Like we were screaming crying. People were probably thrown up when they got drunk later but like we weren't like vomiting and it all over the council building. They used it in everything and it is just a meme,

but like everyone who's reading this doesn't know the context of it just being a funny little joke. And I think we are just forever going to be known as the people who were screaming, crying and throwing up. That I actually, I feel like embarrassed for the reporters who took that seriously. It's like, have you spent zero time online or like engaged in any online culture outside of your bubble?

Because then you would know the tone. like oh god it's it's really funny because they've they've just written it like news they're like the dancers were quote screaming crying and throwing up with joy as they reported on their social media and the person who wrote it just like immediately sent in the group chat being like maybe i shouldn't have written that i think this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life probably the reason my dad got wind of the story in the first phase was that tilda's dad was like i'm screaming No, surprise, it's you're growing up. Hashtag, throwing up with joy.

No, I had someone ask me who was throwing up. I was like, hey what. I think it was like, my dad maybe, or like my grandma was like, who was throwing up. Just shows you how, like, the mainstream media is just like... I love how you were all like, please believe us and then the one thing they believe you on is this. Like, whoa, you can take that with a pinch of salt. More than any one particular article, there's something really frustrating, which you guys would probably have seen when you do a research.

If you search literally anything about sex workers, you get just like a constant stream of articles. They're basically the exact same article. And it's a story that will be like a teller from a sex worker somewhere that is a glamorized picture of how much money she makes doing only fan, porn, selling feetpicks, being dominatrix, being a stripper, occasionally ex-service worker. And it's usually this, like, incredibly glamorized, incredibly inaccurate and, like, unattainable level of money.

And that is just so, that it saturates everything. So if you go on, like, certain tabloid sites and you search for sex workers I have done to see if they're saying anything about, I don't know, digitalization or the current fight against the councils, it's just article after article about empowered women who made seven thousand fans a month from only fans. Which is the thing that is more dangerous in sex work expansionism. It's not us, it's the tabloids printing things to be like

you can make, you can buy a house from only fans in a week. That's what's glamorising the industry. That's more dangerous and that's more of the media than you know, that's nothing to do with like activist groups. I think in the media a lot of people

now are a bit more like, yes we should listen to lived experience. We should listen to people who are in the industry. It's like, yes, but you should listen to activists. You should listen to organizers. They do need to be careful about who they actually talk to. If someone's making like mad money, they're going to be talking about it. I'm not posting online every time I have a really shit night at work and being like, guess how little money I made. The people who are the loudest are the people who are the minority in like, some people do make insanely good money from certain forms of sex work. But a lot of people really don't. And people

need to, like, you know, just think about the wider context and, like, take things with a pinch of salt. People can just lie as well. Layla, Amelie and Scarlett, thank you so much for joining us on This Is How You Do It? Where can people follow you? And do you have anything to plug? You can follow me on Instagram at Half-Goth GF, Goff with a Zero, or on Twitter at Sinapixie. You find me on Twitter at Layla in Bristol. Follow me on Twitter. I am a friend stripper. Follow Bristol SexWorks Collective.

So you can see more of the work that we do and follow our trade union, United Sex Workers. Thank you for listening. Make sure you catch the latest guilty feminist episode recorded live from Adelaide with guests, including comedian Geraldine Hickey and poet Manel Eunice, all presented by Deborah Francis White. And have you heard the latest Media Storm episode,

we discussed masculinity, body image and disordered eating in men, with special guest Scotty, who is just fantastic. And a new episode of Media Storm will be out next Thursday looking at the communities on the front lines of climate damage, the corporations causing that damage, and the marketing campaigns concealing it. See you then. Thank you.