In the 1980s, when Norma Jean Almodovar quit her job as a civilian traffic cop with the Los Angeles Police Department, a co-worker offered her as a farewell gift to a retiring captain.she said that if she were to become a sex worker, it would be for herself, not for the LAPD.
“If murder is the worst thing you can do to a human being, then giving someone an orgasm must be one of the best things you can do,” Almodovar said.
Almodovar was one of three activists who attended as a guest. Richard Lewis Miller’s Mind, Body, Health, and Politics Podcast. Activists shared: Miller, a clinical psychologist, talks about the ongoing fight for equal rights for sex workersTuesday, March 16th episode “Women’s Rights, Pornography, and Prostitution.”
Almodovar, a sex worker activist and executive director of the Los Angeles branch of the sex worker advocacy group Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, spoke in an episode of the podcast about the difficult backgrounds that all sex workers go through to enter the profession. He said that there is a misunderstanding that people are suffering from this problem.
“I’ve never done drugs and I don’t drink alcohol.” [and] I don’t smoke,” Almodovar said. “All I ever did was spread my legs for money.”
Veronica Vera, author and owner of Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys to Be Girls in New York, says why sex workers are now seen as more diverse. , said it was due to their speaking ability. Educate and educate others on multiple platforms.
“[It] “People used to think of the sex workers’ rights movement as a white women’s movement,” Vera said on the podcast. “Things have changed a lot because black and brown people, particularly transgender sex workers, have started to speak out.”
Bella says sex workers have always been more diverse, but now more people are aware of it, have more education about sex work, and the economy is doing better than in years past, so sex work is becoming more and more diverse. said the diversity of its spokespeople has improved.
Carol Lee, a San Francisco sex worker and founder of the Sex Worker Media Library, a U.S. anti-trafficking archive, said people are aware of the different connections between sex work and poverty, and the He said that we need to understand how one does not give rise to the other. .
“There’s money and there’s poverty,” Lee said in the podcast episode.
She said people need to look at the link between sex work and poverty and how it manifests itself.
Almodovar said that while the correlation between poverty and sex work requires further research, the dangers of sex work, such as harassment and abuse, are such that law enforcement defines crimes committed against sex work as “human-involved.” This is further exacerbated by the fact that it is classified as “no” (NHI).
NHI is a term used to describe crimes committed against people with criminal records, such as sex workers, drug users, and gang members.
According to the Open Society Foundations, national health insurance is not prioritized by police and sex workers have a history of being considered prostitution offenses, making it difficult for them to report crimes as they are subject to imprisonment and retaliation. .
She said sex workers have no recourse to law enforcement because their deaths and killings often go unreported and unfollowed up.
“[We have to work on] “We will make sex work safer by decriminalizing all commercial sex between consenting adults,” she said.
Although people may earn more money doing sex work than working in an office, sex work is interpreted as dirty because its economics contrasts with the traditional practices of marriage and childbearing. Vera said.
“We believe in the right to have sex for recreation, reproduction or compensation,” she said. “It’s a three-pronged stool.”
Visit the Mind Body Health and Politics website. Visit minbodyhealthpolitics.org/listen-live to listen to the podcast episode.
