International Sex Workers’ Rights Day is on the 3rd March. Many sex workers and supporters around the world have celebrated this day since it first began in 2001. This international event draws attention to the rights sex workers want… and who better to tell us that than a sex worker? Irish Jezebel gives us her thoughts on sex workers’ rights.

“I have been in the adult industry on and off since I was seventeen. I’m not going to say how old I am, but that was a very long time ago. I started as a kissogram girl before discovering how much I loved swinging around poles for dollars and adulation and that took me all over the world. I met some truly amazing people along the way and I am grateful for that.

I grew as a person and my outlook adapted in a way that I would describe as very positive. I can’t imagine who I would be if I had not lived the life that I have. I have had such a unique and humbling insight into humanity and seen both its beauty and vulnerability.

I have been asked many times if the job makes me hate men but it really doesn’t. I would defend them as much as I would defend the women in the industry. How dare anyone tell a disabled person that they can’t buy sex services and have their basic needs met? How dare they criminalise that? How can people be so ignorant and decide that a man who uses professional sex services is a bad husband or a bad father? They are not.

For example I have a couple of clients who have dedicated their entire lives to caring for their disabled wives. Sadly unable to be physically intimate with them, who is anyone to judge that man for having his needs met?

Everyones’ circumstances are different and it is not my business or anyone else’s to judge a man’s personal life and his decision to see a service provider.

And that brings me to the women in the business! I personally love the job and value the experiences I have had, I would probably need to write an entire book to cover all that fun stuff so I won’t go there just now but this is where I will go. As sex workers we are completely shunned by society and even by our families. The stigma is so great that the marginalisation and discrimination we suffer, the hate crimes carried out against us, the downright, straight-up ABUSE, is not only ignored but completely accepted. I would even go further than that and say that the general attitude towards crimes against sex workers is that we deserve it. Straight up victim blaming at its very worst and this needs to change.

Abuse towards women should not be tolerated in any shape or form. Whether it’s a rape victim who happened to be drunk in a mini-skirt, a stalking victim in India who was blamed for being out past midnight (anyone remember that story?) or a sex worker.

Crimes against sex workers should not be accepted just because we are sex workers. This attitude permeates the whole of society and it absolutely stinks. Those who seek to abuse and exploit us know this only too well. We have nowhere to turn, not even our families and we are suffering.

I know that in Ireland there are girls who would rather be systematically raped and abused than to be outed, such is the extent of the social shame and stigma.

But in a world where I am not considered respectable and where my children and I are shunned to exist on the outskirts of society, categorised as underclass because of my life choices, I have found a sisterhood.

There are some great women here working tirelessly for our rights. There is one woman in particular who decided that she was going to make it her business to make sure every sex worker always had a friend to turn to and she organises events from weekends away to a quick coffee during the week. She helped me more than she will ever know during a time that was particularly difficult for me.

You know back when the suffragettes were fighting for their rights, they lost their children, their families and were completely shunned by society; they endured ridicule, imprisonment and torture but they stood their ground on the basis that it was not them who were wrong, it was the law that was wrong. The fault was NOT with them, the fault was with society.

So I stand here on the margins with my fellow sex workers quite happily. I’m pretty sure we have more fun here anyway.

We are women. We are human. We exist. We have voices and we want to be heard.

In the spirit of the suffragettes, as one of the last remaining social groups whose basic human rights are not recognised, we say that it is the law that needs to change, not us.

Peace out x”

Want to hear more from this incredible woman? You can follow Irish Jezebel on Twitter @irish_jezebel.

You can also keep up with the latest International Sex Workers’ Rights Day news by checking out #ISWRD and #ISWRD2018. Join us on social media and get involved!