June 2nd, 1975. Lyon, France. A bunch of sex workers occupied a church in an act of protest against discrimination and failure by police to investigate or prosecute crimes against them. The cops responded by threatening to take their children away if they did not vacate the church.
Once this threat was uttered, the situation changed dramatically. Non sex working women from the town were shocked from their complacency, and joined the sex workers in the church, rendering the police unable to tell who was and wasn't a sex worker. Bit of an "I am Spartacus" moment, that.
International Whore's Day is held every June 2nd, to commemorate this action. It is considered to be one of the formative moments of what we now know as the sex worker's rights movement. This year, Scarlet Alliance is holding a Red Umbrella protest march.
Sex workers at the Sydney demonstration will be wearing red and carrying red umbrellas in solidarity with sex workers around the world & to fight discrimination.
Wear Red, Bring a Red Umbrella
THIS Tuesday 2nd June, 12:30pm
Sex workers are demanding protection under anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws in response to unfair bias from financial institutions, lenders, Local Councils and in advertising. Supporters are invited to join us.
Come along and join us in the spirit of that first demonstration. It's a lot harder to discriminate against sex workers when supporters stand up against stigma with us.
I'm trying to get a few hours off work that day, but I may not be able to. I'd feel a lot better if I knew I'd sent a few supportive bodies along :)
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2 comments:
Ah...so I just spent an hour typing up a post on this, and saw that I could simply have added your post to my blog. I just wanted to take the time to come over here and say thankyou. So often it feels like my own blogging and the blogging I read can focus on a narrow set of women's issues, and your writing is so very lucid and thought provoking...even where I have thought through my stance on an issue such as mental illness, your writing always challenges, always provides new food for thought. I loved reading about this protest, and its commemoration each year. I love the name, I love the symbolism of the red, the umbrella as protection, the unity of women standing together at a rally called International Whore's Day...so thanks for putting it on my radar, for giving me something to chew over, to challenge myself on what I'm doing to *actively* support women, and to challenge others in their attitudes (as I think often that attitudes to sex workers are one of the last things challenged in privileged, wrapped in cotton wool sensibility). And also...you're just a fucking awesome writer and an inspiration. So ok, thanks.
Thank you for the compliments, I'm blushing!
And I'm glad IWD resonates with you. It is such a powerful story.
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