Where Dacia Makes Diva Cry

This week has been a learning experience for me that resulted in many emotions swirling around in me and I am not sure if I am even ready to write this post yet.

On Monday I attended the Sex Workers Project holiday meet and greet party with Tess and Dacia. Some of the people there had been at our calendar release party but with so many people I never got the chance to meet them so this was a good opportunity for me to talk with some of them. Several of the various sex worker organizations in the city were also at this get together.

People there knew of Tess and I and the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar. A few even bought calendars and asked us to sign them.

This night was an opportunity for me to learn more about the activities of SWP and what they do. There was a presentation at one point during the evening that included a video and some of the podcasts from the SWP website.

As I sat there in my own little world listening to the podcasts of these sex workers talk about their lives and what they deal with day to day I felt guilty. I thought of myself and how uninformed I had been about all of this just a few months ago and the reasons why. I didn't know anyone who was a sex worker. I didn't even know the term sex worker. In my everyday life there was nothing that touched me that made me think about this life. With all the guilt also came the feelings that I didn't belong there. That I didn't deserve to be there. That I wasn't worthy of being involved in this because of all the years I didn't care. That these issues had never mattered to me.

I tried to figure out why it was that I felt this way of not belonging. That I felt like I was an impostor. It wasn't anyone there that I had met who made me feel that way. Working as an advocate for something I believe in or raising money for something is not new to me. I have been doing this for years and never had feelings like this. So why was it that I was feeling this way now in addition to the guilt.

What I have come to realize it that it has to do with sex. When you throw the word sex in there we seem to have different opinions on something. I saw this when Dacia talked about being burnt out in a recent post of hers and how it is expected in the sex industry. How many of us everyday talk about being burnt out in our jobs or career choices yet no one looks at it as an issue. It is expected that people will become burnt out in their jobs yet when you refer to it about a sex worker there is a totally different view on being burnt out.

I think this was going on with me that night. I don't have to have heart disease to raise money for the American Heart Assoc. but I didn't feel worthy about being at this event because I had no experience as a sex worker and didn't pay my dues. That because I didn't have that personal experience I couldn't understand.

I am glad that I attended this event and saw another side than what I knew. The sex workers I know personally live different lives than those in the podcasts I listened to. I only talk about the people I know and their issues but there is so much more than that. Something that I need an entire other post to write about.

The other thing I did this week was attend the vigil for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I had mixed feelings attending this. Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I hate any type of memorial or vigil but I felt it was important for me to be at this vigil.

I attended with Tess and Desiree that night. We wore our red and lit our candles. It wasn't a large group that night there as I stood waiting for it to start with my candle burning. Dacia had organized this vigil and wrote something in advance to say and as she started to speak her voice broke as she tried to hold back both her emotions and the tears that would not be stopped. I stood there with the sound of the city around us and watched Dacia struggle to speak. It was at that point that the tears began to roll down my own cheeks.

I have only known Dacia for a short time but one thing I have sensed about her is that she holds her emotions in. Dacia strikes me as a private person and to see her that night and what that day meant to her touched me so deeply that I can't even put it into words.

Dacia cried that night for the people on a list who had died this past year just like so many all the previous years before because they were sex workers. For some who both their name and age were unknown there would be no families who would ever know what happened or mourn them because they were listed as unknown.

I left there with so many emotions inside of me and not knowing exactly how to process them. I am glad I attended this but after I thought how do you solve something like this. How can you overcome so many issues that surround sex workers and change things for them. It was overwhelming and depressing. But then I thought about how this year there was three people who were at that vigil that were not there last year. There were the the three of us from the calendar who were now involved and that was three more people than there was last year.

It is a small step what we took with this calendar and our involvement but it is one step further than last year and that is a good thing.