Lotus Lain: My Fight for Decrim at the UN
As FSC’s Industry Relations Advocate and a founding member of Decrim Sex Work CA, I recently had the honor and privilege to represent both organizations through my first foray into international advocacy in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations. My reason for being there was to offer testimony as a person with “lived experience” in sex work to petition the UN Human Rights Committee to put pressure on the US State Department to enact better policies to prevent sex trafficking in the US and to end discrimination for sex workers. I know– a mouthful! But I’m used to being able to handle a lot in my mouth at once ;-)
The United Nations’ ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) meets once every 9 years. The goal is to ask the UN Human Rights Committee to put pressure on the US State Department to better address the human rights issues that they are failing to alleviate. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend with my former adult industry colleague and current law professor Lorelei Lee and their group from Cornell Law. Here’s some of what I experienced. — Lotus Lain
Day 1 (October 16)
ICCPR Consultation and Reception with the US State Department
This Civil Society Consultation and Reception took place at a US State Dept. Building aka the CIA (shhh!) I get there exactly at 3 PM when it’s supposed to start. I did a little check in at the gate, put my bag through the security scanner and got my name badge. As I walked towards the top of the hill there was this large building with a beautiful circular roundabout in front of it with flowers and a big silver statue. I go inside this building and towards the left is where the ICCPR Consultation is being held. I go in and find a seat and try to understand the format of what exactly is going on. There are US State Department Representatives sitting in the front of the room in a semicircle with name cards in front of them and microphones. Then where I am sitting is the sort of audience members area with fold out seats. It is eventually standing room only.
I start noticing people lining up behind two microphones, and as each different person is speaking they are speaking to their groups’ specific asks. Representatives for land rights go to speak. Representatives for the conflict in Gaza speak and representatives for detainees in Guantánamo Bay speak. People are asking for what it is they want the US to do and change specifically as it relates to their group that they advocate for.
The line is long. The few people that have already gotten to speak keep trying to call for us to do a walk out at 5PM sharp so we can meet other people outside on the street and sidewalks in front of the UN for a sort of impromptu demonstration rally march in the streets. However, more than a dozen of us were still waiting to speak, and advocating for the walkout to not happen, or to at least be postponed so that more of us could speak. Isn’t this what we were there for in the first place?!
This was the first sign of a fallacy in this façade of “solidarity” in the ACLU Civil Society Task Force Group. They want solidarity for their actions and for their asks, but for everyone else that was at the end of the line, they simply didn’t care? They didn’t consider us? They didn’t think it important enough for us to be seen or heard?
Each speaker was given a strict two minutes to be able to speak their points to this group of State Department representatives. Then the State Department representatives would rebuttal or answer with their responses as far as what is already in place and being put into action in the US to address our specific asks and concerns. Most were giving canned response answers. They would take up time and space with these ridiculous pre-statements such as (long pause) “Thank you so much for the courage to bring that question to our attention. I really appreciate you sharing that knowledge and your wisdom with us today.” Taking long breaths to say those two statements was taking up extra time from those of us, at the back of the line that still had not had a chance to be seen or heard. It was driving me crazy once I started to kind of get the gist of how this thing was running.
So it was well after 5PM once Lorelei was finally able to speak. Thankfully, they speak with such conviction, and it brings such attention to be speaking from a pink wheelchair that they weren’t rushed off of the microphone. I recorded Lorelei’s very brave and powerful statement on why US policies to address trafficking actually lead to vulnerability for trafficking and end up entrapping sex workers, causing so much harm that the policies can lead to death, jailing, loss of housing, loss of income, and many other negative outcomes for those of us in those communities. They were able to speak for 3.5 minutes uninterrupted. They received generous applause and you could see a developing of understanding in the people's minds that may not have been exposed to these realities before. Only one US State Dept rep, Jesssica Marcella from Population Affairs, was courageous enough to speak to sex work and sex workers in her final statements.
(The people that wanted to walkout to the protest went ahead and did that, then it promptly got shut down by the Swiss police because unregistered protests are not allowed on their streets. So there’s that.)
Day 2 (October 17)
Informal Briefing with UN Special Procedures Staff
Palais des Nations
On Tuesday I was to speak to the UN Special Procedures staff about how the financial discrimination and housing discrimination that sex workers and sex trafficking survivors face actually leads to more vulnerability to trafficking. I was to ask if the UN Committee could please hold the US State Department accountable for creating these obstacles to living.
But the people that spoke first yesterday again speak first today. It really upset me how passive our ACLU organizer was being about this problem as well. He had asked all of us more than ten times to not go over the two minute marker because we had such a limited amount of time to speak with the UN Special Procedures Staff, face-to-face. It went by so quickly — too quickly.
Once the UN Special Procedures Staff Members had to get up and leave, it was so demoralizing. I do not understand why those UN Special Procedures Staff Members felt that their next meeting was more important than staying and waiting and listening to the voices of less than ten more people that wanted to talk, that flew halfway across the world to be heard in person. This injustice is not just on the UN Special Procedures Staff, their procedures and their lack of time. It also lands on us in this entire ACLU Civil Society Task Force Group. We promised each other solidarity. We promised each other to hold space for each other. We promised each other that each other's issues were equal to one another. Supposedly that’s the whole premise of the Human Rights Committee to begin with! It states that each human life is as important as the other. Which means that each human’s issue is as important as the other human’s rights issue. Which means that their issue on Guantánamo Bay Detainees is not more important than our issue on trafficking, housing and banking discrimination towards sex workers and trafficking survivors. It’s just infuriating that those that already got to speak first and most still spoke first and most over others, stealing our time.
After dinner, I walked the neighborhood a little bit and saw some of the working girls. It was really not immediate for me to identify these girls as sex workers because they were so well put together with clean hair and faces, elegant makeup and nice outfits and bright, brand new, shiny stripper heels! It was the stripper heels and the short miniskirts, and the fact that they were all just standing by themselves, next to a dark bar that I finally realized, oh damn— these are sex workers! Unfortunately, in my extremely conservative looking corporate drag outfit I did not feel comfortable in letting them know that I too was just like them. But in America. And online. So I opted to just say “I love your shoes! I love your heels! You girls look great!”, and gave them a wave and a smile and kept on walking.
Day 3 (October 18)
ACLU Civil Society Task Force Working Groups
At noon, this meeting ended and we were able to walk up directly to the UN committee members and share contact info or thoughts, or whatever. Lorelei’s students, Pilar and Reese, were there early, and were able to identify to me which committee member I should speak to— Yigezua Bakeskis from Ethiopia, who had specifically spoken up on behalf of replacing the US carceral system with more supportive social services and decriminalization for sex workers. After speaking with him, we got the UN Secretariat’s email address before she had to rush off to the bathroom. These face-to-face conversations were what I was here for and what really made a difference in this trip. Being able to identify and interact with the people that are already supportive of sex workers rights and learning how we can work together to affect change in this global fight.
I spoke about the fact that sex workers' human rights and issues intersect and overlap with everybody else’s issues, so why weren’t we given the same value of time to speak? I said our issues intersect with immigrants & refugees rights— there are predators right now plotting on the women in Israel & Gaza that may soon be trafficked. We also deal with Disabled Rights Issues. There are disabled sex workers that find sex work more accessible for them to earn a decent living. I spoke to the fact that many queer & LGBTQIA+ people find their community within Sex Work and Sex Workers because the outside world still hypersexualizes us and will harass if we do any kind of other work in some areas of the US. I spoke about the fact that we’re on the forefront of discovering sexual infections and diseases, and on how to treat them! Because regular medical doctors aren’t doing research on sexual populations to find out what things such as MGen (mycoplasma genitalium) are— And we are! I talked about the fact that Sex Workers experience housing discrimination and we cannot put our profession on a rental application so we have to lie and then we have to worry about being found out and then we have to worry about being evicted. We can’t necessarily have cash deposits, put into our bank accounts unless they get flagged or deposits from certain adult websites or they get flagged or shut down without warning without being able to retrieve any of our money back that puts us in such a precarious position because now we’re desperate to make money, and it’s now being held in the hands of someone else. All of this is exactly what pimping is. So in some cases, the US policies literally push us into this underground and dangerous world of pimping aka sex trafficking and human trafficking. After that moment, and receiving applause was when it hit me. I should’ve recorded that. I should’ve asked for someone to record that. Oh well, I would go on to record my prepared speech later once I returned home to LA.
However, from there I was able to connect with visibly supportive allies from the Disability Rights Group, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Groups, LGBTQIA+ Groups, Teachers Education Rights and Land Rights Groups– which gave me hope and confidence that we can continue to build and grow our contingency of support outside of the Sex World and Adult Industries. They spoke to us and shared interest in our fight for ending discrimination against Sex Workers, Survivors and Sex Industry Professionals.
That evening, I reconvened with a really great duo I had met earlier at Serpentine Bar; Kaitlyn, a journalist with German publication TAG24 and Antar, of the Democrats Abroad For Reparations Society. They wanted to interview me about our experience in Geneva for the new US edition of TAG24. Lorelei was able to join us, so we decided to have a private dinner and conversation. It was so great to be able to debrief and go over our thoughts and feelings about how this past week went and could have gone, not only with ourselves, but with the journalists there as well offering their perspective. They were really able to give a perspective of a shift in the mood and attitude in the room, when Lorelei gave their very powerful and moving testimony that went over time limit on Monday afternoon. They also gave me the opportunity to feel like I was finally being seen and heard since having an article in a publication is also a way to reach hearts and minds other than being able to speak directly to the UN Committee Members in the UN Building.
