Sabrina Morgan

It’s been harder for me to honor December 17 (the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers) this year. It feels like endless struggle, endless mourning. Like the hurdles are too large.

There’s healing in mourning, but what I’ve been needing is the hope that rekindles an activist’s fire. Renewed purpose, not tears on cheeks.

It was tough to admit to myself that I wasn’t strong enough to do it today. I have no defenses against our community’s grief.

I know that this makes me a coward, if an honest one. But I do wish our only globally recognized day wasn’t so deeply, exhaustingly sad.

There’s a bright side to remembrance as well. Our stories, our lives should be remembered and honored - not just our deaths. Without both, society will tune out, continue to dehumanize us. Without both we’re too easy to ignore.

Both society and media focus too much on our role as victim and too little on our lives as humans - not safely inside our little sex worker bubbles of clients and sex and lipstick and death, but living fully and with connections to other humans.

We must honor our dead not only by mourning them, but by remembering them. We must honor our dead by telling the stories of their lives - not only their deaths. We are not newspaper headlines.

(Sometimes that’s all we know about a given murdered sex worker, and that is a shame as well as so illustrative of the problem. That’s all we are to so, so many: shock value, sympathy, a cautionary tale and a stock victim.)

We must also honor our dead by taking care of our living - by advocating with them for change that will improve sex workers’ lives, and as importantly by strengthening them in community. Our sex worker and allied community is strong and so restorative. We need to remember what an amazing and powerful resource we have in each other. Our strength in community can overcome the dangers of isolation, and I encourage all sex workers and allies to find it, treasure it, relax into that support and nourishment.

That’s something we should recognize, even celebrate - but on another day. Today, we must honor our dead and remember the travesty that we are at times performing a necessary service and at times simply doing our jobs under constant threat of harassment, rape, threats, violence, murder.

None of these, none, are an intrinsic part of our jobs. Violence is not something we encounter in the course of our normal work; it’s something we’re targeted for and considered less able to stand against because criminalizing any form of sex work reduces our access to life-saving legal resources. Think about that. Think about how it affects trafficking.

This is a terrifying reality to have in the back of your mind every single day. It’s especially strong today - but today we have each other. We remember, we share our fears, we honor, we cry - but we don’t mourn alone.