Storytime: about that time when, as a hooker, I came up with the idea for the "Lysistrada Mutual Care Collective Fund".
Yet another set of draconian anti-sex work bills (SESTA and FOSTA,) had just passed. These bills effectively eliminated, or at the very least, greatly hampered our abilities to advertise more safely online, and even worse, they caused the shut down of a website that we had used to check if a potential client had had any reports of violence against a worker in the past, placing us all in even greater danger.
Many of us were having a difficult time adapting to these changes, and the increased dangers in which they'd resulted. I had never been very good at working online, and took these changes as an opportunity to start working on the street, or, "the stroll". At the time, I'd been volunteering for the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Coalition doing street outreach, and I often used my HRC bag and supplies, as a sort of cover, ie, if I was questioned by the cops, I was in the area doing outreach, not working.
During this time, I got to meet workers that either hadn't fit into the more privileged circles of "sugar babies", and "escorts" I'd known, from our "sex workers' pot lucks", (yes, it was a thing, ) or who, like me, had had to adapt, and begin freestyling in hotel bars, or working on the stroll.
I'd organised a biweekly support group for workers, and one night, listening to one woman's story, I had had an idea: "We should organise a group that workers would pay into, whatever we can each afford, sort of like what Workman's Circle used to be, and if a member of the community becomes ill, or is in jail or prison, or gets beaten up, or raped, and can't work, the fund could be there to help them."
Immediately, the idea was popular, and it was decided that in addition, we'd organise child care, clothing swaps, and collect, and distribute harm reduction supplies.
I'll unabashedly admit that it was a wonderful idea, and really, one of the highest points in my life, but unfortunately, as an Autistic, I've always missed out on signs of impending danger, and the buzzards were already circling.
As soon as we'd gotten off the ground, a woman I'd been dating, Lily, approached us, telling us that someone with whom she'd done "doubles", a Dominican woman named "Bambi", who, like her, was a single mother trying to get custody of her child, had been arrested, and was in Ryker's.
The group was abuzz with our first mission! Bambi was going to need around 14,000.00 for lawyer's fees and miscellaneous other costs of survival.
As the group got busy crowdfunding, I began to become suspicious: Lily was acting weird, and parts of her story were inconsistent.
Knowing that whether my suspicions were correct or not, it would be the end of Lily's and my friendship/dating, I informed the rest of the board of my feeling, that we were being scammed.
As it turned out, I was right. "Bambi" had been wholly a product of Lily's manufacture.
What I'd not counted on, was that eventhough I was the one to bring her scam to the group's attention, I would be scapegoated, and blamed for having brought her in, in the first place, and I was ousted.
It later, it came to my attention that a worker who lives in Toronto, who was a rabid antisemite, (and with whom Lily had had an affair,) had been hard at work spreading rumours about me in the community, and when a friend of mine raised the fact that my ousting had been done in a particularly cruel and unfair way, (there was a lot of overlap between the sex work and Queer communities, and when I'd been ousted from Lysistrada, I also lost most of my access in the Queer community,) she was told, "well, that zio bitch is problematic, anyway, fuck her".
I tried to kill myself with a Xanax overdose. I'd started feeling like shit all the time, physically months before, and had recently been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and, having survived my latest attempt, I went to bed, and didn't get up for 16 months.
To the best of my knowledge, Lysistrada still exists, and does some vitally important work, but from what I understand, I've been written out of the organisation's story.
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