Sex Workers Speak Skill Share/Workshops Friday, May 27 10 am - 3pm - Sex workers only 3-6 PM General Public SOMArts Cultural Center 934 Brannan St 415-671-6117

Advance Tickets:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/176491
Price: Suggested donations $5-$50 (No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds)


Sex Workers Speak brings a series of workshops for sex workers, our friends, families, advocates and allies. Some of the workshops are specifically developed for sex workers (current or former), and some of the workshops will also be open to the public. General public welcomed and encouraged to come after 3pm. Current and former sex workers invited all day starting at 10am.

In addition to Fridays sessions, on Monday, May 23rd, from 6p-10p we will be offering a webcam workshop that will include a short photo shoot with professional photographers (for advertising, so bring something sexy to wear) at a separate location.  Space is limited. Email sexworkerfest@gmail.com

Workshop Schedule:

Clients Are Not The Enemy

(sex workers only)

Sabrina Morgan

10am-10:50am

Does navigating client boundaries stress you out? Would you like to find clients that don't leave you feeling drained? Do you connect well with your clients, but feel that it leads to tricky situations? This session will cover techniques for more rewarding work relationships between sex workers and clients, including focusing on opening up connections during sessions, dealing with difficult clients, managing boundaries, and how to use your marketing to choose your clients and reduce burnout.

 Meet The Neighbors

(sex workers only)

Kirk Read

11am-11:50am

This is a male focused workshop where male sex workers (past and present) meet each other and tell each other stories in a one on one way. We will take topics and break into diads and small groups, learn some active listening skills, learn how to integrate those with our clients, and build some friendships with other guys in the industry.

 

Lunch provided by the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival

12 pm-1pm

 

Sex Workers Sharing Strategies for Successful Relationships (and Hot Sex, too)

(sex workers only)

Lusty Day

1:10pm-2pm

This session is a discussion among sex workers on how to negotiate and find love and happiness with sweeties, partners, and lovers in the face of stigma against our work. Share heartache, learn from others successes, and have the opportunity to contribute a piece of advice to the Every Ho I Know Says So video project.

 

An Elephant in the Room: Sex work in the age of HIV

(sex workers only)

Cyd Nova

2:10-3pm

This will be a space for poz sex workers, sex workers who work with poz clients and all people who want to talk about how they negotiate HIV in their sex work. Some subjects will be talking about will be: *Criminalization of HIV and felony charges for poz workers, *Negotiating condom usage and status sharing, *Talking about HIV in phobic communities, *Barebacking and harm reduction, *Confidentiality and online advertising, This is not meant as a support group but rather an environment where people can talk about what is going on in their lives around workingand HIV, share information, and be in a poz friendly, non-judgmental space.

Green & Sexy!!

(open to the public)

- Ecosex For Whores w/Annie Sprinkle Ph.D.

- Plant Medicine w/Tara

3:10-4pm

ECOSEX FOR WHORES - Sex workers are quickly catching on that ecosex is the next big thing. Learn how ecosex strategies can be a win-win for you, your clients and the Earth-- and make you more green-backs too. Annie Sprinkle, an ecosex movement mover and shaker, will present a slide show, which explores the landscape of this satisfying new sexual identity. Learn about erotic environmentalists, green porn, and nature fetishes such as arboreal frottage, wind play, and mysophilia. Consider eco-sensual massage, discounts for clients on bikes, and reach a whole new client base. As Annie shifts the metaphor from “Earth as mother” to “Earth as lover” you will discover how to find your e-spot and realize you are ecosexual too. After all, whoring IS a green job!This workshop will be combined with -

PLANT MEDICINE Many of us don't have health insurance, which can make it hard to get even basic health care. Until a couple hundred years ago, health care was freely available to everyone. Mothers, sisters, and friends knew which plants to use to heal and to prevent illness. These plants still grow around us today, free for anyone with access to a place where plants grow. Come learn how to use common everyday plants to maintain your health.

 

Real Feminists and Human Rights Activists Don't Buy Ashton: How Irrational Panic over 'Modern Day Slavery' Harms Women

(open to the public)

Emi Koyama

4:10-5pm

This workshop examines "facts" presented by the U.S. anti-trafficking groups and activists, and how they have distorted our conversations about human trafficking and prostitution, harming women, sex workers, immigrants, people of color, and others. The presenter is a sex worker activist and a member of the recently formed national collective of sex workers of color and indigenous sex workers resisting state violence, which is an affiliate of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.

Sex Workers and Social Justice

(open to the public)

Miss Major and Cris Sardina

5:10-6:10pm

This workshop will begin with the history of the social justice work by San Francisco's own Miss Major, long time activist, who participated in the original Stonewall Rebellion, who currently directs the The Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex (TGI) Justice Project. Joined by Cristine Sardina formely of WREN, Women's Re-Entry Network, and a long time prisoner rights activist, now a sex worker rights movement leader.

Informed by the ongoing work of the speakers, attendees are invited to consider the intersection of the sex workers movement and social justice framework. How do these emphases intersect? How has the sex workers movement reflected broad social justice issues. What can sex workers bring to a social justice framework? What does our movement need to learn? What are the Iimpediments to diverse leadership regarding race, class, gender identity and other discriminations, in the struggle for sex workers rights.
.

Bios:

A proud sex worker/blogger since 2006, Sabrina Morgan began as a phone sex operator and later branched into webcam, porn, and fetish escort work. She has moderated/presented at Sex 2.0 (2009 & 2010) and Momentum (2011) on sex work-related topics such as "Customer Relations for Sex Workers" and "How to (Successfully) Date a Sex Worker" and appeared as a panelist on "Blogging the Gap: How Sex Workers and Sex Writers Can Work Together." Sabrina served as the sex worker liaison for Momentum's inaugral year. A strong believer in continuing education for sex workers, she is a Kink Academy instructor (and student!) and provides training for sex workers both one-on-one and via distance education.

Kirk Read is the author of "How I Learned to Snap". His forthcoming second book is a collection of essays called "This is the Thing." He cohosts two open mic events called K'vetsh and Smack Dab. He has hosted several hundred literary events in the Bay Area and has toured the United States a number of times as a solo performer and as part of the Sex Workers Art Show. He is a touring storyteller, performance artist, teacher, HIV counselor and phlebotomist. He worked for a number of years at the St. James Infirmary, a free clinic for sex workers.

Cyd Nova is the Harm Reduction and STRIDE program coordinator at Saint James Infirmary.  He has been a sex worker for many a year in two countries with a stint in almost every mutation of the industry.  He currently work as a counselor at a peer based holistic health care clinic for current and former sex workers.  He is also a writer and performance artist who most recently wrote a zine called 'Off the GRID' about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation lawsuit against the LA porn industry.

Annie Sprinkle has 38 years of experience in sexually oriented entertainment, education, and art. She worked as a prostitute and porn star for twenty years, and was a player in the 80’s sex positive feminist movement. She evolved into an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose work is studied in many Universities. Sprinkle became the first US porn star to earn a Ph.D..Today she is an out “ecosexual,” committed to making the environmental movement more sexy, fun and diverse. Annie and her partner/collaborator, artist Elizabeth Stephens, are currently organizing an Ecosex Manifesto Art Exhibit & Ecosex Symposium II, June 17-19 in San Francisco.  www.sexecology.org

Tara Burns is a former hobo stripper currently manifesting as an ecowhore. One part hermit and one part hobo, she lives in the wilderness, whores in the city, and does strange things on the internet.  You can find her at ecowhore.com

Emi Koyama is a longtime sex worker activist from Portland, which was recently nicknamed “Pornland, Oregon” by Dan Rather because the city ranked second among dozens of cities that participated in FBI’s nationwide three-day search for minors engaging in prostitution. But a larger body of evidence shows that this characterization of Portland is highly questionable—and it is one of the myths that Koyama thoroughly disputes in her blog (http://eminism.org/blog) and other publications and presentations. She is also a  member of the recently formed national collective of sex workers of color and indigenous sex workers resisting state violence.

Cristine Sardina (Co-director, Desiree Alliance) In 2010 Desiree Alliance transitioned leadership, selecting the first trans woman of color and myself.  We are reconstructing the organization to  working towards a full social justice sex workers rights organization. Through this discussion on social justice we will explore the intersection of the sex workers movement and social justice framework.

Miss Major (TGI Justice Project) Miss Major is a formerly incarcerated, transgender elder, an activist and advocate in her community for over forty years, mentoring and empowering many of todays transgender leaders. Miss Major was at the Stonewall uprisings in '69, and became politicized in the aftermath at Attica. She has worked at HIV/AIDS organizations throughout California.

Relax in the SOMArts garden (under the freeway). Very San Francisco!