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Apply for Media Credentials
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Movie Stills, Performer Photos, and illustration (web- res and
hi-res)
3.
Festival Logos, Banners and Ads (web-res and hi-res)
4.
Schedule-at-a-Glance
5.
Primary Media Release and Materials (updated regularly)
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Individual Event Releases for Web Posting Campaign
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Sex Worker Festival Program-Ready Now-PDF !
Blurbs
50 words
Over
a week of sex worker art, parties, movies and politics! Join
us for this whores-eye-view at the 8th Biennial San Francisco
Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival May 18th to 26th at the Center
for Sex & Culture, the Roxie Theater and beyond. Visit http://www.sexworkerfest.com.
80
Words
Join us for a week of sex worker art, parties and
politics including four day workshop series, “Privilege,
Oppression and InterseXionality,” Mariko Passion’s
“Whorrific Popcorn Theatre Bus and Cabaret.” Get
a whores-eye view from Amber Dawn, Emi Koyama, Brontez Purnell,
Juba Kalamka, Ckiara Rose, The Incredible Edible Akynos, Tom
Orr and more. Sex worker sinema at the Roxie includes “Lot
Lizard,” “Whore Logic,” “Stripper Damage”
Emi Koyama comes to the Bay Area with research on "Anti-Trafficking
and The Carceral State."
Tweets
#SanFrancisco #SexWorker Fest May Whores Bath, Whore Logic,
Whores-Eye-View @WhoreCast @CentrSexCulture ht.ly/jJnMC
May #SexWorker Festival lineup @jubakalamka @Scarlot_Harlot
@WhoreCast @MsMarikoPassion @emikoyama & more sexworkerfest.com
Short
Description #1
A week of sex worker art, parties
and politics! Join us for this political and cultural soiree
from “The Whore Cast LIVE!” to “Whores Bath”
to “Oral Services.” Attend a transformative four
day workshop series, “Privilege, Oppression and InterseXionality.”
Climb on board Mariko Passion’s “Whorrific Popcorn
Theatre Bus and Cabaret” at the Center for Sex & Culture.
Get a whores-eye view from Amber Dawn, Emi Koyama, Brontez Purnell,
Juba Kalamka, Ckiara Rose, Absinthia, Mariko Passion, The Incredible
Edible Akynos,Tom Orr and many more. Throughout May, the Roaming
Hookerfest brings movies to your agency or organization including
the St. James Infirmary, CAL-PEP and beyond. A day and night
of sex worker sinema at the Roxie includes “A Kiss for
Gabriela,” “Lot Lizard,” “Whore Logic,”
“Stripper Damage” "Scarlet Road" and more.
Emi Koyama comes to the Bay Area with research on "Anti-Trafficking
and The Carceral State." Sponsored by SWOP, BAYSWAN, ISWFACE,
the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc., the San Francisco
Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Bay Times, the San Francisco
Transgender Film Festival, Media Alliance, the National Queer
Arts Festival and more!
Check
out our evolving schedule at: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
Short
Description #2
The
San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival provides a forum
for the accomplishments of sex worker performers, artists and
video makers from San Francisco and around the world. The 2013
Festival brings favorite and new events including "The
WhoreCast LIVE!" with a festival kickoff at the Center
for Sex & Culture. "Whores Bath," a magical healing
spa for sex workers; "The Whorrific Popcorn Theater Bus
and cabaret," curated by Mariko Passion features Ckiara
Rose, Absinthia and The Incredible Edible Akynos;. "Oral
Services" spoken word from Amber Dawn, Brontez Purnell,
Ckiara Rose, Rhiannon Argo, Juba Kalamka and more. Tom Orr presents
Love for $ale: Hookers with Hearts of Gold, a hooker showtune
benefit extravaganza for the St. James infirmary; 4 day workshop
series will focus on "Privilege, Opression and Intersexionality"
for sex workers and allies: a day and night of movies at the
Roxie , and much, much more. Visit our website at http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
For Immediate Release: 4/22/2013
Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival:
American Courtesans, Lot Lizards, Whore Logic and The Carceral
State
Contacts:
Co-Producers- Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot and Erica Fabulous
Telephone: (415) 857-5425
email: swfest@bayswan.org, sexworkerfest@gmail.com
Dates: May 18th-26th 2013
Location: Multiple venues: Roxie Cinema; Center for Sex & Culture;
Agency Locations-St. James Infirmary; CAL-PEP.
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com
Telephone: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest[at]bayswan.org
Schedule:
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
Tickets: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Additional Curators: Film Curator- Laure McElroy; Performance curators:
Tom Orr and Mariko Passion
Media
Release and Materials-Updated regularly
Logos
at http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics-logos.htm
Photos,
Movie Stills and Illustrations at: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/hi-res.htm
Since 1999 the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival has provided
a forum for sex worker film and video makers to screen works about sex
workers and sex work, businesses, industries and trades around the world.
The Festival has expanded to become a vibrant venue for performances,
workshops, visual arts, political organizing, skills sharing and ever
expanding events. The Sex Worker Festival recognizes and honors prostitutes,
dancers, porn performers and other sex workers from diverse communities,
who have been dynamic and integral members of arts communities since
time immemorial.
Performance
and Parties
TheWhoreCast LIVE! Siouxsie Q brings sex worker stories, art, and voices this time LIVE and in person to kick off the Fest at the Center for Sex & Culture featuring Cinnamon Maxxine, James Darling and Courtney Trouble.The WhoreCast Trivia game and lots of surprises in this interactive live show.
Back
by popular demand, San Francisco's "Musical Comedy Cabaret Porn
Star" and award-winning lyricist Tom Orr presents Love For $ale
redux, "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" featuring music, burlesque,
and performance art via hooker showtunes in this a benefit
for the St. James Infirmary, the sex worker occupational health clinic
in San Francisco.
Performance
curator and international multi-media artist Mariko Passion
brings her "Whorrific Popcorn Theater Bus and Cabaret,"
as storytellers and performers including Ckiara Rose, Scarlot
Harlot, Absinthia and Femme 6 take riders on a magical adventure
with a Happy Ending!
The
8th Biennial Sex Worker Fest welcomes Amber
Dawn (author of Lambda Award-winning novel Sub
Rosa) launching her new work "How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers
Memoir" on Thursday, May 23rd at "Oral Sarvices," an evening
of spoken word with Brontez Purnell, Juba Kalamka, Rhiannon Argo (2009
Lambda Award winnder), Laure McElroy, Ckiara Rose, Lola Sunshine, Jacques
La Femme, Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words and folks from MNRC/POOR
Magazine workshop.
Special Events
The
Sex Worker Festival again presents "Whores'
Bath," a spa and magical healing event for sex workers in San
Francisco, "reclaiming our roles as healers." "Whores'
Bath," was created by Festival co-producer, Erica Fabulous."Whores'
Bath" contributes to the 21st century lexicon with a new entry in
the Urban Dictionary. (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whores%20bath)
Workshops
In
2013 the Festival launches a 4 day series of workshops, "Privilege, Oppression,
and InterseXionality," for sex workers and allies in conjunction with
Rhizome
Consulting Project. Join us for this "mind and heart opening"
workshop series as we deepen our awareness of class/race/gender and how
they overlap and intersect.
Amber Dawn will be
among those offering workshops
at the Institute of Sex Workology on Friday on May 24th at the Center
for Sex & Culture. Amber Dawn's workshop "Tough Language
and Tender Wisdoms" is sex workers only but most, including Alice in Bondage
Land, The Incredible Edible Akynos, Mission SRO Collaborative's "Housing
Justice Framework & Sex Worker Rights" are open to all. Please
check the schedule TBA re: admission policies for each workshop.
The
Festival is proud to welcome activist and artist Emi Koyama. Focusing
on the carceral state, Koyama's recent zine, "State Violence, Sex
Trade, and the Failure of Anti-Trafficking Policies," was developed
from her extensive research, documenting of false premises within the
U.S. domestic anti-sex trafficking movement and the alignment with the
fundamentalist Christian right. The evening also includes a selection
of video clips from "Collateral Damage: Sex Workers and the Anti-Trafficking
Campaigns," "Normal- Real Stories from The Sex Industry,"
" Last Rescue in Siam" by Empower and more.
Sex
Worker Sinema at the 8th Biennial San Francisco Sex Worker Film
and Arts Festival, curated by Laure McElroy
Summary
The San Francisco
Sex Worker Film and Art Festival, as always, focuses on the lives, the
art, and the struggle for workers' and human rights of people employed
in sex work industries. The festival strives to maintain a forum for
diverse voices, including youth, sex workers of color, migrant sex workers;
sex workers' rights organizations around the world, queer and trans sex
workers, sex worker artists, saints, heros and she-ros, and sex workers
both within and outside the borders of the United States. Films and topics
address the impact of trafficking policy and discourse on sex workers;
sex work as a labor issue on the international agenda; sex work and gender
identities, sex education, sex art, porn, fetish culture and erotica,
as well as portraits of strippers, prostitutes, doms, madams and much
more.
Lot
Lizard
The festival lens has always ranged far and wide around the world; this
year two of our dearest feature films draw the viewer back to the gritty
strolls of these United States.
Director Alexander Perlman brings us "Lot Lizard" (for those
who are unfamiliar with the term, a lot lizard is a prostitute who works
primarily at truckstops serving drivers). Inspired by a conversation
Perlman had in 2009 with a woman working out of the same truckstop he
happened to be hitchhiking, Perlman and his two person crew put together
200 hours of documentary footage over eight weeks of filming in 2010,
following a selection of sex workers as they ply their trade in a uniquely
American setting, including: Monica and Frank, the boyfriend with whom
she shares a room bordering the lot; Jennifer, a single mom who struggles
to walk away from sex work as a livelihood because it has become bound
up for her with drug addiction; Betty, who says, "I don't have to
date if I don't want to… but sometimes you have to," and makes
no apologies about her life on the lot. The street workers of "Lot
Lizard" are by-and-large working class and poor women who are engaged
in what sex worker rights movement terms "survival' sex work, that
is, sex work that is performed as a way to meet very basic needs of the
worker, such as shelter or food or medicating; these workers, in addition
to dealing with the general stigmatization of sex work, are arguably
prone to more intense criminalization due to the exposed (outdoors) nature
of their work. Along with criminalizing policies, agendas of "rescue"
that silence the actual voices of workers trying to communicate their
own needs are heavily slanted toward people engaged in survival sex work.
"Lot Lizard" does not take any easy ways out by simplifying
the stories of the featured or making them pithy; and although poverty
and even desperation may at times inform their work and their choices,
there is in every story a clear element of strength, of will and independence
that transcends victimhood.
American Courtesans
Some people envision catty strippers trash-talking each others' weight
and ratting out co-workers to management for crimes imagined or real
for the prime stage time or just for bitchy kicks; mainstream media throws
up stereotypes of hookers pulling out each others' weaves over status
in the eyes of a pimp or "dibs" on a john; what people do not
see is the great affection and support that can exist between workers
in this oldest and arguably hardest of professions. "American Courtesans",
a feature film that is the culmination of a dream project for filmmaker
and escort Kristen DiAngelo, watches like a love and acceptance letter
from a sex worker to her sisterhood of fellow whores. In line with a
trend in sex worker cinema that festival producer Carol Leigh identifies
as arising out of the contemporary, ubiquitous genre of intensely personal
reality shows, the stories of the women featured in "American Courtesans"
begin at the beginning, where many of the women featured relate a past
of family or professional victimization, and pull the viewer through
the trauma and catharsis stories to bear witness to eventual claiming
of spaces of radical empowerment as whores.
"Scarlet Road" documents the specialized practice of Rachel
Wotton, as she works with differently abled clients , campaigning for
both sex worker rights and to increase awareness and access to sexual
expression for people of varying abilities. "Pay it no Mind: The
Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson," memorializes the woman who
thew "the shotglass that was heard around the world" in this
tribute to sex worker and LGBT history, screening with "Remembering
The Living: Monica Forrester on Sister in Spirit and Indigenous Sex Workers."
"Ticket to Paradise" portrays the details of women's choices
in a small village in Thailand, to marry a foreigner or do sex work in
Pattaya.
An
array of brilliant shorts include a new video from Asia
Pacific Network of Sex Workers, "Global Sex Workers on the March!,"
"A Kiss for Gabriela" by Laura Murray, "Whore Logic"
by PJ Starr featuring The Incredible Edible Akynos, "Stripper Damage"
by Gina Gold, "Sex Worker Open University 2011," "Transitioning
Through Sex Work" by Jay Very, "Nada" by Nada Felini and
Christian Vega, "Creative Trafficking" by Operation Snatch
and many more.
.
Festival founder, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot says, "Sex workers
have an excellent vantage point from which to view social hypocrisy,
expressed in many contexts--by the lawmakers who use their services,
then sponsor policies which further criminalize them, to the wanna-be
saviors who claim to 'rescue' but only increase our vulnerability. This
whores-eye-view of society is reflected in this body of work by sex workers."
Individual
Event Press Releases for Calendars, Etc.
THESE
ARE THE LISTINGS FOR THE WEB POSTING CAMPAIGN. Of
course, don't put the words "Short Description" or "Additional
Info" Basically, this is a resource from which to fill in the boxes
for calendar listings. Use long titles whenever possible, but sometimes
it won't be. These 10 links bring you down the page to the listings,
so just do all 10 for each calendar. Use the back button on your browser
to get back to this list. Note that there are lot of words above this
section that you don't need.
1. The WhoreCast LIVE!
2.
Tom Orr's Love For $ale:
3.
InterseXionality
4.
Anti-Trafficking and The Carceral State
5.
Oral Services
6.
Institute of Sex Workology
7.
Mariko Passion's Whorrific Popcorn Theatre Bus and Cabaret
8. Sex
Worker Sinema: Movies Day and Night at the Roxie!
9.
Whores' Bath, a spa and magical healing event for sex workers only
10. 8th
Biennial San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival
Event:
The Whorecast LIVE! Sex Worker Fest Kick Off with Siouxsie Q
and guests, Courtney Trouble, James Darling and Cinnamon Maxxine.
Date: Saturday, May 18th
Time: 8PM
Cost: General Admission $25; VIP WhoreCast Party: $50; Sex Worker
Community Admission: $10-$25 sliding scale
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/363937
Event Website: http://www.thewhorecast.com/
Contact: thewhorecast@gmail.com
Location: Center for Sex & Culture 1349 Mission St., SF
94103
Contact Tel: 415-857-5425
Image-print: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/whorecast.jpg
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/whorecastsm.jpg
Short Description:
The Whorecast LIVE! Siouxsie Q brings her podcast to the stage
w/James Darling, Cinnamon Maxxine and Courtney Trouble. Sex
worker stories, art, and voices this time LIVE and in person
to kick off the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival. Join Siouxsie
Q and The WhoreCast Team as they continue their quest to destroy
the evil forces of sex worker stigma.and fight for Truth, Justice
and the American Whore. High stepping musical numbers, frank
and hilarious sex worker stories, The WhoreCast Trivia game
and lots of surprises in this interactive live show.
More Info:
Earlier this year, local sex worker and porno darling Siouxsie
Q was approached by lawyers from the number one podcast in America.
Chicago Public Media's program This American Life asked her
to change the name of her podcast then-titled This American
Whore or face a trademark infringement lawsuit. Despite public
outcry, and the fact that Ira himself considers Siouxsie Q and
her podcast 'Charming', Siouxsie had little choice but to concede."How
dare they! Siouxsie Q will always be our American Whore,"
insists Scarlot Harlot. Find out more about WhoreCast at the
show.
Event: Tom Orr's Love For $ale: Hookers with Hearts of Gold, A Hooker
Show Tunes Extravaganza and Benefit for the St. James Infirmary
Date: Sunday, May 19th
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Center for Sex & Culture, 1349 Mission St., SF
94103
Cost: $15 in advance; $20 at the door
Tickets:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest[at]bayswan.org
Event Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/lovefor$ale.htm
Organization Website: http://stjamesinfirmary.org/
Info Tel: 415-857-5425
Image-print:
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/jupiterknows.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/tom-orr.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/lovefor4$ale-2.jpg
Back by popular demand, San Francisco's "Musical Comedy
Cabaret Porn Star" and award-winning lyricist Tom Orr presents
"Love For $ale: Hookers with Hearts of Gold" featuring
music, burlesque, performance art performed to your favorite
Hooker Show Tunes in this a benefit for the St. James Infirmary,
our sex worker occupational health and safety clinic in San
Francisco.
Event:
Privilege, Oppression and InterseXionality: A workshop for sex
workers and allies
Date: May 20th-May 23rd, Monday-Thursday (4 days)
Time/Date/Location: The workshops run from Monday, May 20th
to Thursday, May 23rd, 2013:
Monday, May 20th 5-9 PM (dinner provided) at Hospitality House,
290 Turk Street, SF 94102; Tuesday, May 21st & Wedensday,
May 22nd 12-4 PM (snacks provided) at CAL-PEP- 2811 Adeline
st. Oakland Ca. 94608;Thursday, May 23rd Noon -4 PM (snacks
provided) at Center for Sex & Culture 1349 Mission, SF 94103
Tickets:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
(Register here also)
Info Tel: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest[at]bayswan.org
Cost: No charge, donations accepted
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/interseXionality.htm
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/intersexionalitybanner-pink.jpg
Images: Festival images and more http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/hi-res-photos.html
Short
description:
In 2013 the Festival launches a four day series of workshops, "Privilege,
Oppression, and InterseXionality," for sex workers and allies in
conjunction with Rhizome Consulting Project, a collaboration of social
justice consultants working with grassroots and movement building organizations
in the Bay Area.
Current and former sex workers as well as individuals who engage in sex
trade and their allies and families will be coming together to join this
much needed and greatly missing lens on working towards the safety, health,
and dignity of all people involved in sex work.
Additional
Info:
Rhizome "is committed to transformational processes and social justice
movement building to uproot the systems of oppression that perpetuate
state and interpersonal violence and generational poverty. We work to
instead replace them with liberatory and beautiful structures and practices."
"Poor people, young people, immigrants, people of color and others
in our communities are under attack with increasingly oppressive laws
and policies being enacted and enforced to further criminalize acts of
survival," explains Lisa Marie Alatorre of Rhizome. "As a larger
movement and community of sex workers, we want to challenge those systems
of oppression collectively. Rather than allow them to fracture our work,
we aim to heal and build together."
"As a sex worker activist, I have seen that issues of class, race
and privilege have been scary and divisive. Our preparation for these
workshops has been mind and heart opening. I am so glad to have guidance
from Shreya and Lisa Marie in Rhizome and I look forward to learning
and changing."
Carol
Leigh
BAYSWAN
"My mind was blown in the first 15 minutes of the ARAO training
with Rhizome. Having been a radical leftist and activist for over 20
years, I had spent a lot of time thinking and talking about oppression,
but now I realize that I had never really gone beyond the concepts of
race and class. This training taught me that there is so much more to
it than that. I have undergone some intense personal growth as a result
of this training, growth that will make me a better person, and a better
activist."
Shannon Williams
Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP)
Join other sex workers and allies coming together to build support, understanding
and communication within our communities and to deepen our awareness
of class/race/gender and how they overlap and intersect. We will build
tools to challenge and overcome oppression as we work towards creating
an inclusive space to organize and strengthen our communities. We will
explore identities, the dynamics of power and discrimination and how
they interact within the sex worker communities.
Locations and times vary. Space is limited and registration is required.
We will also offer on site registration, but reservations should be made
in advance. Interested people should call 415-857-5425 to learn more
about this project or to register.
Event: "Anti-Trafficking and The Carceral State" Emi Koyama
LIVE! Videos and Discussion
Date: Wednesday, May 22
Time: 7:30 PM
Cost: $5-$20, sliding scale, NTALF
Tickets: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Event Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/thecarceralstate.htm
Organization Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/
Location: Faithful Fools, 234 Hyde Street, SF 94102
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest@bayswan.org
Tel: 415-857-5425
Short
Description:
The SF Sex Worker Festival is proud to welcome activist and
artist Emi Koyama, focusing on dynamics of the carceral state.
Koyama introduces her recent zine, "State Violence, Sex
Trade, and the Failure of Anti-Trafficking Policies," developed
from her extensive research about anti-trafficking frameworks,
organizing and policies.
Koyama's
recent work focuses on "a call for a special emphasis on
the context of pervasive surveillance and criminalization of
communities of color, immigrants, street youth, as well as people
in the sex trade...calling
for a new multiracial coalition against state violence and criminalization,
instead of narrowly focusing on sex workers' rights or on sex
trafficking."
Additional
Info:
Her 2011 zine, "War on Terror & War on Trafficking:
A Sex Worker Activist Confronts the Anti-Trafficking Movement"
was a product of her extensive research into the anti-trafficking
movement, as she exposed "false premises of the U.S. domestic
anti-sex trafficking movement, and challenged how the movement
is increasingly aligning itself with the fundamentalist Christian
right and contributing to the militarization of our society."
The evening also includes a selection of video clips from "Collateral
Damage: Sex Workers and the Anti-Trafficking Campaigns,"
"Normal- Real Stories from The Sex Industry," "
Last Rescue in Siam" by Empower and other work.
Event: "Oral Services," a spoken word event in conjunction
with the SF Sex Worker Fest
Date: Thursday, May 23, 2013
Time: 7PM Open Mic; 7:30 PM Featured Authors
Location: Center for Sex & Culture 1349 Mission St. SF 94103
Cost: $5-$20 NTALF
Tickets: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Website:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/oralservices.htm
Tel: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest@bayswan.org
Images:
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/oralservices1.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/AmberDawn-2.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/RhiannonArgo-by-AmosMaclg.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/JohnCarruthers-CkiaraRose.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/CkiaraBkCover.jpg
Short
description
The 8th Biennial Sex Worker Fest welcomes Amber Dawn (author of Lambda
Award-winning novel Sub Rosa) launching her new work "How Poetry
Saved My Life: A Hustlers Memoir" on Thursday, May 23rd at "Oral
Sarvices," an evening of spoken word. Others providing "Oral
Services" include Brontez Purnell, Laure McElroy, Juba Kalamka,
2009 Lambda Award winner Rhiannon Argo, Ckiara Rose, Lola Sunshine, Jacques
La Femme, editors of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words and participants
from an MNRC workshop w/ POOR Magazine. Sex
workers, come at 7 PM to sign up and read for the open mic!
Event: Institute of Sex Workology-All Day WorKshops at CSC
Date: May 24th, Friday
Time: 11-12:30 (sex workers only); 12:45-5 (everyone welcome)
Location: Center for Sex & Culture, 1349 Mission St., SF
Cost: $10-$25, NTALF
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest@bayswan.org
Contact and Info Tel: 415-857-5425
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/WorkshopsatCSC.htm
Festival website:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/
Images:
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/AkynosbyPJStarr.jpg
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/AmberDawn-2.jpg
Short
Description:
The
Institute of Sex Workology offers a day of classes for sex workers and
our friends. Brush up on your sex work survival skills with a workshop
in Memoir writing with Amber Dawn. Learn how to empower AND market yourself
from Alice in Bondage Land. Understand yourself and your sex worker friends
better by studying "Whore Logic" with The Incredible Edible
Akynos and bring your woes down to the Mission SRO Collaborative's workshop
on Housing Justice and Sex Worker Rights.
11:00 am: "Tough
Language and Tender Wisdoms"
Memoir Writing Workshop for Sex Workers
by Amber Dawn
(sex workers only)
12:45 PM: Empowerment & Marketing w/ Media
by Alice in Bondage Land
2:00
PM Whore Logic: Stripping, Burlesque & Sex Work Politics
by The Incredible Edible Akynos
Don't miss this workshop which includes a live performance!
3:00
PM Housing Justice Framework and Sex Worker Rights
Mission SRO Collaborative
(Find out about your rights as tenants and your work! Bring
your questions.)
Amber Dawn
Tough Language & Tender Wisdoms:A Memoir Writing Workshop
for Sex Workers
(current and former sex workers only)
This workshop invites participants to write under-told stories
from their personal experience and to develop strategies to
creating safe and celebratory spaces for these stories to be
heard. Whether participants are interested in formally writing
their memoirs or writing is a part of self-discovery, this workshop
will offer foundational memoir writing exercises in sex-worker-only
space.
Amber Dawn will use source material from her new book "How
Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers Memoir" and select other
text to lead participants through a series of freewriting exercises,
small group work, and discussion. Participants should come prepared
to share and listen, and bring pen and paper.
Learn more about Amber Dawn.
The Incredible Edible Akynos
If you ask anyone that you know, minister, mother, police officer,
judge, lawyer etc etc you will find out that outside of what
they do they have other talents. And they all have sex too,
it's not just me. I don't have sex or have an interest in sex
because I am a whore with no respect for myself. Those are poor
ways of thinking and you should feel free to uplift yourself
from that. Particularly when it's dealing with women, sex is
still till this day a hush hush, she should be ashamed she's
doing that kind of thing. Which in turns tells me that if this
is your state of mind you have issues. Particularly one with
thinking for yourself and analyzing the bullshit that you've
been fed for so long. I mean gosh, it's not your fault that
you think this way, but it is if you continue to be so biased
and so silly. I for one not only love the attention, I love
the freedom to express myself this way and in other ways. If
you have concerns with how I choose to express myself leave
now and check yourself at the door.
Learn more about The Incredible Edible Akynos
Alice in Bondage Land
From the time she was old enough to watch Adam West’s
Batman on television and tie up dolls, Alice knew that she was
kinky.
In college, she lived in a private dungeon and began moonlighting
as a prodom while working as a wedding photographer by day.
She also started working for local websites like www.SeriousBondage.com
and www.Kink.com in their start-up days. It wasn’t long
before this natural born exhibitionist began shooting videos
of her own. That grew into a full time calling to document lifestyle
bdsm in a sexy and compelling way... plus a lot of collaboration
with local dominatrixes!
Before she had a video camera, she was taking kinky 35mm photos
and developing them herself. Before that, she used Polaroids.
Before the Polaroids, she drew kinky pictures that got her in
trouble at school… and before she could draw, she would
write BDSM fiction and post it to alt.bdsm.stories. Alice just
can’t keep her kinkiness hidden! Now, her exhibitionism
has grown into over 250 videos and over 50,000 photos! She teaches
classes all over the world to both kinky and vanilla audiences.
Alice is notorious for public bondage “stunts” all
over the country and creating flash mobs and whimsical "happenings."
She is well known locally for wearing latex to the opera, cuffing
sissies to the Golden Gate Bridge and opening heart chakras
with a jewel-encrusted toilet plunger at the Saint Stupid's
Day Parade.
Alice no longer takes private clients, but enjoys auditioning
new collaborators if they can sign a model release. Disguises
optional on camera!
Event: Mariko Passion's Whorrific Popcorn Theatre Bus and Cabaret
Date: Friday, May 24th
Time: 7 PM Cabaret, 9:30 PM Climb on Board Popcorn Theatre Bus
Location: Center for Sex & Culture, 1349 Mission St., SF
Cost: 7 PM Cabaret $15; Popcorn Bus Tour $30. Cabaret and Bus Tour Package
for $35.Plus VIP tickets, Vagabo nd discounts and Free Popcorn! Bus Tour
Seats are limited. Reserve Fast.
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/WhorrificPopcorn.htm
Tickets:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Contact and Info Tel: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest[at]bayswan.org
Image-print: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/Mariko-Passion-Anna-MayTong.jpg
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/Mariko-Passion-Anna-MayTongsml.jpg
Short
description:
Performance curator and international multi-media artist Mariko Passion
brings this San Francisco phenomenon to the Sex Worker Festival with
the "Whorrific Popcorn Theater Bus and Cabaret." Storytellers
and performers take riders on a magical adventure with a Happy Ending!
This
sex worker 'show and tell' edition visits the haunts and landmarks
of SF whoredom (like City Hall) where sex workers dish the dirt
about what really goes on in "the city that knows how."
Performers include Scarlot Harlot, Femme 6, Dee Dee Russell,
Ckiara Rose, Hernan Cortez, Sister Dana Van Iquity, The Incredible
Edible Akynos, Absinthia , Ben Goldstein, Tom Orr, Mariko Passion,
and more. Ms. Passion guides the guests as Ana May Tong, (after
Ana May Wong, the first famous Chinese actress in the U.S.)
Additional
Info:
A long running San Francisco tradition, the Popcorn Anti-Theater Bus
Tours "encourage audience participation, costumes and general bonhomie.
The trips focus on the underground artists and performers who are an
increasing rarity in a city where overzealous development and rising
housing prices are driving them out." (SF Gate)
“Art is the method for coping and growing beyond cultures barriers
and barrio's," says Magician, Heran Cortez. “The Art of the
Oppressed is triumphant merely in it's creation and communication. The
audiences willingness to witness and honor the oppressed artist is an
act of nobility, nurturing, suturing and chain-breaking.”
“In other words, make sure to bring some cash!” explains
Scarlot Harlot. “Sex Workers Unite! Outlaw Poverty, Not Prostitutes!”
Event: Sex Worker Sinema: Movies Day and Night at the Roxie!
Date: May 25th, Saturday
Time: Noon- Midnight
Location: Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, SF
Cost: 12,2 & 4 PM- $8; 6-10 PM is $10; All Day Pass $35
Advance
Tickets: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Tel: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest@bayswan.org
Image-print: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/hi-res-photos.html
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics-logos.htm
Sex Worker Sinema at the 8th Biennial San Francisco
Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival
curatored byLaure McElroy
Summary
The San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Art Festival, as always,
focuses on the lives, the art, and the struggle for workers'
and human rights of people employed in sex work industries.
The festival strives to maintain a forum for diverse voices,
including youth, sex workers of color, migrant sex workers;
sex workers' rights organizations around the world, queer and
trans sex workers, sex worker artists, saints, heros and she-ros,
and sex workers both within and outside the borders of the United
States. Films and topics address the impact of trafficking policy
and discourse on sex workers; sex work as a labor issue on the
international agenda; sex work and gender identities, sex education,
sex art, porn, fetish culture and erotica, as well as portraits
of strippers, prostitutes, doms, madams and much more.
Lot Lizard
The festival lens has always ranged far and wide around the world; this
year two of our dearest feature films draw the viewer back to the gritty
strolls of these United States.
Director Alexander Perlman brings us "Lot Lizard" (for those
who are unfamiliar with the term, a lot lizard is a prostitute who works
primarily at truckstops serving drivers). Inspired by a conversation
Perlman had in 2009 with a woman working out of the same truckstop he
happened to be hitchhiking, Perlman and his two person crew put together
200 hours of documentary footage over eight weeks of filming in 2010,
following a selection of sex workers as they ply their trade in a uniquely
American setting, including: Monica and Frank, the boyfriend with whom
she shares a room bordering the lot; Jennifer, a single mom who struggles
to walk away from sex work as a livelihood because it has become bound
up for her with drug addiction; Betty, who says, "I don't have to
date if I don't want to… but sometimes you have to," and makes
no apologies about her life on the lot. The street workers of "Lot
Lizard" are by-and-large working class and poor women who are engaged
in what sex worker rights movement terms "survival' sex work, that
is, sex work that is performed as a way to meet very basic needs of the
worker, such as shelter or food or medicating; these workers, in addition
to dealing with the general stigmatization of sex work, are arguably
prone to more intense criminalization due to the exposed (outdoors) nature
of their work. Along with criminalizing policies, agendas of "rescue"
that silence the actual voices of workers trying to communicate their
own needs are heavily slanted toward people engaged in survival sex work.
"Lot Lizard" does not take any easy ways out by simplifying
the stories of the featured or making them pithy; and although poverty
and even desperation may at times inform their work and their choices,
there is in every story a clear element of strength, of will and independence
that transcends victimhood.
American Courtesans
Some people envision catty strippers trash-talking each others' weight
and ratting out co-workers to management for crimes imagined or real
for the prime stage time or just for bitchy kicks; mainstream media throws
up stereotypes of hookers pulling out each others' weaves over status
in the eyes of a pimp or "dibs" on a john; what people do not
see is the great affection and support that can exist between workers
in this oldest and arguably hardest of professions. "American Courtesans",
a feature film that is the culmination of a dream project for filmmaker
and escort Kristen DiAngelo, watches like a love and acceptance letter
from a sex worker to her sisterhood of fellow whores. In line with a
trend in sex worker cinema that festival producer Carol Leigh identifies
as arising out of the contemporary, ubiquitous genre of intensely personal
reality shows, the stories of the women featured in "American Courtesans"
begin at the beginning, where many of the women featured relate a past
of family or professional victimization, and pull the viewer through
the trauma and catharsis stories to bear witness to eventual claiming
of spaces of radical empowerment as whores.
"Scarlet Road" documents the specialized practice of Rachel Wotton, as
she works with differently abled clients , campaigning for both sex worker
rights and to increase awareness and access to sexual expression for
people of varying abilities. "Pay it no Mind: The Life and Times
of Marsha P. Johnson," memorializes the woman who thew "the
shotglass that was heard around the world" in this tribute to sex
worker and LGBT history, screening with "Remembering The Living:
Monica Forrester on Sister in Spirit and Indigenous Sex Workers."
"Ticket to Paradise" portrays the details of women's choices
in a small village in Thailand, to marry a foreigner or do sex work in
Pattaya.
An
array of brilliant shorts include a new video from Asia
Pacific Network of Sex Workers, "Global Sex Workers on the March!,"
"A Kiss for Gabriela" by Laura Murray, "Whore Logic"
by PJ Starr featuring The Incredible Edible Akynos, "Stripper Damage"
by Gina Gold, "Sex Worker Open University 2011," "Transitioning
Through Sex Work" by Jay Very, "Nada" by Nada Felini and
Christian Vega, "Creative Trafficking" by Operation Snatch
and many more.
.
Festival founder, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot says, "Sex workers
have an excellent vantage point from which to view social hypocrisy,
expressed in many contexts--by the lawmakers who use their services,
then sponsor policies which further criminalize them, to the wanna-be
saviors who claim to 'rescue' but only increase our vulnerability. This
whores-eye-view of society is reflected in this body of work by sex workers."
Event: Whores' Bath, a spa and magical healing event for sex workers
only
Date: May 26th, Sunday
Time: 3 PM-11PM
Location: TBA, call for location info and to register, or to volunteer
Cost: $25-50, NTALF
Tickets:http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/whoresbath/
Info and Contact Tel: 415-857-5425
Contact: Carol Leigh swfest[at]bayswan.org
Image-print: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/images13/hi-res/whoresbathmed.jpg
Image-web: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics/Whorebathsml.jpg
Short
description:
After rave reviews, the Sex Worker Festival presents "Whores Bath,"
a spa and magical healing event where sex workers from all of our communities
can be pampered, pamper each other, and reclaim our role as healers.
Whore's Bath
will feature practitioners in various healing modalities from herbal
treatments to massage to Reiki and more, as well as beauticians, mani-pedi
providers and others.
"Whores'
Bath," was created by Festival co-producer, Erica Fabulous and has
been developed with help and love from Solace (solacesf.org) as well
as numerous sex workers and healers from the Bay Area.(guests are current
and former sex workers only)
Space is limited, and reservations will also be offered through health
service outreach agencies. If you are a program director or a practitioner
volunteering your services, please contact us. Call (415-857-5425) or
email sexworkerfest(at)gmail.com if you are interested in being part
of this community building event.
"Whores Bath" contributes to the 21st Century lexicon with
a new entry in the Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whores%20bath)
Whores Bath (old dictionary definition): The gentle dampening of a rag
when one must cleanse oneself to use on vaginal area, usually between
fuckin's.
Whores Bath (new urban dictionary definition): A day of self-care, spa
treatments, and magical healing for current and former sex workers.
Event:8th
Biennial San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival
Dates: May 18th-26th 2013
Location: Multiple venues: Roxie Cinema; Center for Sex & Culture;
CAL PEP, St. James Infirmary;Faithful Fools
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com
Telephone: 415-857-5425
Contacts: Co-Producers- Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot and Erica Fabulous
email: swfest@bayswan.org, sexworkerfest@gmail.com
Schedule: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
Tickets: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/tickets.html
Cost: Festival Passes $75-$150, Individual Events $5-$50, NTALF
Logos at http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics-logos.htm
Photos, Movie Stills and Illustrations at: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/hi-res.htm
Short description:
Join us for a week of sex worker art, parties and politics
including four day workshop series, “Privilege, Oppression and
InterseXionality,” Mariko Passion’s “Whorrific Popcorn
Theatre Bus and Cabaret.” Get a whores-eye view from Amber Dawn,
Emi Koyama, Brontez Purnell, Juba Kalamka, Ckiara Rose, The Incredible
Edible Akynos, Tom Orr and more. Sex worker sinema at the Roxie includes
“Lot Lizard,” “Whore Logic,” “Stripper
Damage” Emi Koyama comes to the Bay Area with research on "Anti-Trafficking
and The Carceral State."
Additional Info:
Since
1999 the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival has provided
a forum for sex worker film and video makers to screen works about sex
workers and sex work, businesses, industries and trades around the world.
The Festival has expanded to become a vibrant venue for performances,
workshops, visual arts, political organizing, skills sharing and ever
expanding events. The Sex Worker Festival recognizes and honors prostitutes,
dancers, porn performers and other sex workers from diverse communities,
who have been dynamic and integral members of arts communities since
time immemorial.
Performance
and Parties
TheWhoreCast LIVE! Siouxsie Q brings sex
worker stories, art, and voices this time LIVE and in person to kick
off the Fest at the Center for Sex & Culture featuring Cinnamon Maxxine,
James Darling and Courtney Trouble.The WhoreCast Trivia game and lots
of surprises in this interactive live show.
Back
by popular demand, San Francisco's "Musical Comedy Cabaret Porn
Star" and award-winning lyricist Tom Orr presents Love For $ale
redux, "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" featuring music, burlesque,
and performance art via hooker showtunes in this a benefit for the St.
James Infirmary, the sex worker occupational health clinic in San Francisco.
Performance
curator and international multi-media artist Mariko Passion
brings her "Whorrific Popcorn Theater Bus and Cabaret,"
as storytellers and performers including Ckiara Rose, Absinthia,
Scarlot Harlot and Femme 6 take riders on a magical adventure
with a Happy Ending!
The
8th Biennial Sex Worker Fest welcomes Amber
Dawn (author of Lambda Award-winning novel Sub
Rosa) launching her new work "How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers
Memoir" on Thursday, May 23rd at "Oral Sarvices," an evening
of spoken word with Brontez Purnell, Juba Kalamka, Rhiannon Argo (2009
Lambda Award winnder), Laure McElroy, Ckiara Rose, Lola Sunshine, Jacques
La Femme, Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words and folks from MNRC/POOR
Magazine workshop.
Special Events
The
Sex Worker Festival again presents "Whores'
Bath," a spa and magical healing event for sex workers in San
Francisco, "reclaiming our roles as healers." "Whores'
Bath," was created by Festival co-producer, Erica Fabulous."Whores'
Bath" contributes to the 21st century lexicon with a new entry in
the Urban Dictionary. (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whores%20bath)
Workshops
In
2013 the Festival launches a 4 day series of workshops, "Privilege, Oppression,
and InterseXionality," for sex workers and allies in conjunction with
Rhizome
Consulting Project. Join us for this "mind and heart opening"
workshop series as we deepen our awareness of class/race/gender and how
they overlap and intersect.
Amber Dawn will be
among those offering workshops
at the Institute of Sex Workology on Friday on May 24th at the Center
for Sex & Culture. Amber Dawn's workshop "Tough Language and
Tender Wisdoms" is sex workers only but most, including Alice in Bondage
Land, The Incredible Edible Akynos, Mission SRO Collaborative's "Housing
Justice Framework & Sex Worker Rights" are open to all. Please
check the schedule TBA re: admission policies for each workshop.
The
Festival is proud to welcome activist and artist Emi Koyama. Focusing
on the carceral state, Koyama's recent zine, "State Violence, Sex
Trade, and the Failure of Anti-Trafficking Policies," was developed
from her extensive research, documenting of false premises within the
U.S. domestic anti-sex trafficking movement and the alignment with the
fundamentalist Christian right. The evening also includes a selection
of video clips from "Collateral Damage: Sex Workers and the Anti-Trafficking
Campaigns," "Normal- Real Stories from The Sex Industry,"
" Last Rescue in Siam" by Empower and more.
Sex
Worker Sinema at the 8th Biennial San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts
Festival by Festival curator, Laure McElroy
Summary
The San Francisco
Sex Worker Film and Art Festival, as always, focuses on the lives, the
art, and the struggle for workers' and human rights of people employed
in sex work industries. The festival strives to maintain a forum for
diverse voices, including youth, sex workers of color, migrant sex workers;
sex workers' rights organizations around the world, queer and trans sex
workers, sex worker artists, saints, heros and she-ros, and sex workers
both within and outside the borders of the United States. Films and topics
address the impact of trafficking policy and discourse on sex workers;
sex work as a labor issue on the international agenda; sex work and gender
identities, sex education, sex art, porn, fetish culture and erotica,
as well as portraits of strippers, prostitutes, doms, madams and much
more.
Lot
Lizard
The festival lens has always ranged far and wide around the world; this
year two of our dearest feature films draw the viewer back to the gritty
strolls of these United States.
Director Alexander Perlman brings us "Lot Lizard" (for those
who are unfamiliar with the term, a lot lizard is a prostitute who works
primarily at truckstops serving drivers). Inspired by a conversation
Perlman had in 2009 with a woman working out of the same truckstop he
happened to be hitchhiking, Perlman and his two person crew put together
200 hours of documentary footage over eight weeks of filming in 2010,
following a selection of sex workers as they ply their trade in a uniquely
American setting, including: Monica and Frank, the boyfriend with whom
she shares a room bordering the lot; Jennifer, a single mom who struggles
to walk away from sex work as a livelihood because it has become bound
up for her with drug addiction; Betty, who says, "I don't have to
date if I don't want to… but sometimes you have to," and makes
no apologies about her life on the lot. The street workers of "Lot
Lizard" are by-and-large working class and poor women who are engaged
in what sex worker rights movement terms "survival' sex work, that
is, sex work that is performed as a way to meet very basic needs of the
worker, such as shelter or food or medicating; these workers, in addition
to dealing with the general stigmatization of sex work, are arguably
prone to more intense criminalization due to the exposed (outdoors) nature
of their work. Along with criminalizing policies, agendas of "rescue"
that silence the actual voices of workers trying to communicate their
own needs are heavily slanted toward people engaged in survival sex work.
"Lot Lizard" does not take any easy ways out by simplifying
the stories of the featured or making them pithy; and although poverty
and even desperation may at times inform their work and their choices,
there is in every story a clear element of strength, of will and independence
that transcends victimhood.
American Courtesans
Some people envision catty strippers trash-talking each others' weight
and ratting out co-workers to management for crimes imagined or real
for the prime stage time or just for bitchy kicks; mainstream media throws
up stereotypes of hookers pulling out each others' weaves over status
in the eyes of a pimp or "dibs" on a john; what people do not
see is the great affection and support that can exist between workers
in this oldest and arguably hardest of professions. "American Courtesans",
a feature film that is the culmination of a dream project for filmmaker
and escort Kristen DiAngelo, watches like a love and acceptance letter
from a sex worker to her sisterhood of fellow whores. In line with a
trend in sex worker cinema that festival producer Carol Leigh identifies
as arising out of the contemporary, ubiquitous genre of intensely personal
reality shows, the stories of the women featured in "American Courtesans"
begin at the beginning, where many of the women featured relate a past
of family or professional victimization, and pull the viewer through
the trauma and catharsis stories to bear witness to eventual claiming
of spaces of radical empowerment as whores.
"Scarlet Road" documents the specialized practice of Rachel
Wotton, as she works with differently abled clients , campaigning for
both sex worker rights and to increase awareness and access to sexual
expression for people of varying abilities. "Pay it no Mind: The
Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson," memorializes the woman who
thew "the shotglass that was heard around the world" in this
tribute to sex worker and LGBT history, screening with "Remembering
The Living: Monica Forrester on Sister in Spirit and Indigenous Sex Workers."
"Ticket to Paradise" portrays the details of women's choices
in a small village in Thailand, to marry a foreigner or do sex work in
Pattaya.
An
array of brilliant shorts include a new video from Asia
Pacific Network of Sex Workers, "Global Sex Workers on the March!,"
"A Kiss for Gabriela" by Laura Murray, "Whore Logic"
by PJ Starr featuring The Incredible Edible Akynos, "Stripper Damage"
by Gina Gold, "Sex Worker Open University 2011," "Transitioning
Through Sex Work" by Jay Very, "Nada" by Nada Felini and
Christian Vega, "Creative Trafficking" by Operation Snatch
and many more.
.
Festival founder, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot says, "Sex workers
have an excellent vantage point from which to view social hypocrisy,
expressed in many contexts--by the lawmakers who use their services,
then sponsor policies which further criminalize them, to the wanna-be
saviors who claim to 'rescue' but only increase our vulnerability. This
whores-eye-view of society is reflected in this body of work by sex workers."