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Monday, April 30, 2007

Johns Gone Wild: The DC Madam’s Gift to Sexual Health

filed under: Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira

The cats and all their dirty politics and money are scrambling out of the bag after this weekend, with the Big Reveal of the alleged “D.C. Madam” — alleged, in that, on an unstated sex industry technicality, one can only be thought of as a madam if one is involved in prostitution, and we’re not saying, and she’s saying she’s not, and so let’s help a sister out.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey (nice roundup at DCist, who names her a Feminist, Security Expert, and Freedom Fighter) is the former proprietor of Pamela Martin & Associates, and her celebrated forty seven pounds of telephone records and the journalists at ABC now data mining them have now netted their first “casualty”, Randall Tobias, former Deputy Secretary of State, the first United States Global AIDS Coordinator, and administrator of the controversial United States Agency for International Development (Google cache of his position description, now removed). Under his direction, USAID cut off all funds to organizations that did not sign a pledge to the US government that they opposed prostitution. Tobias is likely the choicest john offered up from any black book, period, and especially so for those who truly have the most to lose politically in this suit. By that I don’t mean the other abstinence-preaching Bush appointees and their hypocritical brethren, but sex workers.

Sex workers have been organizing against this policy since its inception, stating that sex workers themselves are the most effective network of people and organizations in reducing HIV/AIDS, violence, and forced labor in the sex industry. By contrast, the US is leading a global strategy around sex work founded on telling people to abstain from sex, to be faithful, and barring that, use condoms (but don’t you dare ask the US to fund those, or education around how to use them properly, or to be tested for HIV if one needs to).

To have the man in charge, literally, fall prey to his own inability to follow his own policy — oh, of course he tells us that he only ever called Ms. Martin’s service so “a few gals could come over to the condo to give him massages” (ABC video), and he tells us this, yes, on his way out the door — is sweet, yes, but it isn’t so much the “sex scandal” the Left (see: Talking Points Memo Muckraker, Daily Kos, et. al.) is looking for to further skewer the Bush administration. No one should have to go down politically because they’ve hired a prostitute, and, newsflash, it’s not like johns don’t exist in Blue States, too. What’s frustrating is that sex workers have been going down, politically and literally, on these guys and their goons for aeons. If we can stop and remember what sex workers know from experience, that money and politics are so deeply embedded in sex as to be impossible to do one without doing the whole team, this moment could be a potential wake-up call for progressives to take on the promotion of sexual health as an agenda item every day, and not just when Ms. Palfrey Goes to Washington.

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