INCITE! Color of Violence 4

This workshop focuses on the specific forms of violence faced by racialized sex workers, and what is necessary to fight back. Sex workers of colour and indigenous sex workers are subject not only to state violence such as police profiling and violence, incarceration, and deportation. They also face street harassment from community-members, and the criminal laws surrounding sex work make those in the sex trade easy prey for violent predators - sex workers, especially racialized ones, are seen as 'disposable', victims of their own 'at-risk lifestyle'. Not only this,women of colour in the sex industry are sometimes marginalized *within* the industry (just as in all other industries), and often have to work within a realm of ethnic stereotypes. At the same time, racialized and indigenous sex workers are vocal and active in fighting violence. Yet their voices are frequently silenced and appropriated by feminists who wish to abolish the sex trade above all, who use racial stereotypes of helplessness to cast them them as always and only victims who need rescue, rather than actors in their own lives. This workshop explores these dynamics and will hopefully allow racialized sex workers and allies to brainstorm on how to to self-organize to fight violence of all forms.