20210810

Don't bother to make time for mother's emotional needs, they are a waste of your energy and time. Your energy and your time is important. 

역시 외국에 가서 사는 것이 답이야.

https://youtu.be/R4L2oxlDif8

20200817

또 시작이다 또 또 또.

응 나도 사랑해~ 라고 답할 뻔 했다.

But 김칫국은 금물^^^^^^

게다가 예에ㅔㅔㅔㅔㅅ날에도, '문화차이'의 벽을 넘기 힘들다고 이미 결론내리지 않았었나.

적어도 이사람은, 연락할께, 라는 말이 인사치레가 아니라고 믿어도 되는 것 같아서, 

놓을 수가 없다.ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ

언제가 될지도 모르는데, 또 매일매일 목빠지게 기다리는 짓을..... 하

ㅋㅋ이건 여담인데

그친구랑 차로 걸어가다가 푸시베리 지나갔다!!! 도대체 어디있나 싶었는데! 이런 계기로 발견하게 될줄은ㅋㅋㅋㅋ 꿈에도 미처 몰랐어요ㅋㅋㅋ

존중받는 느낌. 그게참 뭐라고 정리해서 말하기가 어려운데..  '여자라서' 나에게 '베푸는' 호의 내지는 '매너'와 종이한장 차이일 수도 있는데, 그런 대접을 받아보면 안다. 이사람에게 나는 단순히 '여자' 가 아니라 한 '사람'이구나, 라고 느끼는게 그 차이이다. 여성과 남성이라는 컨텍스트 안에서 만난 남자가 typically 나를 대하는 태도와는 확연히 다르다. 물론 초면에는 그러기 어려울수도 있고, 이친구와는 정말 오랜 시간에 걸쳐 신뢰와 존중을 이미 쌓아왔기 때문에 가능하다는 생각도 들지만, 이친구는 아마도 나 뿐만 아니라 다른 여성들에게도 이렇게 대할 거다. 

애석하게도 이런거에 껌뻑 죽는 나의 희한한(?) 취향(?) 내지는 고집 때문에, 나에게 이성으로서의 감정은 1도 없는 남성들에게 끌린 적이 많았던 것 같다. 그래, 정리해서 말하자면 나는 나를 여자가 아니라 사람으로 대하는 남자를 좋아한다. 그리고 이렇게 얘기하면 뻔한 얘기 같지만, 나는 누군가를 사람으로서 좋아하는 것이 선행되어야만 그사람에게 성적 매력을 느낄 수 있다. (이런걸 데미섹슈얼 이라고 하기도 하나 보더라.) 아 물론 연예인 등 자신의 섹스어필을 상품화한 경우는 예외다.ㅋㅋㅋ 그들과는 사람 대 사람으로서 관계를 맺게 될 가능성이 제로이므로.ㅎㅎ

20180512

정말 이 거지같은 것들의 끝없는 supply는 어디에서 나오는걸까? 화수분처럼 끊임없이 쓰레기들을 배출하는 그런 데가 있나보다 (bastards from hell?).

정말 급이 너무 떨어져서 대화를 이어가기가 힘들다. 이 '시장'에서 내 '급'에 맞춰줄 수 있는 사람은 아마도 없을 것이라는 확신이 든다.

돈과 시간이 아까운 정도가 비행기 놓쳤을 때 보다 지금이 백만 배는 더 아까운 것 같다.

밥이나 쳐먹고 늙어죽어라 시발...

내가 도대체 언제까지 이런 거지발싸개들을 참아줘야 하는걸까.

Until the money runs out, apparrently.

20171225

완전히 고갈된 것 같다.
일에는 정말 1도 관심이 없지만 이직하기 위해서 경력을 쌓아야 하고, 더이상 손 벌릴 데도 없으니 돈을 벌어야만 하니까 붙어있다. 내마음에 차지 않더라도 어찌됐건 백수보다는 회사원이 좀 덜 불안해 보이는 것은 사실 아닌가.
그 어떤 관계에서도 진실을 말할 수가 없다. 진실 비스무리한 것을 말하려면 하소연이나 푸념밖에는 할 말이 없기 때문이다.
생각해 보니 고등학생 때 부터 항상 삶을 이런식으로 살아왔던 것 같다. 내 성에는 차지 않아, I belong somewhere better, I am where I am because I was unlucky or because I didn't try hard enough, not because I'm not good enough.
죽어도 I'm not good enough는 받아들일 수가 없으니까.
그렇다면 왜 더 노오력을 하지 않는걸까?
삶을 치열하게 사는 수많은 example들이 주변에 널리고 널렸는데. 왜 자꾸 불만족스러운 상태에 안주하면서 불행하게 살기를 선택하는걸까?
뉴욕에서 혼자 보낸 크리스마스와 nye보다도 더 우울한 크리스마스 이브다. pms 가 아닌것도 확실하니 this is not my hormones talking. I really am depressed.

20171118

The reason why I'm upset is,
I showed you the world and you..... Just fucking sat there and enjoyed being liked. Why did I fucking grace you with amusement and my company when you didn't fucking deserve it? Why did I treat you like I used to treat my most precious friends when I barely even knew you? Even after I understood that you were in a bad place? And why do I think you deserve a farewell when I nowknow that nothing that I do or say can resuscitate you?
I'm mad at myself for getting my hopes up for a hopeless fool like you (at least with all the shit you're currently in),
for realizing too late that you were and still are in pretty deep shit,
for wasting my precious time and emotions on what was already a lost cause,
for not having a life interesting enough to know better than to waste time with a schmuck like you.

I do hope I learn from this.. Learn to have fun on my own, to 'not have the time to sit around and be bored'.
To learn to respect myself and the fact that every day I am continuously given life, to learn how to live in honor of the fact that I AM ALIVE, that I am young and in good health and have a roof over my head and a job,
Ultimately, to learn how to make the best use of my time.

20171113 정리.

1. 음 옛날부터 참 괜찮다고 생각했던 그사람에게도 secret blog 가 있다는 말을 듣고 용기를 내어? 생각이 나서? 여기에 글을 다시 써보려고 한다. 순간순간 생각날 때 쓰려고 플레이스토어에서 혹평 일색인 Blogger 앱을 다운받았다.

2. 그사람 이야기. 아무리 생각해도 그는 M을 각별하게 여기고 있는 것이 obvious 한데 (M이 12시 넘어서 술먹자고 불러내면 without fail he ALWAYS shows up. 파블로프의 개가 아닐까 싶을 정도로 꼭, 반드시, 온다), 절대로 M과 단둘이 만나지 않는것은 영 미스테리 하다.

3. 무슨 말로 정리할 수 있을까 오랫동안 고민했다. 이렇게 정리할 수 있을 것 같다:

우리는... 서로에게는 비겁했고, 스스로에게는 비굴했다.
비겁하고 비굴했던 작고 작은 자들의 말로는, 시종일관 그래 왔듯이, 답답하기 짝이 없었다.
끝이라고 하기조차 구차한, 그런 일이 있기는 했나 싶을 정도로 밋밋하고 보잘 것 없는, 그런 것이었다.

사실 아주 일찍부터 난 알고 있었다. 아주 일찍부터, 그에게 기대 같은건 이미 접었지만, 나에 대한 기대를 접기가 싫었다. 내가 어디까지 할 수 있을까, 나는 어디까지 해보고 싶은걸까, 그 경계선까지 가 보고 싶었던 것 같다. 그리고 어쩌면 그는 아무런 반응도 하지 않을 것이라는 확신이 있었기에 이만큼이라도 (내 딴에는) 적극적으로 할 수 있었던 것인지도 모른다. 지금 생각해 보니 그는 안전해, 나의 예상을 벗어나는 행동 같은건 절대로 하지 않을거야, 라는 확신이 있었기에 이 이상하고 잔인한 장난을 시작할 수 있었던 것 같다.

결과적으로 나에게 확신을 주었던 바로 그 부분 때문에 난 아주 금방 힘에 부치고 진절머리가 나서 제 풀에 지쳐 나가 떨어지고 말았다. 그는 이렇게 나올 것이라는 것을 아주 일찌감치 파악하고 있었는데도 내가 이렇게 빈정이 상했다는 것은, 결국은... 은연중에 내가 말도 안되는 기대를 했다는 반증이겠지. 스스로 이건 말도 안된다는 걸 알면서도, 그는 나를 실망시킬거라는 확신을 가지고 충분히 예상 가능한 실망의 방향으로 한걸음 한걸음 억지스럽게 발을 내딛었고, 충분히 예측이 가능했던 실망을 마주했을 때, 나는 왜 화가 났을까. I walked into a booby trap that I set up for myself, so why the hell am I disappointed and mad?

Did I want to be mad? At him? At myself? At the situation? For WHAT????? What good does thid serve?

4. 쓰다보니 또 흥분해 버렸다. 아무튼. 이제 완전히, 끝이라는 걸 아니까. 알면서도 굳이 얘기를 꺼내야 할까. 양심선언이라도 해야하는걸까? 나혼자 북치고 장구치다 화나서 접었노라고. 아니면 그냥 아무 일도 없었던 걸로 하기로 무언의 합의를 하는 게 맞는걸까. If I do bring it up, 나는 도대체 어떤 대답이 듣고 싶은걸까? Either way it cant be good, and most of all whats the use when the conclusion has already been drawn. 지금 마음 같아서는 인사같은 것도 하기 싫다. 혹여나 혹시나 그가
were you playing me this whole time? 따위의 생각을 할 수 있겠다 싶어 (이 와중에) 미안한 생각도 들고. 무엇보다도 더이상 (when did I ever?) 아무 기분좋은 것을 찾을 수 없는 그의 얼굴을 별로 보고 싶지 않다. 이런 생각을 하다 보면 나의 옹졸함에, 나의 우스움에, 또 화가 난다.

5. So..... Back to the running question: Will I ever?

6. 한때 그가 먼저 연락을 한 적이 있었다. 모든 sns를 다 끊고 있던 시기였는데 굳이 나를 linkedin에서 찾아서 쪽지를 보냈었다. 그것보다 조금 전 혹은 후에 내가 gustavo dudamel 에 대한 걸 페북에 올렸더니 그걸 보고 제 발로 그의 내한공연 표를 사서 (비쌌을텐데) 말러 교향곡을 듣고 와서는 두다멜은 촐싹거렸으나 말러는 좋았다고 했다. 뭐 그런 일련의 일들이 있었고, 나는 예로부터 그에게 지대한 관심이 있었으므로, 만나자고 만나자고 조르다가 정말 씨알도 안먹혀서 나가떨어진 경험이 있다. 그가 지금 무슨 일을 하며 어떤 생활을 하고 있는지 들으니 정말... (게다가 4번의 그 찌질함의 끝장에 한참 치를 떨고있는 중이므로 더더욱 대조되어) 정말 너무나 이상적인 사람으로 보였다. 내가 이상적이라 생각하는 일, 생활, 사고방식... 물론 그도 인간이니까 그 가운데 어딘가에 내가 치를떨며 싫어할 법 한 구석이 하나쯤은 있겠지만. 게다가 아주 결정적으로, 그는 '심심할 틈 따위 없는' 사람 혹은 상태라는 걸 알아 버렸다. 이건 정말 치명타다. 나는 회사를 다니기 시작한 이래로 심심함에 함몰되어 오로지 심심함을 떨쳐 보고자 이것저것 먹고 이사람저사람 만나고, "심심해서" 찌질한줄 200% 알고있던 사람을 지난 반년동안 물고 늘어졌는데 (징하다), 그는..... 나는 작아 보이고 그는 완벽해 보이는, 치명적인 그런 상황이다.

7. 아무튼 이렇게 되고 나니 지나간 버스들이 참으로 아쉬워 졌다. 몇년만에 만난 H가 하는말이 병따개 그자식이 내 칭찬을 그렇게~~~ 했었다고~~~ 다시한번 만나보는게 어떻냐지를 않나. 심지어 아틀란틱시티에서 3년을 도박으로 먹고살았다는 그사람마저 지금은 갱생되어 "차카게" 살고 계신데, 나를 귀엽다고 생각해 준 한손에 꼽을 수 있는 사람 중 하나인데, 그렇게 나빴을까 싶고 막...

8. 그래도 가장 땅을 칠 정도의 회한이 남는 건 역시 S 인 듯 하다. 그만큼 나를 알아 주었고 그만큼(이라도) 나를 인정해 준 사람은 전무후무 한 듯 하다. 그만큼의 랍뽀를 쌓은 이 역시 전무후무 하다. 중고등학교 시절 내내 지구 반대편에 살면서도 나에게 연락했던 이유는 도대체 뭘까? 나는 그에게 그만큼 좋은 사람이었을까? 나는 그에게 도대체 뭘까? 어찌됐건 이제는 다 지나간 일이고, 그렇기 때문에 미화된 기억들만 추억으로 남겠지. 그리고 나는 언제까지나 모든 관계들을 그와의 관계와 비교하며 set myself up for disappointment 하겠지.....

20161018

So many things I would like to update on, so little time to blog!

1. After work, usually have a snack or light dinner before I get on the bus, come home, take a shower, waste some time on the internet, and go to bed. I do not exercise, I do not watch what I eat. I eat some form of dinner every day. This is bad. I look super fat in photos now. I feel heavier. My belly fat is getting thicker by the day. #DIETFAILLLLL

2. My boss has been having a fever since last week and still hasn't recovered. She took Friday off (but worked from home, so it wasn't really a day 'off'), and went to the hospital in the morning today to get an IV drip and to ask for a stronger prescription. Her 70-year-old mother is sick with pneumonia. She is worried and sick and so fucking busy and has no time to take care of her elderly, ailing mother, whom she still lives with. Is that what my life is going to look like in 15 years? God forbid...

3. Man, people can really sniff out money. It's like an instinct. 이렇게 또 하나의 인연을 끊는구나.....

4. 병따개 katalked me at lunchtime. WTF? Felt like saying "WTF do you want?" but also that that would probably only invite unpleasantaries, so stopped myself. Dude, 용건 없으면 그냥 연락하지 말라고오오오오오ㅗㅗㅗㅗ

5. 이대............................. 하아................................... 최경희총장.......남궁곤 입학처장........... 여름부터 맨날맨날 뉴스에 나오는구나..... 쪽팔려 죽겠다 쉬발라마 여태껏 사임 안하고 뭐하냐??? 철면피도 유분수지.....

6. 계약직은 역시 파리목숨, expendable 일 뿐이라는 걸 실감하게 되는 일이 생겼다. 순간적으로 '시발 그럼 난 계약연장 하려면 뭘 어째야 되는거야?!???'라는 위기감이 들었으나 딱히 뭘 달리 해야 할지는 모르겠다. S와 C가 왜 그렇게 쎄하게 굴었는지, O와 W 사이에는 왜 그렇게 엄청난 긴장감이 있었는지 알게 되었고, W가 퇴사하기 전까지는 나도 영 입장이 거시기 하다. W와 친하게 지내는 걸 다른 직원들에게 보이기도 싫고, 내가 살아남기 위해 W를 엿먹인 직원들과 친하게 보이는 걸 W에게 들키는 것도 싫다. 그리고 그런 내막을 다 듣고서도 친해지고 싶은 마음도 딱히 없는 사람들과 억지로 억지로 바득바득 우겨서 친하게 지내야만 한다는 것도 싫다. 난 정말 소처럼 일만 하다 6시 땡 하면 용수철처럼 의자에서 튀어올라 퇴근하고 싶다. 일은 정말 좋고 I really couldn't have asked for something better, 부장님도 나를 너무 좋게 봐 주셔서 정말 감사하고 (집에 갈 생각이 없으신 것만 빼면 정말 완벽한 상사에 가깝다)... 이곳에서 일하는 데에 부수적으로 들러붙는 잡다한 '사회생활'이라는 군더더기가 참 부담스럽고 싫다.

7. 운동을 해야한다...... 이렇게 살만 찌다가는 병들고 늙기만 할텐데.......... 운동과 다이어트를....... 먹을 돈을 아껴 헬스장을 등록하자........................

yet another personality test: ISFJ ?????

it seems that my personality is continuously in flux...
In my teens and early 20s I was consistently an INTP,
later in my 20s I was an INFP,
Now I'm an ISFJ?!??? What the hell happened????? Am I really such a different person now compared to 5, 10 years ago? Or am I still the same person, and rather, are these all different facets of my self?

https://www.16personalities.com/isfj-personality
That's the result of the personality test I just took, and the explanation sounds like a pretty accurate description of what I currently am like.

"The ISFJ personality type is quite unique, as many of their qualities defy the definition of their individual traits. Though possessing the Feeling (F) trait, ISFJs have excellent analytical abilities; though Introverted (I), they have well-developed people skills and robust social relationships; and though they are a Judging (J) type, ISFJs are often receptive to change and new ideas. As with so many things, people with the ISFJ personality type are more than the sum of their parts, and it is the way they use these strengths that defines who they are."
-> So it's true that I'm full of contradictions huh?

"ISFJ personalities . . . though they procrastinate, they can always be relied on to get the job done on time."

"The challenge for ISFJs is ensuring that what they do is noticed. They have a tendency to underplay their accomplishments, and while their kindness is often respected, more cynical and selfish people are likely to take advantage of ISFJs' dedication and humbleness by pushing work onto them and then taking the credit. ISFJs need to know when to say no and stand up for themselves if they are to maintain their confidence and enthusiasm."

"ISFJs' ability to connect with others on an intimate level is unrivaled among Introverts, and the joy they experience in using those connections to maintain a supportive, happy family is a gift for everyone involved. They may never be truly comfortable in the spotlight, and may feel guilty taking due credit for team efforts, but if they can ensure that their efforts are recognized, ISFJs are likely to feel a level of satisfaction in what they do that many other personality types can only dream of."

And I should probably copy+paste this into every 자기소개서 I write from now on... https://www.16personalities.com/isfj-strengths-and-weaknesses

In romantic relationships, . . . https://www.16personalities.com/isfj-relationships-dating

"The trouble is, these are the benefits of an established long-term relationship, and ISFJs' unbearable shyness means it can take a long time to reach this point. ISFJs are most attractive when they are simply being themselves in a comfortable environment such as work, where their natural flow shows this kindness and dedication. Relationships built on established familiarity are a warm prospect for ISFJs – they take dating seriously and only enter into relationships that have a real chance of lasting a lifetime."
....................FUCK.....

On the other hand,
"ISFJs are skilled at remembering things about others which makes them not only valuable assistants, but well-liked colleagues. People with the ISFJ personality type can always be counted on to remember a birthday, a graduation, or simply a frequent customers' name, and that can make all the difference. Add to these amiable qualities ISFJs' meticulousness, hard work and dedication, and it's no surprise that their careers often progress smoothly, with few of the ups and downs that accompany more high-flying types."

"However, ISFJs are unlikely to actively seek out managerial positions, and are still more unlikely to brag about their accomplishments. ISFJ personalities prefer to be rewarded by seeing first-hand the positive impact of their efforts, and will remain enthusiastic simply knowing that what they do is genuinely appreciated by the people they care for. This makes them natural counselors, technical support, and interior designers, where they are able to help others one-on-one without having to worry about corporate politics." 
- Couldn't be more true..

"while they may not always seek out these managerial positions, they fill them well. ISFJs are well-tuned to others' emotions and have a strong sense of practicality, extending their own ability to get things done to their teams."

"Strong, well-developed institutions alongside like-minded friends are attractive workplaces for people with the ISFJ personality type, and careers as nurses, elementary school teachers and social and religious workers are attractive options." 
- I am so in the wrong field, aren't I? I really should have gone into social work and opted for marrying a rich guy instead of thinking I could make the money myself...

"Relied on and respected for their patience and commitment, ISFJ personalities really only seek one reward for their work: the satisfaction of knowing that whoever they helped feels heartfelt thanks. On the other hand, this humbleness can hold them back – ISFJs are quite unwilling to advertise their achievements, often for fear of creating unnecessary friction, which makes it too easy for them to be overlooked when opportunities come along."

"ISFJs are natural networkers, but they use this skill to keep things running smoothly, not as a tool for professional advancement." = STUPIDITY...

"Oftentimes they don't actually enjoy managing others, but this can be one of their greatest strengths – as managers, ISFJs are warm, approachable and great listeners. Having no real desire to issue authoritarian dictates from some high tower, ISFJ personalities prefer to work alongside their subordinates, organizing people and minimizing conflict."

"ISFJs can be easily tripped up in areas where their kindness and practical approach are more of a liability than an asset. Whether it is finding (or keeping) a partner, learning to relax or improvise, reaching dazzling heights on the career ladder, or managing their workload, ISFJs need to put in a conscious effort to develop their weaker traits and additional skills."
Yeap.
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The personality type that I was when I was younger: 
INTP, the Logician: "innovative inventors with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge"

The personality type that I think I wish to be:
INFJ, the Advocate: "Quiet and mystical, yet very inspiring and tireless idealists"

The personality type that I thought I was:
INFP, the Mediator: "poetic, kind, and altruistic people, always eager to help a good cause"

The personality type that the results of this test say I am:
ISFJ, the Defender: "very dedicated and warm protectors, always ready to defend their loved ones"

2015 TRUST WOMEN ACTION: "TrustLaw Litigation for Trafficking"

2015 TRUST WOMEN ACTION: "TrustLaw Litigation for Trafficking"

Whoa this is so cool!!!

See video of the presentation here:
http://www.trustwomenconf.com/actions/i/?id=642109e0-e8fc-4235-b2f7-6faec4e3ed18&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TWC%20Actions%20Update&utm_content=TWC%20Actions%20Update+CID_01ad98f0637e79db5e4ce63222cd9665&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=TrustLaw%20Litigation%20Hub%20for%20Trafficking%20and%20Modern%20Slavery

Or here: https://youtu.be/8VF-4BNTIRI

Presented by Martina Vandenberg - Founder and President, The Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center

Summary: A hub bringing together lawyers and NGOs in the fight for justice by enabling advocates to share best practices in anti-trafficking litigation.

[NYT] How to Fix Feminism by Judith Shulevitz

http://nyti.ms/1XJkSeP

How to Fix Feminism

Hillary Clinton’s generation aimed to free women
from domestic prisons. But work is a prison, too.

Judith Shulevitz JUNE 10, 2016

HILLARY CLINTON’S securing of the Democratic nomination doesn’t just put a woman in range of the White House; it puts a mother there. And that’s momentous. Over the past half-century, unmarried childless women have overcome every barrier to opportunity you can think of, and now earn 96 percent of what men do. Mothers, on the other hand, aren’t doing nearly as well: Married mothers are paid 76 cents on the dollar.

To me, Mrs. Clinton’s sheer professional survival is as inspiring as any of her other accomplishments. A woman with a small child can easily lose faith that she’ll ever do anything else again. God knows I did. For the first five years of my child-rearing life, I was supposed to be writing a book, but mostly I dodged my editor’s calls. The 3-year-old had separation anxiety, so I waited it out on one of the nursery school’s kid-size chairs. I lacked the heart to say no to play dates, so I shut my computer and attended to juice boxes.

Then there was Ladies’ Night, when the mothers on my cul-de-sac got together to drink too much wine. Fun, sure, but really: “Ladies’ Night”? The fact that I went every week proved that my professional viability was fast disappearing, or so I thought at the time.

How did Mrs. Clinton hold on to hers? How did she rebound from the years in which she was raising a daughter, pursuing a law career and serving as first lady of Arkansas? She has a steely will, as everyone knows. But another answer is that it was in many ways easier to be a working mother in 1980, when Chelsea Clinton was born, than it is today.

Between the ’80s and the aughts, when I had my children, a cloud of economic anxiety descended on parents, tightening what the sociologist Arlie Hochschild has called “the time bind.” The workweek of salaried professionals ballooned from 40 hours to 50 hours or more, not counting the email catch-up done after the kids’ bedtime. Union protections, predictable schedules and benefits vanished for vast numbers of blue-collar workers. Their jobs in the service or on-demand economies now pay so little, and child care costs so much (168 percent more than it did a quarter-century ago) that parents have to stitch together multiple jobs. Meanwhile, terrified that their offspring will sink even lower, parents siphon off time and money to hand-raise children who can compete in a global economy.

Women like me who scale back in the face of impossible expectations feel themselves morphing into caricatures: attachment freaks, helicopter moms, concerted cultivators, neo-traditionalists. These stereotypes are just plain sexist, but I don’t know many mothers whose careers, paychecks and sense of self-worth haven’t been eroded by all the compromises they’ve had to make. Our worlds have narrowed; our bank accounts have dipped below the minimum balance; and our power within the family and the world has dwindled. We’d be quick to tell you that we wouldn’t have done it any differently. Still.

What if the world was set up in such a way that we could really believe — not just pretend to — that having spent a period of time concentrating on raising children at the expense of future earnings would bring us respect? And what if that could be as true for men as it is for women?

We live in an age rich in feminisms. One celebrates our multiplicity of identities: black, lesbian, transgender. Another has effectively anathematized sexual violence. Yet another — I think of it as C-suite feminism — chips away at the glass ceiling that keeps women out of the most powerful jobs, such as, say, the presidency.

But we need another feminism — and it needs a name that has nothing to do with gender. Let’s call it, for lack of a better term, “caregiverism.” It would demand dignity and economic justice for parents dissatisfied with a few weeks of unpaid parental leave, and strive to mitigate the sacrifices made by adult children responsible for aging parents.

Mrs. Clinton could be a champion of caregiverism. She has been blunter this electoral season about family-friendly policies than she has ever been before. She emphasized paid family leave when she began her campaign and again in the opening statements of the first Democratic presidential debate. In May, she said she’d cap the cost of child care at 10 percent of a household’s income, down from what, for a household supported by minimum-wage workers, can now be more than 30 percent.

But she needs to go further. Her focus is on wage-earners; what about the people who want to get out of the workplace, at least for a while? Mrs. Clinton should talk to Representative Nita Lowey of New York, who last year introduced a bill that would give Social Security credits to caregivers who left the labor market or cut back on hours — a public nod to the reality that care is work and caregivers merit the same benefits as other workers.

Mrs. Clinton belongs to an earlier generation, one whose objective was to free women from the prison of domesticity — at least the middle-class women who didn’t already have jobs — and send them marching into the work force to demand equality there. But true equality will take more than equal pay and better working conditions. It will require something more radical, a “transvaluation of all values,” in Nietzsche’s phrase.

Am I calling for a counterrevolution? I don’t think so. Feminists have not always seen work as the answer to women’s problems. Many who put in sweatshop hours in the textile industry or open-ended days in domestic service fought for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the 40-hour workweek. Working women “were not just organizable; they were the best constituency for struggle over the working day,” write David Roediger and Philip Foner in “Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day.”

There is also a venerable tradition in feminist history of trying to overturn a status quo that esteems professionals and wage-earners while demeaning those who do the unpaid or low-paid work of emotional sustenance and physical upkeep. In the 1960s, the largely African-American National Welfare Rights Organization demanded welfare payments that would maintain a decent standard of living, partly on the grounds that these mothers were working already, raising future workers, and partly because they couldn’t find jobs that would support them. “I am 45 years old; I have raised six children,” wrote the group’s chairwoman, Johnnie Tillmon, in 1972. “A job doesn’t necessarily mean an adequate income. There are some 10 million jobs that now pay less than the minimum wage, and if you’re a woman, you’ve got the best chance of getting one.”

Around the same time, the Marxist feminists Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James began a campaign called Wages for Housework that called for the overthrow of a capitalist order subsidized, in their view, by the unpaid slog of homemaking and, yes, sexual services. This did not mean that women should necessarily go out and find jobs. “Not one of us believes that emancipation, liberation, can be achieved through work,” they wrote. “Slavery to an assembly line is not liberation from slavery to a kitchen sink.”

Liberal feminists accused them of wanting to push women back into domestic drudgery, but they denied it. “We have worked enough,” they wrote. “We have chopped billions of tons of cotton, washed billions of dishes, scrubbed billions of floors, typed billions of words, wired billions of radio sets, washed billions of nappies, by hand and in machines.” So what did they want? I asked Silvia Federici, a founder of the New York chapter of Wages for Housework who writes prolifically on these questions. Actual wages for housework aside, she said, the movement wanted to make people ask themselves, “Why is producing cars more valuable than producing children?”

The expectation that all mothers will work has been especially hard on single mothers. When Franklin D. Roosevelt established the welfare program Aid to Dependent Children in 1935 it was a given that poor single mothers would tend to their young (poor single white mothers, I should say, because black women were expected to hold jobs). By the 1970s, that presumption having vanished, Ronald Reagan could argue that welfare mothers were “lazy parasites” and “pigs at the trough,” laying the groundwork for welfare reform.

The program put in place by Bill Clinton in 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, cuts off benefits after five years or less; forces women to hold or look for jobs, whether or not there are any to be had; and allows states to shunt welfare funds into other programs. And so, from 1996 to 2011, the number of families living in extreme poverty — on $2 per person a day or less — more than doubled. A majority of those households were headed by single mothers.

IN an important new book, “Finding Time,” the economist Heather Boushey argues that the failure of government and businesses to replace the services provided by “America’s silent partner” — the stay-at-home wife — is dampening productivity and checking long-term economic growth. A company that withholds family leave may drive away a hard-to-replace executive. Overstressed parents lack the time and patience to help children develop the skills they need to succeed. “Today’s children are tomorrow’s work force,” Ms. Boushey writes. “What happens inside families is just as important to making the economy hum along as what happens inside firms.”

Knowing that motherhood can derail a career, women are waiting longer and longer to have children. In the United States, first-time mothers have aged nearly five years since 1970 — as of 2014, they were 26.3 as opposed to 21.4. Some 40 percent of women with bachelor’s degrees have their first child at 30 or older. Fathers are waiting along with the mothers — what else can they do?

I had my children at 39 and 40. (Mrs. Clinton was 32.) My 12-year-old daughter is already calculating how soon she’ll have to have children if I’m going to be strong enough to lift them. Younger than I was, I tell her. But she’s bright and ambitious. I could see her going to graduate school.

I recently got into an argument with a professor friend about the plausibility of restructuring higher education and the professions so that women — and men — wouldn’t have to hustle for positions like partner or associate professor just as they reach peak fertility. Many universities, I said, now stop the tenure clock for a year when assistant professors have children. My friend laughed. A year is nothing when it comes to a baby, she said. She’d never have won tenure if she’d had her son first.

I didn’t know what to say. At least she had a child, unlike friends who waited until too late.

Here’s a fantasy my daughter and I entertain: What if child-rearing weren’t an interruption to a career but a respected precursor to it, like universal service or the draft? Both sexes would be expected to chip in, and the state would support young parents the way it now supports veterans. This is more or less what Scandinavian countries already do. A mother might take five years off, then focus on her career, at which point the father could put his on pause. Or vice versa.

Vice versa was the deal struck by characters on the Danish TV series “Borgen,” a member of Parliament and her husband. He’d schlep and clean for five years; then she’d do the same. (As it turned out, she became prime minister and their marriage went to hell. But that’s a problem few of us would ever have to face.)

What really makes the “Borgen” model a mismatch for the United States is that American families, particularly low-income families, can’t do without a double income, given wage stagnation and the cost of children in a country that won’t help parents raise them. But having to work should not be confused with wanting to work, at least not without some stops along the way. “It takes 20 years, not 12 weeks, to raise a child,” as the feminist legal scholar Joan Williams has written.

Those 20 years are what made Sheryl Sandberg’s exhortation to women to “lean in,” or work extra hard, before and after they started families, seem so ludicrous. (Ms. Sandberg has softened her stance since her husband’s death last May. “I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home,” she recently wrote.) When Marissa Mayer, now chief executive of Yahoo, reported that when she was in Google’s employ, she slept under her desk, one disgusted feminist, Sarah Leonard, wrote, “If feminism means the right to sleep under my desk, then screw it.”

But what should feminism mean instead? One thing it should not mean is a politics of the possible. We’re fighting for 12 weeks of leave when we need to rethink the basic chronology of our lives. We live longer than we used to. A caregiverist agenda should include stretching career paths across that longer life span, making it easier for parents of both sexes to drop in and out of the work force as the need arises. Automation may eliminate jobs in all sorts of fields. Perhaps we should lobby for a six-hour workday, yielding both more jobs and more time for family.

It’s a little late for me, if not, thank goodness, for my daughter. I fled my cul-de-sac before I should have, in part because I convinced myself that it was becoming a lovely, leafy, azalea-pink prison. City life is great, thank you, but I have regrets. I should have gone on longer rambles with the babies; blown more deadlines; been quicker to heed my son’s demand to “see train” at the nearby station. The articles could have waited; the sight of a little boy clapping as a train squealed to a stop could not. As for Ladies’ Night, it took me a long time to assemble a coterie of mothers as genial and supportive. If I’m ashamed of anything now, it’s how little I appreciated them then.


Judith Shulevitz will be answering questions via live video on our Facebook page on Tuesday, June 14, at 4:30 EST. Post a question here or on our Facebook page.

She is on Twitter (@JudithShulevitz). She is the author of “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time” and a contributing opinion writer.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 12, 2016, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Fix Feminism.

http://nyti.ms/1XJkSeP

[NYT] Striving for Her Piece of the Pie

http://nyti.ms/1UHVC6v

Striving for Her Piece of the Pie By SUSAN HARTMAN A Stuyvesant and Cornell alumna who was once homeless found that she loved baking, but the Cupcake Cafe in Midtown, her employer and her haven, abruptly closed.

[NYT] Should Prostitution Be a Crime?

To read the entire article and see related photos and videos, go to: http://nyti.ms/26WF0wG


Should Prostitution Be a Crime?
A growing movement of sex workers and activists is making the decriminalization of sex work a feminist issue.

By EMILY BAZELONMAY 5, 2016

Last November, Meg Muñoz went to Los Angeles to speak at the annual West Coast conference of Amnesty International. She was nervous. Three months earlier, at a meeting attended by about 500 delegates from 80 countries, Amnesty voted to adopt a proposal in favor of the “full decriminalization of consensual sex work,” sparking a storm of controversy. Members of the human rights group in Norway and Sweden resigned en masse, saying the organization’s goal should be to end demand for prostitution, not condone it. Around the world, on social media and in the press, opponents blasted Amnesty. In Los Angeles, protesters ringed the lobby of the Sheraton where the conference was being held, and as Muñoz tried to enter, a woman confronted her and became upset as Muñoz explained that, as a former sex worker, she supported Amnesty’s position. “She agreed to respect my time at the microphone,” Muñoz told me. “That didn’t exactly happen” — the woman and other critics yelled out during her panel — “but I understand why it was so hard for her.”

Muñoz was in the middle of a pitched battle over the terms, and even the meaning, of sex work. In the United States and around the globe, many sex workers (the term activists prefer to “prostitute”) are trying to change how they are perceived and policed. They are fighting the legal status quo, social mores and also mainstream feminism, which has typically focused on saving women from the sex trade rather than supporting sex workers who demand greater rights. But in the last decade, sex-worker activists have gained new allies. If Amnesty’s international board approves a final policy in favor of decriminalization in the next month, it will join forces with public-health organizations that have successfully worked for years with groups of sex workers to halt the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS, especially in developing countries. “The urgency of the H.I.V. epidemic really exploded a lot of taboos,” says Catherine Murphy, an Amnesty policy adviser.

Onstage, wearing a white blouse with lace, her face framed by glasses and straight brown hair, Muñoz, who is 43, looked calm and determined as she leaned into the microphone to tell her story. She started escorting at 18, after she graduated from high school in Los Angeles County, picking up men at a dance club a couple of times a week and striking deals to have sex for $100 or so, at a hotel or their apartments. She had a part-time job as a restaurant hostess, but she liked feeling desired and making money on the side to spend on clothes and entertainment. “I really, really did love the work,” she told her Amnesty audience of more than 100. “I was a little reckless.” The same recklessness led her to methamphetamine. When her parents found out she was using, they sent her to rehab. She stopped escorting and using drugs and found a serious boyfriend. When she was 24, the relationship ended, and around that time her parents sold their house. Muñoz started living on her own for the first time. With rent and car insurance to pay, and a plan to save for college, escorting became her livelihood. “I was moving toward a goal, and sex work helped me do that,” Muñoz told the crowd.

A few years later, however, another ex-boyfriend, with whom she was still close, started to take advantage of the underground nature of Muñoz’s work. At first, she told me, he asked her to pay to get his car back after it was towed. Then he started demanding more money and dictating when she worked and which clients she saw. Muñoz didn’t exactly seem like a trafficking victim; she was driving her own car, going to school and paying her expenses. But looking back, she says that’s the way she sees herself. “Because the work I was doing was illegal, he started to hold it over my head. He blackmailed me by threatening to tell everyone, including my family.”

The man was violent, and Muñoz extricated herself with the help of a friend, whom she later married. Haunted by the control her ex-boyfriend had exerted over her, she founded in 2009 a small faith-based group called Abeni near her home in Orange County, to help other women escape from prostitution, as she had. A couple of years later, Muñoz, who now has four children, started letting herself remember the period earlier in her life when escorting served her well, as a source of income and even stability. Struggling internally, she had a “crisis of conscience,” she says, and came to regret her assumptions about what was necessarily best for Abeni’s clients. She stopped taking on new ones, and then turned Abeni into one of the few groups in the country that helps people either leave sex work or continue doing it safely.

At the Amnesty conference, Muñoz told the crowd that she thinks decriminalization would have benefits for many people by bringing the sex trade out from underground. “I believe in the empowered sex worker,” she said. “I was one. But the empowered sex worker isn’t representative of the majority of sex workers. It’s O.K. for us to be honest about this.” She was referring to the social and economic divide in the profession. Activists in the sex-workers’ movement tend to be educated and make hundreds of dollars an hour. The words they often use to describe themselves — dominatrix, fetishist, sensual masseuse, courtesan, sugar baby, whore, witch, pervert — can be self-consciously half-wicked.

Some of their concerns can seem far removed from those of women who feel they must sell sex to survive — a mother trying to scrape together the rent, say, or a runaway teenager. People in those situations generally don’t call themselves “sex workers” or see themselves as part of a movement. “It’s not something people we work with would ever talk about,” says Deon Haywood, the director of Women With a Vision in New Orleans, an African-American health collective that works with low-income women and trans clients. Some of them sell sex, Haywood says, because it’s more flexible and pays better than low-wage work at businesses like McDonald’s.

Human rights advocates tend to focus on people in grim circumstances. “Like many feminists, I’m conflicted about sex work,” says Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, which took a stand in favor of decriminalization four years ago. “You’re often talking about women who have extremely limited choices. Would I like to live in a world where no one has to do sex work? Absolutely. But that’s not the case. So I want to live in a world where women do it largely voluntarily, in a way that is safe. If they’re raped by a police officer or a client, they can lay a charge and know it will be investigated. Their kid won’t be expelled from school, and their landlord won’t kick them out.”

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, along with other groups that support decriminalization — U.N.AIDS, the World Health Organization, the Global Commission on H.I.V. and the Law and the Open Society Foundations — acknowledge that there can be grave harms associated with the sex industry, but say that they see changes in the law as a precondition to reducing them. Last year, an analysis in The Lancet predicted that “decriminalization of sex work could have the largest effect on the course of the H.I.V. epidemic,” by increasing access to condoms and medical treatment. Governments can free themselves to crack down on trafficking and under-age prostitution, human rights advocates argue, if they stop arresting consenting adults.

It’s a pragmatic argument. But the sex-workers’ movement also hinges on an ideological conviction — the belief that the criminal law should not be used here as an instrument of punishment or shame, because sex work isn’t inherently immoral or demeaning. It can even be authentically feminist. “Once you’ve done it, you always know: When it comes down to it, I have everything I need to survive,” says Anna Saini, a former sex worker who is now a sex-worker activist and law student living in Brooklyn. “That’s powerful.” This view poses a deep challenge to traditional Western feminism, which treats the commercial sex industry as an ugly source of sexual inequality.

The activists themselves are a fractious bunch. They belong to a variety of small and sometimes competing groups and question one another’s bona fides on social media and a blog called Tits and Sass. Women who publicly argue the case for decriminalization tend to be white. Women of color say that it’s harder for them to get an audience; they also don’t want white women to speak for them. Trans women raise similar objections. “Don’t tell my story in support of a cis woman’s story,” Monica Jones, who is black and transgender, cautioned me. She did sex work without qualms to help pay the tuition for her social-work degree at Arizona State University. “If you want to be with me, you’re going to pay me or buy me a ring,” she says frankly of her partners. Two years ago, she accepted a ride to a bar with a man and was found guilty of prostitution; her case became a cause célèbre when she challenged her conviction, saying she was just going out for a beer that night, and won her appeal.

Some opponents of decriminalization call themselves abolitionists, consciously invoking the battle to end slavery as well as the one for equality. “If prostitution is legal, and men can buy women’s bodies with impunity, it’s the extreme sexualization of women,” says Yasmeen Hassan, the global executive director of Equality Now, a women’s rights group that campaigns against trafficking. “They’re sexual objects. What does that mean for how professional women are seen? And if women are sex toys you can buy, think about the impact on relationships between men and women, in marriage or otherwise.”

The United States has some of the world’s most sweeping laws against prostitution, with more than 55,000 arrests annually, more than two-thirds of which involve women. Women of color are at higher risk of arrest. (In New York City, they make up 85 percent of people who are arrested.) So are trans women, who are more likely to do sex work because of employment discrimination. The mark left by a criminal record can make it even harder to find other employment. In Louisiana five years ago, 700 people, many of them women of color and trans women, were listed on the sex-offender registry for the equivalent of a prostitution misdemeanor. Women With a Vision, Deon Haywood’s group, won a lawsuit to remove them in 2013.

Because abolitionists see these women as victims, they generally oppose arresting them. But they want to continue using the criminal law as a weapon of moral disapproval by prosecuting male customers, alongside pimps and traffickers — though this approach still tends to entangle sex workers in a legal net.

Last July, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an abolitionist group, accused Amnesty of supporting “a system of gender apartheid,” in which some women are “set apart for consumption by men,” in a letter with 400 signatories, including Gloria Steinem, Lena Dunham, Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep. Anna Saini, the Brooklyn sex-worker activist, went from feeling betrayed by the celebrities to feeling victorious. “They threw all this fame and name recognition at us, and Amnesty is still doing what’s right,” she said. “That was super exciting.” The fight has become, Liesl Gerntholtz of Human Rights Watch says, “the most contentious and divisive issue in today’s women’s movement.”

The battle lines among American feminists over selling sex were drawn in the 1970s. On one side were radical feminists like the writer Andrea Dworkin and the lawyer and legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon. They were the early abolitionists, condemning prostitution, along with pornography and sexual violence, as the most virulent and powerful sources of women’s oppression. “I’ve tried to voice the protest against a power that is dead weight on you, fist and penis organized to keep you quiet,” wrote Dworkin, who sold sex briefly around the age of 19, when she ran out of money on a visit to Europe.

Other feminists, who called themselves “sex positive,” saw sex workers as subverters of patriarchy, not as victims. On Mother’s Day 1973, a 35-year-old former call girl named Margo St. James founded a group in San Francisco called Coyote, for “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.” Its goal was to decriminalize prostitution, as a feminist act. In its heyday, Coyote threw annual Hooker’s Balls, where drag queens and celebrities mixed with politicians and police. It was a party: In 1978, a crowd of 20,000 filled the city’s Cow Palace, and St. James entered riding an elephant.

By the 1980s, Dworkin’s argument condemning prostitution moved into the feminist mainstream, with the support of Gloria Steinem, who began rejecting the term “sex work.” St. James and the sex-positivists were relegated to the fringes.

The abolitionists moved into the fight against global labor trafficking in the 1990s, focusing on sex trafficking, though most estimates suggest that the majority of trafficking victims are forced into domestic, agricultural or construction work. The abolitionists wanted to erase the traditional legal distinction between forced and consensual prostitution by cracking down on all of it as trafficking. In 1998, they tried to persuade President Bill Clinton — and Hillary Clinton, who was the honorary chairwoman of the Clinton administration’s council on women — to adopt their broad definition in an international crime treaty and a federal trafficking bill. It was a striking effort to expand and stiffen criminal punishment, a strategy Elizabeth Bernstein, a Barnard anthropologist who studies sex work and trafficking, termed “carceral feminism.” Abolitionists “have relied upon strategies of incarceration as their chief tool of ‘justice,’ ” she wrote in 2007. They lost the fight to define all prostitution as trafficking during the Clinton administration. “Those were depressing years,” Donna Hughes, an abolitionist researcher and women’s studies professor at the University of Rhode Island, said in an interview in National Review in 2006.

When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Hughes and other abolitionists formed a coalition with faith-based groups, including evangelical Republicans, to lobby the new president. The Bush administration funded Christian groups, like the International Justice Mission, to rescue girls and women abroad. I.J.M. helped to raid brothels in Cambodia, Thailand and India, working with local police officers who broke down doors while American TV cameras rolled. Donations poured in to I.J.M. from the United States.

But local human rights and women’s groups complained about the tactic. After some raids by police forces in India and Indonesia, girls and women were deported, detained in abusive institutions and coerced into sex with the police, according to a 2005 bulletin by the World Health Organization and the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. Two years earlier, when I.J.M. reported that there were minors in a brothel in Thailand, the police raided it and locked the women who were working there in an orphanage. The women strung together bedsheets to escape from a second-story window.

Françoise Girard was director of the public-health program at the Open Society Foundations when she met with Gary Haugen, the leader of I.J.M., and Holly Burkhalter, a senior adviser, in 2007. “I.J.M. said, ‘If we can save one girl, it’s worth it,’ ” says Girard, who is now president of the International Women’s Health Coalition. “I said, ‘What happens to the girls?’ And they couldn’t answer.” Burkhalter says she doesn’t remember Girard’s question, but the police did not permit I.J.M. to go on the raid in Thailand. “If we had, it would have gone much better,” she says, adding that now, when I.J.M. helps with raids, “each victim has a case worker.”

The Bush administration also funded abolitionist research on the harmful effects of prostitution, prominently featuring references to that work on the State Department’s website. Hughes, the abolitionist women’s-studies professor, denounced strip clubs and lap-dancing in a 2005 report on trafficking that was funded with more than $100,000 from the State Department. Melissa Farley, a psychologist who received Bush funds, wrote in 2000 in the journal Women and Criminal Justice that any woman who claimed to have chosen prostitution was acting pathologically — “enjoyment of domination and rape are in her nature.” Non-abolitionist researchers criticized her for presenting the brutal harm of some experiences of prostitution as the near-universal reality without solid evidence.

In part as a response to lobbying by feminist abolitionists and evangelicals, in 2003 Congress barred groups that aided trafficking victims from receiving federal funds if they supported the “legalization or practice of prostitution.” The same year, President Bush committed $15 billion to the international fight against AIDS, but required all recipients of the funding to sign an anti-prostitution pledge. The result was a head-on collision between AIDS prevention and abolitionist ideas. Brazil turned down $40 million in American funds. Sangram, a public-health and human rights organization that was distributing condoms in Sangli, a red-light district in rural southern India, refused to sign the pledge and returned American funds in 2005, at a time when U.N.AIDS cited it as a trusted source on H.I.V. and human rights. “We were distributing 350,000 condoms a month,” says Meena Seshu, the director of Sangram, who has a master’s degree in social work and has published in The Lancet and won an award from Human Rights Watch. “Do you actually work with people, or do you give them morals? That was the choice.”

The Obama administration continues to fund organizations involved in rescue missions. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the anti-prostitution pledge for groups in the United States, ruling that it violated their free-speech rights. But the decision didn’t apply to foreign groups, which still cannot receive federal funding to fight AIDS if they support the sex-workers’ rights movement.

The current debate over sex work in the United States is often framed as a choice between international legal systems. Abolitionists embrace what they call the Swedish (or Nordic) model. In 1999, at the urging of feminists, Sweden’s Parliament passed the Sex Purchase Act, making it a crime to buy sex. Prostitution itself had not been a crime, but the new law deemed it “a serious harm both to individuals and to society,” giving the legislation a moral underpinning and aiming to “flush the johns out of the Baltic,” as a media campaign declared. A decade later, Sweden announced a reduction in street prostitution by as much as 50 percent and proclaimed the law a success. Though no one had recorded data on street prostitution before the law passed, the claimed drop became the chief selling point for a system that punished men. Yet online advertising for sex increased in Sweden, leading researchers to conclude that the small market was shifting indoors. Norway and Iceland adopted the Swedish model in 2009, and in the last two years, Canada and Northern Ireland enacted modified versions.

Sex-worker activists reject this model. “People think the Swedish state criminalized clients, and not us, because they cared about us, but that was not the case,” says Pye Jakobsson, a Swedish sex worker who is the president of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. “The law is about protecting society, and we’re seen as a threat.” Some sex workers say that criminalizing male behavior pushes them to take greater risks. “Women who worked on the street used to have safe spots where they would tell the client to drive,” Jakobsson explains. “Now clients say no, because of the police. They want to go someplace else remote. How can the woman be safe there?” In December, a Bulgarian sex worker was found brutally murdered in a deserted parking lot at the harbor in Oslo. Her friends — also migrants from the Baltic States, like many women selling sex in Sweden and Norway — looked for her when she went missing. But they did not go to the police until they found her body.

When the police investigate whether a man has bought sex, “they use it as a reason to check women’s documents,” says May-Len Skilbrei, a criminology and sociology professor at the University of Oslo. She says that these inspections can lead to deportations. Sex workers also face the possibility of losing custody of their children and being evicted. “If the police tell the landlord they think you’re escorting out of your apartment, he has to evict you, or he could be prosecuted,“ Skilbrei says. The Norwegian police called a long-running Oslo crackdown on prostitution Operation Homeless.

The Swedish government has been clear that it considers the problems the law causes for sex workers an acceptable form of deterrence, reporting in 2010 that the negative effects “must be viewed as positive from the perspective that the purpose of the law is indeed to combat prostitution.” When France adopted the Swedish model in April, the bill’s sponsor in Parliament said one goal was to “change mentalities.” On social media, American sex workers poured out their sympathy for their French sisters, who were marching in protest.

Sweden may not be a relevant model for the United States, where the kind of hardship that often pushes people into street-level sex work is more widespread and the safety net much weaker. The difference is relevant, says Rachel Lloyd, the founder and C.E.O. of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), based in Central Harlem, which helps about 400 girls and young women in New York annually who have been involved in prostitution. She opposes legalization, because she thinks it will increase trafficking. She visited Stockholm two years ago and found it significant that there are so many family services, that few teenagers are in foster care and that most have access to state-funded universities. “I came away thinking: In the U.S., we’re not there,” she says about adopting the Swedish model. “We don’t have the social services.” Lloyd says that not enough of the tens of millions of dollars in government funds and donations in the United States that go to fight trafficking are used for services, like housing for teenagers leaving foster care; 70 percent of GEMS members have been in that system. “When you’re trying to move forward, you need an apartment,” Lloyd says. “You need to go to school.” (In Sweden, she was also surprised to learn that men who are caught buying sex are fined rather than arrested, paying an amount that depends on their income and generally ranges from $300 to $4500, according to a news report.)

Australia has adopted a very different legal model from Sweden’s. In 1999, the Australian state of New South Wales repealed its criminal laws against prostitution, freeing consenting adults to buy and sell sex and allowing brothels to operate much like other businesses. (Other Australian states have a variety of laws.) Four years later, New Zealand implemented full decriminalization. Abolitionists predicted explosive growth of prostitution. But the number of sex workers stayed flat, at about 6,000 in New Zealand and somewhat more in New South Wales. Condom use among sex workers rose above 99 percent, according to government surveys. Sex workers in brothels in New South Wales report the same level of depression and stress as women in the general population; rates are far higher for women who work on the street, who are also often intravenous drug users. While the New Zealand government has found no evidence that sex workers are being trafficked across the country’s border, last November, the Parliament of New South Wales gave the police more power to monitor brothels, after reports that some were linked to organized crime and prosecutions for “sexual servitude” and exploitation. One involved a Thai woman who was recruited in Bangkok and told she would learn to be a hairdresser.

A couple of years ago, a Seattle dominatrix and outspoken activist who goes by the name Mistress Matisse flew to Australia for three weeks and spent a week working. “I just had to see what it was like,” she says. At home, she writes for The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly, and frequently tweets about the practice and politics of sex work to her 27,000 Twitter followers.

In Australia, Matisse worked at a small brothel called the Golden Apple (small bar, six bedrooms) in Sydney, which is in New South Wales, and a larger one called Gotham City. “I thought: I won’t be Mistress Matisse. I’ll just be a girl doing full service” — intercourse — “which I hadn’t done for years,” she says. She saw three or four clients a night and then went to the beach.

Matisse contrasted working in Australia with working in a brothel in Nevada several years ago. She much preferred Australia. Nevada limits legal prostitution to a small number of brothels in rural areas, and they are subject to strict licensing requirements. “In Australia, you go home every night, and you can have a cigarette, go on a date, stay in a normal head space,” Matisse said. “In Nevada, you had to be in the brothel 24/7. It was like a cross between summer camp and a women’s prison.” Most prostitution in the state takes place illegally outside the brothels, in Las Vegas and Reno, with more freedom but also more risk.

Germany has a similar two-tiered market. The country became a growing destination for sex tourism after introducing in 2002 new regulations for the legal sex trade, with an estimated 400,000 sex workers. Migrant women working underground, some of whom are lured into crossing the border, face the same threat of deportation as in Sweden. Meanwhile, licensing requirements raised the cost of setting up brothels, favoring chains and big businesses, including a 12-story, neon-lit brothel in Cologne. “What’s strange is how industrial the brothels are,” says Skilbrei, the professor at the University of Oslo. “They control the women, for example with health checks.” That’s not the model sex workers are fighting for, because it diminishes their autonomy.

Amnesty distinguishes the laws in Germany (and the Netherlands, where sex work is legal but regulated by local authorities) from those in New Zealand and Australia, which place “greater control into the hands of sex workers to operate independently, self-organize in informal cooperatives and control their own working environments,” the human rights group states. Melissa Farley, the psychologist and abolitionist researcher, rejects all of these models. “The state functions as a pimp, collecting taxes, which I consider blood money,” she wrote in an email last December. In the most recent government research, a 2008 survey of 770 sex workers by the New Zealand government, most reported that they were not likely to report violence to the police, which the government attributed to their sense of stigma. Farley sees this as proof that “wherever prostitution exists, the harm goes with it, regardless of legal status.”

To Amnesty, the lesson is that decriminalization isn’t like flipping a switch — it takes time for attitudes to shift. There are signs that this has begun: In the 2008 New Zealand survey, 40 percent of sex workers also said they felt a sense of camaraderie and belonging, suggesting that their relationships with one another may provide an antidote to stigma. Annah Pickering, who does street outreach for the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, describes a more recent dynamic with the police that would be unthinkable almost anywhere else. “We used to wave the police down for help, and they’d keep driving, but now they take sex workers’ complaints seriously,” she said. She told me about an incident in South Auckland last year. “One client negotiated with a street worker; she did the act, and he refused to pay. She waved a cop down, and he told the client he had to pay and took him to the A.T.M. to get the money.”

Sixty years ago, after Gloria Steinem graduated from Smith College, she spent two years in India on a fellowship observing village-based land reform. Returning to the country in 2014, she called prostitution “commercial rape,” making headlines. Until recently, Indian feminists shared Steinem’s views of prostitution, but many have gradually shifted their thinking. In 2014, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the chairwoman of India’s National Commission on Women, came out in favor of decriminalization, saying it would help protect sex workers from violence and improve their health care. Reaction within India was mixed. But the refusal of Americans like Steinem to rethink their broad-brush condemnation of sex work, or the wisdom of rescue tactics, angers some feminists there. “Why have you locked yourself into saving sex workers in India and not engaged with the larger women’s movement?” asked Geeta Misra, who runs the human rights group C.R.E.A. in New Delhi, which tries to build feminist leadership and expand sexual and reproductive freedom.

The debate shifted in India largely because of the role of the country’s sex-worker collectives, which are among the largest in the world, and which exert a social and political force that has no parallel in the United States. Founded in the early 1990s, the collectives first proved adept at helping to slow the spread of H.I.V. Melinda Gates went to Sonagachi, the red-light district in the city of Kolkata, in 2004 and wrote in The Seattle Times about a sex worker named Gita and her peers, who “have helped to increase condom use from zero to 70 percent in their district, and to reduce H.I.V. infection rates to 7 percent — compared with rates as high as 66 percent among sex workers elsewhere.” Gates concluded by announcing that the foundation she created with her husband, Bill Gates, would spend $200 million to fight H.I.V. in India, an amount later raised to $338 million.

The sex-worker collective in Sonagachi, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (D.M.S.C., the “Unstoppable Women Committee”), now has 65,000 members and runs schools for the children of sex workers, who often face discrimination, and has established banks where sex workers can open accounts. In rural Sangli, 6,000 people belong to Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (or VAMP, “Sex Workers Fight Injustice”), an offshoot of Sangram, the public-health group.

. . . .

To read the entire article and see related photos and videos, go to: http://nyti.ms/26WF0wG

[Devex] The next UN secretary-general: A candidate vision cheat sheet

https://www.devex.com/news/the-next-un-secretary-general-a-candidate-vision-cheat-sheet-88014

The next UN secretary-general: A candidate vision cheat sheet

By Jenny Lei Ravelo @JennyLeiRavelo12 April 2016

The international development community is in for another first in the history of the United Nations.

The eight official candidates vying for the position of the next U.N. secretary-general will introduce themselves to the world as they present their vision for the global body and answer hot topic questions presented by member state representatives and civil society actors — an exercise never before asked of candidates in a usually closed-door process.

The informal dialogues will be broadcast on the U.N.’s Web TV beginning at 9 a.m. EST in New York, starting Tuesday April 12 and running through April 14. Each candidate is allotted a total of two hours as part of the three-day program. But with only 10 minutes for their vision statement, candidates will be challenged to make some cuts in their speeches — considering candidates’ original vision statements range from four to 20 pages long.

Devex combed through each candidate’s vision statement, published on the website of the U.N. General Assembly president, to get a better look at how each plans to address some of the important issues facing the world — and particularly the U.N.

Ahead of the dialogues, here’s what the official candidates have to say.

António Guterres

The former U.N. high commissioner for refugees focused on a wide range of issues, from mainstreaming human rights across the U.N. system to the U.N. committing to a “culture of prevention.”

But one of Guterres’ notable visions is on boosting the U.N. brand to be seen as a trustworthy body capable of providing protection to all.

“The SG must stand firmly for the reputation of the U.N. and its dedicated staff. Leading by example and imposing the highest ethical standards on everyone serving under the U.N. flag. In particular, elevating the prestige of the blue helmet, the soldier standing for peace, and eradicating, once and for all, the exploitative and abusive conduct of those U.N. agents who do not represent what the organization stands for,” he said.

The official candidate of Portugal also touched on changing attitudes within the U.N. system: making it less bureaucratic, adopting simplified processes and becoming more field oriented. He underlined the importance of addressing gaps in staffing within the U.N. system, particularly on gender and regional diversity, and placed emphasis on thoughtful senior staff selection.

Danilo Türk

The Slovenian diplomat and professor of international law stressed the importance of developing partnerships with member states, regional bodies, civil society actors, the private sector and academia to “achieve real results.” In the field of peacekeeping, he named working closely with the African Union as deserving of special attention.

He also identified what he thinks are the three key areas of work for the United Nations, namely maintenance of international peace and security, the catalytic role the U.N. secretary-general must play in the implementation of new global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris agreement on climate change, and the mainstreaming of human rights in the U.N. system.

On U.N. reform, meanwhile, he underscored having gender balance as a “leading and sustained priority.”

Helen Clark

The former New Zealand prime minister opened her statement by promising to act honestly, listen and work with everyone and give her all to the U.N. and its member states.

She uses her vision statement to outline just how she feels the U.N. can deliver for current and future generations. She speaks of a “practical and effective” body, which she would achieve by focusing on results, delivering real transparency, investing in people and performance and championing collaboration and efficiency.

Clark didn’t shy away from stressing that the U.N. has existing weaknesses that must be recognized first.

“Over the past 70 years its ability to implement the critical mandates agreed by member states has diminished,” the statement reads. “It is important that the United Nations is transparent and frank about what it can and cannot do.”

As secretary-general, she plans to carry her commitment to create a streamlined, smart operation from UNDP, as evidenced by her multiple mentions of focusing on recruitment, investing in people, rewarding talent and expecting “the exceptional.” The current United Nations Development Program administrator closes her vision statement with a Maori proverb stressing that the most important thing in the world is people.

Igor Lukšić

The next secretary-general’s role is not to reinvent the wheel, he says, but the former prime minister of Montenegro has a list of reforms and proposed new initiatives in his vision for the U.N.

On peace and security, for example, he proposed setting up a peace operations group encompassing key under-secretary generals from various U.N. departments, such as the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. And he suggests the U.N. Project Office on Governance be closely supervised by the secretary-general and his or her deputy.

He stressed the importance of the U.N. better communicating the 2030 agenda to all citizens, proposing to do this is by appointing new or reorienting some existing special envoys for every SDG.

On internal reforms, meanwhile, he proposed changing the U.N. Development Group to the U.N. Sustainable Development Group, to be co-chaired by the UNDP administrator and the high commissioner on human rights. The secretary-general should provide a more defined role for the U.N. deputy secretary general — while ensuring gender and geographical balance in appointment — and proposed the latter be set up office in Nairobi.

He also spoke of opening the debate on transforming the Human Rights Council to a principal body and considering a U.N. legally binding instrument on addressing violence against women.

Irina Bokova

The UNESCO director-general touched on a wide array of topics, from more effective multilateralism to the sustainable development agenda. But one of the more defined items in her vision is on prevention, and she said the U.N. must “mobilize every pillar of the [system] to bring mediation and prevention to the fore of all efforts.”

To do this, the U.N. needs to strengthen its preventive role by investing in diplomacy and reviewing the body’s approach to peacekeeping, she said.

In regards to the SDGs, the Bulgarian politician believes in focusing on least-developed countries, including small island developing states. But she noted middle-income countries should not be left behind, as they continue to need support to address inequalities and boost progress through the promotion of good governance and rule of law. And on women’s empowerment, she highlighted the importance of working with governments and civil society to address violence against women and girls.

Touching on the U.N. system, meanwhile, she said she will promote “synergy between the member states and the secretary-general in order to achieve rationalization and optimization of management, administrative costs and human resources development.”

Natalia Gherman

The former deputy prime minister of Moldova is banking on partnerships to get the job done at the United Nations. Gherman emphasized the importance of the U.N. engaging with regional organizations for maintenance of peace and security, for example, and working with relevant stakeholders in delivering on the promises of several global frameworks such as the 2030 agenda, the climate agreement in Paris, and the Addis Ababa action agenda.

The U.N. secretary-general candidate is also looking to advance partnerships with member states when it comes to pushing for human rights reforms and policies at the national level.

But to be a credible proponent of universal human rights, the U.N. should abide by the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion or culture in administrative decisions, as well as in its operations.

Internally, the U.N. secretary-general should implement a zero tolerance policy on mismanagement, fraud, abuse, corruption and unethical behavior, she stressed, and senior managers should be selected on basis of merit and expertise, but also ensuring gender and geographical balance.

Srgjan Kerim

The former foreign minister of Macedonia’svision for the U.N. spans 20 pages. He focuses on reforms, including of the Security Council and General Assembly, but also specific targets that he aims to implement if he secures the position.

One of his goals is implementing a more active, coherent and inclusive U.N. system. To do so, he plans to set up concrete targets and deadlines for implementing management reforms. On gender equality, he aims to have an equal distribution of men and women in managerial positions at the secretariat by the end of his five-year term as secretary-general.

Kerim also talked about effective resource management, and he plans to establish set regulations in terms of dealing with U.N. consultants, and, like Lukšić, move forward in improving the U.N.’s mobility framework.

The next secretary-general, he said, needs to be “more visible and demonstrate leadership in terms of engaging in mediation.”

Vesna Pusić

The current deputy speaker of the Croatian parliament based her vision and policy priorities for the U.N. on her country’s experience post-Cold War. She has no illusions about the organization, and, like UNDP Administrator Clark, didn’t hold back from speaking of the body’s flaws and limitations.

“Too often, the U.N. is given an impossible mission that is then under-resourced. This was the case of the UNPROFOR mission in Bosnia, where 25,000 lightly armed blue helmets couldn’t keep peace in the midst of a war. Such missions destroy morale, cost lives and discredit the United Nations itself,” she said.

But she also talked about what the U.N. is capable of doing, and banked on those strengths to support her argument of how, despite its flaws, the U.N. continues to be an indispensable institution today.

What she aims for as the next secretary-general is to focus on enhancing the quality of the U.N.’s diplomacy, appointing personalities such as Sergio Vieira de Mello, Lakhdar Brahimi and Staffan de Mistura, the secretary-general’s special envoy for Syria. And she hopes to see women on the list too. She also would like to strengthen the U.N.’s mediation efforts by strengthening the Department for Political Affairs, among others.

And as for handling the multiple responsibilities of a U.N. secretary-general, Pusic said she’ll conduct meetings on management and administrative issues on a daily basis when she’s in New York. To do this, she hopes to rely on a strong management team by appointing quality people in key senior positions — but she won’t hesitate in removing poor performers.

https://www.devex.com/news/the-next-un-secretary-general-a-candidate-vision-cheat-sheet-88014

About the author

Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo

Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex senior reporter based in Manila. Since 2011, she has covered a wide range of development and humanitarian aid issues, from leadership and policy changes at DfID to the logistical and security impediments faced by international and local aid responders in disaster-prone and conflict-affected countries in Africa and Asia. Her interests include global health and the analysis of aid challenges and trends in sub-Saharan Africa.