Queer sex worker Elena Jeffreys talks to Katrina Fox about globalised sex work and taking part in the 2020 summit next month.

Born in the country approximately 1000km north of Perth, Elena Jeffreys moved to the city as a teenager.

After a stint at university and delving into the lesbian scene, she found herself among a broader queer community, some of whom were sex workers.

Around 10 years ago she took the plunge and began working as a prostitute – and hasn’t looked back since.

Now living in Sydney, Jeffreys is the President of Scarlet Alliance, a national association that lobbies for the rights of sex workers in Australia.

Next week the organisation, together with its Migration Working Party of multilingual peer educators from sex worker groups across the country, will hold its second annual Globalised Sex Work Forum.

“We’re seeking to expose other advocates, health professionals, members of the gay and lesbian community and people interested in social justice and human rights to the important international work sex worker groups do around the world,” Jeffreys tells SX.

“Our programs in Australia around HIV prevention and sex worker organising are highly influenced by the programs in other regions. We’ve networked together constantly now for two decades ever since the beginning of the HIV epidemic led us to organise in this way. Now more than ever we need to understand that HIV, migration and trafficking issues are a regional issue and can’t be treated just as a national issue.”

Jeffreys’ views on trafficking are seen by some to be controversial. She’s been chosen to speak on behalf of the sex industry at the Rudd government’s 2020 summit next month in which Australians are invited to offer their views on how to move the country forward in a positive manner for all its citizens.

Recent responses on the Sydney Morning Herald website to her article calling for migrant sex workers to be given proper work visas to enter Australia drew criticism from the Adult Business Association as being “too radical”, and anti-trafficking groups such as Project Respect in Melbourne don’t agree with the position taken by Scarlet Alliance – that sex work is a valid form of employment. But Jeffreys is having none of it.

“Our work on trafficking comes directly from our community of multicultural and non-English speaking sex workers in Australia,” she asserts.

“However, groups with an anti-sex work perspective think all sex work is victimising and exploitative so when those groups try to assess the numbers of people experiencing a sex slave environment in Australia they include everyone, whereas what we understand is sex work is work ... we are very lucky in Australia that trafficking is an anomaly; it’s very unusual.

“We understand that not every Asian sex worker in Australia is a sex traffic victim. Myself and other policy makers at Scarlet Alliance and different sex worker organisations know that just like HIV transmission in the sex industry, with the right peer education and prevention programs in place, trafficking can become a thing of the past and be totally eradicated.”

Scarlet Alliance also advocates the rights of HIV-positive sex workers to be able to work without fear of prosecution. “Increased criminalisation of people who are HIV-positive having sex of any kind is going to affect the entire gay and lesbian community,” Jeffreys says. “It’s an attack on our rights.”

Source: SWnews