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Binder Giveaway! #1

2/14/2020

Exciting news rural queers! We’re partnering with Shapeshifters for some binder giveaways! Our rural trans and nonbinary community deserve access to resources that makes us feel whole and supported. It’s a win, win, win! Enter to win and be one of 5 people this February that get themselves a free binder. We will select winners on February 27th!

Win: Feeling good in your body with a custom made binder just for you!
Win: Creating connections with rural queer businesses and organizations!
Win: Being your fabulous rural trans/ nonbinary self!

This is our 1st giveaway, and there will be more opportunities in the future.

A pile of multi pattern and color binders stacked on top of each other.

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Out in the Open statement on H. 568, 569, and 651 - A trio of proposed legislation affecting the lives of sex workers in Vermont

1/16/2020

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Out in the Open stands with sex workers throughout Vermont, in all rural places, and in all places. Sex work is work. It is long past the time to decriminalize sex work in Vermont and we are pleased that this conversation is on the table during this legislative session. Justice for sex workers is interconnected and part of our fight for collective liberation.

There are three bills being currently considered by the VT State Judiciary Committee: H. 568, 569, and 651.

H. 568 & 569 (being considered together) would decriminalize sex work in Vermont while retaining federal human trafficking laws (H. 569) and form a Sex Work Study Committee (H. 568) to continue digging into updating VT law as relating to sex workers. We are strongly in favor of decriminalizing sex work in Vermont and urge support of H. 569 in this regard.

We understand that H. 569 has a sibling piece of proposed legislation, H. 568, “An Act Relating to Human Trafficking and Prostitution” intended to create a Study Committee to modernize Vermont’s laws with regard to sex work. We applaud this effort to look at and improve (or remove) laws governing sex work in Vermont. We also have some specific feedback on this proposed bill:

The Study Committee must include participation from those directly involved in the practice of sex work
Attendance at meetings of the Study Committee must include per diems for sex workers who are participating
- Those practicing sex work who are participating in the Study Committee should be assured of anonymity (if desired by that person) throughout the process and also be assured of freedom from related prosecution while new laws are being put in place
  - sex workers’ knowledge and expertise must be a part of these processes regardless of their desire or ability to publicly share their identity. We don’t presume that all sex workers involved in this process would want to remain anonymous. But those who need to or desire to protect their identity should be able to do so.
Present instances of “he or she” (“his or her” etc.) should be remedied to language inclusive of people of all genders.

H. 651 provides specific guidance on what would become the only legal way(s) to practice sex work. Regulation legislation can create harm for people practicing sex work and have greater negative impacts on those who are also street-based and/or low-income and/or people of color. Proposed regulations like those described in the current text of H. 651 create the possibility of increased interactions with police, instances of incarceration, and fines. Out in the Open does not support H. 651 as currently written.

We’d like to address some specific concerns with the current version of H. 651:

Presently, there is no mention of sex worker involvement in decision-making. We believe sex workers must be directly involved in all phases of the creation of any regulatory apparatus
- sex workers who are involved should be assured of anonymity (for those want it) as a part of the process (similarly as outlined above).
The stipulation that work only happen in designated facilities has potential to create harm through various means such as concentrating power in the hands of a small number of facility owners, continuing to hold street-based work outside the regulations (and thus presumably making those folks subject to continued criminalization), disallowing rural people from participating in decriminalized work due to limited licenses being available for facilities and/or potentially having to relocate or travel long distances to work in a licensed facility.
- Location-based work in specified facilities is not preferable or safer for everyone.
- When we limit options for folks practicing sex work, it creates less safety. (See FOSTA/SESTA…)
Add specific language that until explicit regulations are in place, people practicing sex work for money or goods will not be prosecuted.

Some questions that we have:

What happens to folks who are practicing sex work in ways other than those specifically stipulated in the regulations?
What type of providers will be allowed to approve the health certification?
- This is a huge problem in rural areas where there is limited access to providers of any kind.
Who decides what items are included on the health certification? And then what items are included to pass the certification?
Do other professional certifications require a criminal background check?
- If someone has been engaged in sex work and it has previously been criminalized, that poses an obvious problem to passing a criminal background check.
Are there other professional licenses that are limited in number?
Is there money associated with this bill to aide in public education, in supporting sex worker participation in creating regulations, and in financial aide to achieve licensure, etc.?

For more resources on sex workers rights organizing:

Red Umbrella Fund
Third Wave Fund Sex Worker Giving Circle
Jacobin Magazine “Sex Workers’ Rights are Workers’ Rights”
Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights
Decriminalize Sex Work
Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP)
Swarm Collective
Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP)

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Welcome!

1/14/2020

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Welcome to the Out in the Open blog! We are currently in the process of migrating our archived blog posts, please be patient with us. If you're interested in writing a guest blog for us (reflections on being rural and queer, a skill you want to share, etc), please reach out to eva@weareoutintheopen.org.

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We have always been here; we will always be here

10/26/2018

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This is the text of a speech given by executive director HB Lozito at our Trans Justice Rally in Brattleboro October 25, 2018. Following news of a leaked memo from the Department of Health & Human Services.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for standing together to let everyone know that here in Brattleboro, in Southern Vermont, in Northern New England, rural and small town folks won’t stand for these kinds of attacks on anyone in our community. When they come for one of us, they come for all of us. And this is an incredible showing of belief in that and in the power of community today. So thank you.

Thank you to all the trans folks who came last night and made all of these brilliant signs and who gathered together in community to laugh and rage in the face of this brutal news.

In the shadow of something looming so large, when it’s hard to know what potentially awful fresh hell the U.S. Government will be lobbing against us in the coming years and decades, it can be so easy in these moments to feel and be stopped in our tracks. But we will not be halted on the road to justice! We must ask ourselves what can we do when faced with invalidation of our identities, bodies, and lives?

We can know that our validation comes from so many other places than the State. Our worth comes from us, from our community both on the internet and IRL, from our families chosen and of origin. We are so much more than the sum of the letters on our government issued IDs.

We can RUN for office and VOTE. Not just for those running for national or statewide office, vote for people you want to represent you as Town Meeting Reps, as Selectboard members, as State’s Attorneys, and as Weighers of Coal. OK, Weighers of Coal may be less important but if that’s what gets you to the polls, great! Our local and state-based protections and power becoming even more important as these frankly really scary and very real restrictions come down from the Federal level.

As our fabulous Brattleboro Selectboard member, Brandie Starr says, a budget is a moral document. We must get involved in our school and town budget processes so that the sizable resources of our towns go to pay for the things we value and to create the future we want to see.

If you’re here from Massachusetts or know anyone in MA (I’m sure we all do!) we can tell every person in MA to VOTE YES on 3 to continue protecting trans people in that state.

You can let the trans people in your life know that you love us. And not just when this government-related news flares up. We know that being a trans person in this world can be a challenge every day regardless of the news. As the brilliant Ashley Lordes Hunter of the Trans Women of Color Collective often says, “every breath a trans person takes is an act of revolution.” Remember that and hold up the trans folks in your life.

We can donate money, time, and other resources to trans-led organizations like GMC, like Trans Lifeline, Trans Justice Funding Project, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and many others.

We can support and care for trans elders like Miss Major (whose birthday is TODAY!) who was here with us in April and like Ben Power of the Sexual Minority Archives in Holyoke, whose wisdom and guidance we need so very much at this time.

We must remember that Trans people have always been here, and that we will always be here.

And lastly, to the other trans folks here, let’s also hold each other up. We in the LGBTQ+ community are experts at tearing each other down. Now is the time to lovingly support each other, to foment our rage together, and to work on pulling each other through this wild time together emerging from the other side more powerful than ever.

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