ACORN and Class-Based Assumptions of Sex Work

            The current ACORN scandal says more about our assumptions of sex work and class than it says about the organization itself. Consider the whom and how of those breaking the story: two white, middle-class conservative students, both with a marked disdain for the organization, decided to expose the criminal mentality of ACORN by seeking advice on the financial side of prostitution. James O’Keefe, the man who posed as a pimp in the videos, even appeared on Fox’s Morning News show wearing a “pimp” costume while discussing his expose.  

            Aside from the questionable journalism ethics, which James Rainey discusses in the LA Times, there is something insidious about the way these activists decided to expose what they called a “thug mentality” in ACORN. I try to picture how this scenario would play out if activists were trying to expose criminal compliance in organizations for the wealthy, but any conservative figures have been ousting themselves so fast lately it seems like a moot point and I can’t imagine anyone deciding to go to a National Right to Life Office and asking them tips on how to break into abortion provider’s offices to cause some damage.

            A somewhat comparable scandal broke this summer with an investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet’s expose of the workings the C Street House in Washington D.C., a building registered as a church (and enjoying considerable below market rent for this status) that served as a home for several members of Congress run by a secretive religious organization called The Family, which was involved with both Senator Ensign and Governor Sanford.

           According to Sharlet, prominent members of The Family sanctioned Ensign paying off his Mistress using millions of dollars in Republican Party Funds while preaching family values. Sharlet also reported that The Family referred to themselves as a Christian mafia. What we should note is that he did his investigative journalism by going into the organization to see what he could see instead of going in with a specific agenda to bust them for their complacency in bankrolling mistresses and promoting extremist religious theology into the U.S. political scene.

            The link is tenuous, but both ACORN and The C Street house received financial windfalls in the form of federal funding (for the former) and substantial below-market rent (for the latter). Both organizations encouraged criminal activity to varying degrees, though the ACORN employees being complacent, even helpful, in the face of sex trafficking minors acted in a manner that is beyond reprehensible.

            But the way in which the activists exposed this is unnerving. Sex work exists in all classes but it is those working in the street, for the lowest pay, that endure the most harassment, danger and incidence of arrests. A disproportionate number of sex workers arrested are women of color, even though women of color make up the minority of sex workers. Adding to this targeting, 85-90% of arrests are women working on the street while these women make up only 20% of sex workers (stats pulled from here).

            Basically, poor women of color are the ones primarily arrested for prostitution, not the Ashley Dupres of the world. In this light, I understand why someone at ACORN might give tax advice to a prostitute. When I was a teen I lived in a low-income apartment complex with my girlfriend who was turning tricks at the time. I’ve spent plenty of time around sex workers before and I will tell you right now that “freelance performance artist” is the most common occupation on paper for sex workers paying taxes. Also, for some people in poor neighborhoods, sex work is part of the everyday reality and when you see your friends or neighbors suffering from targeted arrests, you want to help protect them when no-one else will.

            The activists’ tactics in exposing ACORN play perfectly into our assumptions that sex work is the province of the poor and non-white. They then dramatized the reactions of the few employees dispensing advice on illegal activity and extrapolated this to suggest that the entire organization is full of criminals, instead of providing a balanced report that some of the offices they went to would not go along with their ruse. Not to mention that these were front-end employees, not people higher up in the organization. If several people working for an organization are busted for selling drugs, do we then assume the entire organization is a drug front? Hardly.

            We seem to give a pass for sex workers providing for the upper echelons of society while vilifying those in the lower financial brackets. Somehow, if sex work is surrounded with opulence it becomes a fascinating world that we want to devote a series to, like Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Even public officials caught seeking services from expensive call-girls manage to ride out the storm and continue their political careers. This conceptual divide is best elucidated with the following quote from a sitcom character: “NO! I will not have sex for money! I only have sex for jewels, furs, or mixed securities, like a lady.” As ladylike as a mistress commiting extortion and blackmailing her on-again off-again Senator lover. That’s not a more complex form of prostitution, that’s entrepreneurship!