For the Second Edition of the Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker manual, we’ve updated our examples, refined our approached, and added more goodies.

Here are some of the subjects covered in the materials:

• Typical variations of mainstream media stories about the sex industry
• Deciding to be part of a story
• Crafting your message
• Interview tips and tricks
• Writing press releases, letters to the editor, and op-eds
• Strategies for events and earned media
• *NEW* How to create your own podcast

The manual also includes lots and lots of examples of both mainstream media and content produced by sex workers.

Click the cover image to download the pdf!

We will be accepting applications until February 17, 2010. Accepted applicants will be informed no later than March 1.

Our inaugural training in 2009 yielded:

• A video public service announcement, I Am A Sex Worker, which has been viewed 30,000 times online and has screened at events and film festivals in San Francisco, Amsterdam, and other cities;
• Workshop participant Megan Andelloux has used her training to assist her in many media appearances debating her right to open her Center for Sexual Health and Pleasure in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Watch her on ABC News and read her letter to the Providence Journal;
• Read What Speak Up Did For Me by participant Calico Lane

The impetus for developing Speak Up is based on a real need expressed by members of our community for more resources and skills training on how to (a) respond to media requests effectively and safely, (b) engage with the mainstream media in order to get a particular message out, and (c) create our own media products. Sex workers, like many other marginalized communities, find the mainstream media a crucial site of resistance due to the harmful misrepresentations and stereotypes that it promulgates. This is especially true when the job the sex worker does is illegal and becomes further compounded by factors such as race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, relative poverty, drug use, family status, immigration status, and age. All too often, sex workers simply choose not to engage with the media due to potential social and legal repercussions or sex workers get in over their heads and are unwittingly exploited by the media without getting anything out of it.

Our seminar teaches sex workers how to evaluate media requests and to formulate strategic responses to the media in a variety of formats. Sex worker participants learn to write press releases, op-ed pieces, and letters to the editor, build a press list, pitch a story to a reporter, and pitch their own freelance journalism to an editor. Attendees also get a crash course on how to start their own podcast, blog, or video podcast. Additionally, seminars will contain practical hands-on activities and role plays (like video taping a simulated interview with a television reporter). We will also have participants look to already existing nationally-focused sex worker media and talk about how sex workers can contribute to these and other national efforts.

In addition to the training and skills, workshop participants will get:

• A $50 stipend
• Dinner on April 9th, breakfast and lunch on April 10 & 11th
• The opportunity to apply for a $500 grant to continue their media advocacy work

The workshop is limited to ten participants on the basis of a submitted application (below). Only self-identified current and former sex workers are invited to apply, to ensure that all feel comfortable during the seminar. The workshop is lead by two English speakers, so participants must be fluent in English. Our current budget does not include funds for travel stipends and housing for those coming from out of town, however, we will do our best to accommodate the travel/housing needs of all successful applicants.

Speak Up is funded by sponsorships and sales from the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar.

Questions? Email us at info [at] sexworkawareness.org

Applications for the 2010 training are closed.

The bulk of Hughes’ piece is criticism edging into mocking the sex workers who spoke up at the hearing. One of the women she picks on is Megan Andelloux (pictured above), who was a participant in the first Speak Up media training that Sex Work Awareness did in April.

Ms Hughes had this to say about Megan:

Then a tattooed woman, calling herself a “sexologist and sex educator,” spoke against the bill. She is also a reporter for a prostitutes’ magazine called $pread. (I couldn’t make this stuff up!)

And this is what Megan had to say in return:

Let me introduce myself: I’m the nationally certified sex-educator and derogatorily labeled “tattooed lady” mentioned by Ms. Donna Hughes in Wednesday’s paper. It seems that the would-be chairwoman of URI’s women’s studies program (she is not) was so put off by my appearance that she called into question my credentials. Putting quotation marks around my profession was insulting. And yes, it is not “made up” that I am a contributor to the sex-workers magazine $pread. Is it so shocking that sex-workers can read?

This “Opinion piece” was nothing more than an exercise in highbrow name calling. She attacked the opponents to her pet bill as “a sordid circus”, as “smelling of other odors”, and as projecting the atmosphere of “a carnival”. As an alum of URI (‘97), I would have expected faculty of our honored University to develop a reputation for science and truth. Instead, it seems that Ms. Hughes would rather resort to right-wing scare tactics. Perhaps if “the Professor” really cared about women, she wouldn’t attack us for the way that we look.

Megan J. Andelloux, AASECT, ACS

Here are some of the subjects covered in the PDF:

• Typical variations of mainstream media stories about the sex industry
• Deciding to be part of a story
• Crafting your message
• Interview tips and tricks
• Writing press releases, letters to the editor, and op-eds
• Strategies for events and earned media
• New media best practices and took kits

The manual also includes lots and lots of examples of both mainstream media and content produced by sex workers.

Click the cover image above to download!

Is there something you’d like to learn more about? Are you a sex worker support organization that is in the midst of a media onslaught? Think your community could benefit from a media training workshop? Get in touch with us.

Sex Work Awareness recently implemented its first day-long Speak Up media training workshop, which took place in New York at the Harm Reduction Coalition in mid-April 2009. At the end of the day, the workshop participants made a minute long public service announcement video and audio recording.

Also available, click to download (and feel free to include in your podcast!) AUDIO: I Am a Sex Worker

“Speak Up! Media Skills for the Empowered Sex Worker” is a day-long seminar offered by the New York-based organization Sex Work Awareness (SWA). The workshop is based on $pread Magazine’s successful “Journalism for Sex Workers” training, which was developed by two of SWA’s founders in July 2006 for the “Revisioning Prostitution Policy: Creating Space for Sex Worker Rights and Challenging Criminalization” Desiree Alliance conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The impetus for developing the seminar was based on a real need expressed by members of our community for more resources and skills training on how to (a) respond to media requests effectively and safely, (b) engage with the mainstream media in order to get a particular message out, and (c) create our own media products. Sex workers, like many other marginalized communities, find the mainstream media a crucial site of resistance due to the harmful misrepresentations and stereotypes that it promulgates. This is especially true when the job the sex worker does is illegal and becomes further compounded by factors such as race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, relative poverty, drug use, family status, immigration status, and age. All too often, sex workers simply choose not to engage with the media due to potential social and legal repercussions or sex workers get in over their heads and are unwittingly exploited by the media without getting anything out of it.

Our seminar utilizes popular education techniques and teaches sex workers how to evaluate media requests and to formulate strategic responses to the media in a variety of formats. Sex worker participants learn to write press releases, op-ed pieces, and letters to the editor, build a press list, pitch a story to a reporter, and pitch their own freelance journalism to an editor. Attendees also get a crash course on how to start their own podcast, blog, or video podcast. Additionally, seminars will contain practical hands-on activities (for instance, we will blog during the workshop) and role plays (like video taping a simulated interview with a television reporter). We will also have participants look to already existing nationally-focused sex worker media (blogs like Bound Not Gagged, internet radio like SWIRL, and print publications like $pread Magazine) and talk about how sex workers can contribute to these and other national efforts.

This is a day-long seminar in which meals will be provided. The workshop is limited to ten participants on the basis of a submitted application; each participant will receive a Flip camera and a $50 stipend. Only self-identified current and former sex workers are invited to apply, to ensure that all feel comfortable during the seminar. The workshop is lead by two English speakers, so participants must be fluent in English.

The flagship workshop in this series was given on April 18th in New York City. We are planning on traveling to other cities and will host another Speak Up workshop in New York as well. If you are not in the New York City area but are interested in participating in a future workshop, please get in touch.

Pictured: the first Speak Up class!