I was so stoked to spend the week of the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto with sex workers from Thailand, Bangladesh, Cambodia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico and Africa, as well as local friends from Stella in Montreal and Maggie’s in Toronto. Learning about their lives first-hand was one of the most inspiring experiences I’ve had in my 12 years as a sex columnist and as a sex worker activist. Some notes:

Monday, Aug. 14 I find my way through the bustling Global Village to the Stiletto Lounge, where the hookers have booths representing their regions. I locate my colleague Jenn Clamen, an activist from Montreal who apprises me of the gossip. Rumour has it that some of the (groan) AIDSerati will be visiting the Stiletto Lounge and the girls have their panties in a collective bunch hoping it’s Richard Gere, because they’ve started an informal contest to get a picture with him in the famous Pretty Woman poster pose.

Instead, it turns out to be BillandMelindaGates™, hotly pursued by a murder of media. I never really planned on seeing Bill Gates in person, so watching him enter a makeshift hooker parlour while a Hijra was swirling and dancing on a giant bed/stage was... well, let’s just say I couldn’t imagine a more magical setting. The girls unfurl a banner with a photo of Burmese sex workers being abducted from Thai brothels to illustrate that one of the organizations, the International Justice Mission, that Bill and Melinda have aligned themselves with is bad news. Khartini Slamah, a Malaysian transsexual activist, elbows past the press and says, “You’re dumping your money in the wrong place” upon which Bill and Melinda are whooshed away, all in under two minutes.

Tuesday, Aug 15 I attend a panel discussion titled “Sex Work, HIV and Politics” moderated by Jodi Jacobson, a respected American activist who works with an organization called CHANGE (Centre for Health and Gender Equity). The discussion turns to PEPFAR, The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In 2003, Bush’s government created a policy that forces nations to sign a “prostitution pledge,” preventing organizations that empower sex workers from getting U.S. HIV/AIDS funding. Brazil was one country that refused—a whopping $40-million. Such civil societies stood beside their prostitutes, saying they couldn’t do HIV/AIDS prevention and activism without them. Gabriela Leite, a Brazilian sex worker and activist, speaks of the clothing line Brazilian hookers designed called Daspu, meaning “the whore.” All of the models in the line’s ads are sex workers—young, old, fat, skinny, black, white—and it’s been a huge success both in raising positive awareness and money. Fuck you, Bush. Sisters are doing it for themselves!

Wednesday, Aug 16 begins at 10 a.m. The women gather in the Stiletto—bright-eyed despite the open-bar party the previous night hosted by the Open Society Institute—and lead a demonstration. We march around the Global Village yelling, “Sex worker rights are human rights!” We stop outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, then in Simcoe Park beside the CBC building where leaders speak, then outside the convention centre’s media room where we are joined accidentally but enthusiastically by conference co-president Mark Wainberg, as USAID reps are seen bolting down an escalator.

Thursday, Aug. 17 is a press conference called “New Findings on the Impact of U.S. Prostitution Loyalty Oath on HIV Prevention” moderated by Jodi Jacobson. Activists Melissa Ditmore from New York, Gabriela Leite from Brazil and Hazera Bagum from Bangladesh, who just the night before won a Red Ribbon award for her work with the organization Durjoy Nari Shangha, are on the panel. The havoc wreaked by PEPFAR is enragingly transparent in all the literature given out by international groups—condom shortages in sub-Saharan Africa, outreach workers in Cambodia fired for treating sex workers, sex workers turned away from clinics in Thailand. But it is Bagum, breaking down in tears when telling of the 17 drop-in centres around the Bangladesh capital that have been closed for lack of funding, who really drives the point home for me. The DICs not only provide a place for thousands of women to get condoms—the number of which they’re selling now dropping from 73,000 to 30,000 per month—but somewhere for them to rest, wash and gain literacy skills and moral support. For all the stories and pictures of human rights violations heaped on sex workers the world over, it is the image of a woman deprived of the simple dignity of cleaning up after intimate labour that burns in my heart.

Got any questions for Sasha? Email: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM