Girls are not for sale!

Visit The Council of Daughters

I am so incredibly happy and excited to announce a new campaign to raise awareness about child sexual exploitation in the US: Girls Are Not For Sale. Featuring artists like Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, and Sinead O'Connor, the campaign seeks to enlighten and activate people to help combat the sexual exploitation of girls -- find out more about how you can participate by clicking the link above to join the Council of Daughters. I'm a member, and I couldn't be prouder. I hope you'll join me in announcing to the world that girls should be celebrated, not sold!

A GEM of an article

"It was a Friday night at the Bowery Poetry Club, and a group of ethnically diverse young women in their late teens and early twenties were preparing to take the stage. But these girls weren’t performers. They were survivors of New York City’s commercial sex industry..."

Check out this wonderful article about the GEMS party in the Villager this week! Thanks so much to reporter Will McKinley for covering the event, and photographer Andrew Marks for the photo -- more to come!

Friday Night Lights

Thanks so much to those of you who were able to come out on Friday night for the GEMS tenth birthday celebration. It was an exhilarating night, and I’m very glad and grateful that some of you were there to share in it. Watching the girls take the stage and read their work was incredibly powerful and moving – they put so much heart and so much guts into their performances, their heads high and their voices strong – I know I wasn’t the only one who had to sneak a tissue from their pocket to dab at the tears of happiness, pride, and pain they inspired.

Also amazing was the performance by the brilliant Imani Uzuri, who sang in honor of the girls, raising goosebumps throughout the room, and the speech by GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd, who said some very important things I’d like to share with you now, in case you weren’t able to be there in person.

1. Sometimes people ask Rachel if she ever imagined how big and successful the program would grow to be when she started it ten years ago. “And,” she said, “I have to say, I kind of did. I kind of knew that we were going to change things. I kind of knew that young women had the power, and that survivors could be leaders, and survivors could step up and be the experts on the issue, and that we would create a home for girls, and we would create programs and counseling and health care, and all the things we’ve been able to do over the years.”

To hear Rachel say that yeah, she did know that she was going to create a successful, strong, multi-faceted organization, rather than hearing her waffle and shrug and titter and talk about luck or chance or god’s plan or whatever, was so potent and so (I hate this word but) empowering. To hear someone say, “Yeah, I did know that this would be huge, because that’s how I planned it, and that’s the only way huge things happen, is by planning and believing in them” – that’s something I think everyone in the room really needed to hear.

2. But what she didn’t know, she continued, was how much she would gain from GEMS. She spoke about the girls being family to her, and how proud she was of them for being family to each other – “Seeing you really value and support and cheer each other on, and stick behind each other,” she said, “It’s huge.” And this is something I’ve witnessed myself – GEMS girls supporting each other emotionally, lifting their friends’ kids out of their strollers and cooing to them when they cry, lending money or hair products or just words of encouragement to each other. This kind of mutual support between survivors is the core of the GEMS program, and it is beautiful to behold.

3. I think I’ll just go with the transcript here:

“And I have to say that whilst GEMS is the place that I kind of have to come to everyday because it’s my job, it’s also the place that I really want to be at every day. It’s the place that makes me happy. It’s the place where I know that, as much as we try to give you love, I really appreciate all the love that you give us too. I really appreciate the time that you take to teach us stuff. I appreciate the fact that I get to be inspired by your courage and by your strength. I appreciate the fact that you don’t stop, and even when things are really, really tough, and we’ve gone through some difficult situations, I appreciate that you come back, and you give us the opportunity to work with you, and you give us the opportunity to serve you, and it is such a privilege. I can not say it enough – it is such a privilege to work with such an amazing group of phenomenal, resilient, smart, funny, funny as hell young women. I think sometimes people think if you’re working at GEMS and you’re working on this issue, you just kind of, you know, sit around and cry all day, you go home and you drink a lot – and some days you do that. But we get to laugh a lot at GEMS, there’s a lot of fun at GEMS, there’s a lot of joy, and that comes from you guys and your energy and the humor that you bring.”

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Again, this is something I’ve felt personally: GEMS is a place of happiness and hope. There are tough times, and sad stories – unbelievably sad stories, stories that make you want to run out and kill people with machine guns – but there is a lot of love, and a lot of laughter, and a lot of reasons to feel joy there. As Rachel found, I’ve found that GEMS is a place where I feel happy and inspired, and that’s because of the staff and the girls and what they share with each other.

I’m hoping the girls will give me permission, when I see them tomorrow, to post some of their poetry as well, because their voices are irreplaceable, and their stories have got to be heard. But I wanted to get this post up tonight, because I am overdue in thanking the amazing people who supported the event, including Lauren Cerand, Jess Zaino, Bridgit Antoinette Evans, Amanda Stern, Will McKinley, Andrew Marks, Stana Weisburd, Dana Piccoli, Lana Lauriano, Erik Seims, Jen Glick, Heather Fischer, Marsha Blank, luckydave, DJ Jools Palmer, the Bowery Poetry Club, super assistant Georgia Jelatis-Hoke, super parents Larry and Sylvia, super husband Bill Scurry, and of course the entire GEMS family. Thank you!

(If you weren’t able to join us on Friday, please consider donating to GEMS online.)

News-making greatness!

The constantly amazing Girls Write Now is awarded recognition as a 2009 Coming Up Taller Semi-Finalist, chosen by the President's Committee on The Arts and The Humanities! As in, "Oh, the humanities!" Also as in the name of the high school I went to in Chelsea, the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, which will be closing in 2012, because the entire school got an F on everything. And -- see? -- this is where we need more Girls Write Now.

GWN featured last week on NBC News with Brian Williams:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm teaching the memoir section of a Girls Write Now summer series for girls age 14-19, Girls Write New York City. Application deadline is May 15 -- here's the details.

And of course we're less than a week away from the Friday, May 8 birthday party for GEMS, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery at First St., 6-9pm, suggested donation $10. Guest list is filling up fast! RSVP on Facebook, or email janice.erlbaum at gmail.

I can't seem to embed this, but here's GEMS on WABC7 news (about 3:15 into the clip).

AND while I'm posting clips, here's me and Bill on the Bilge Show. News-making greatness!

The Bilge Show, Episode 8 - watch more funny videos

I will love you for a long time

The communal office where I work is on the third floor of a three-story building on a bustling commercial cross street in the Village. On the first floor is a nondescript retail store; a few doors down is a Caribbean fast food place; a few doors further down are a liquor store and a store that sells wigs. You can buy guitars on this block, and jeans, and giant 14-carat gold earrings shaped like hearts. And right downstairs from my office, you can buy sex.

It started out as a nail salon, the business on the second floor. First it was empty, then there were a few weeks of sawing and banging and general disruption while they put in the waxing rooms and redid the floors. Then it was open for business, with a sign out front promising cheap mani-pedis and chair massages, and a quartet of Asian women sitting around the mostly empty salon, waiting for the rare customer to come in and select a bottle of polish from the rainbow rack on the wall.

The salon wasn’t doing so well, it was clear. There were already six or seven nail salons in a two-block radius, and this one was tucked on the second floor, where it attracted few passersby. I considered a chair massage a few times, walking past the salon on my way out of the office, shoulders tight from hunching over my laptop, but never spared the time. Most days, I’d peek in as I passed and see the manicurists reading, or staring out the windows, stone-faced. It seemed obvious that the salon would soon close.

Which it did, for a few weeks, while there was a short recurrence of the banging and sawing. And then it reopened, without the sign out front, without the massage chairs or nailpolish racks. And I started to see them, especially in the evening hours – men, climbing the stairs to the second floor, where they were greeted at the door by a younger version of the manicurists and quickly escorted inside, past the glass front door with its new plastic sheathing shielding the inside from view. 

So maybe the men were getting pedicures, right? Right. It would be sexist of me to assume otherwise, and racist, too – just because the salon was full of young women from Asia didn’t mean there was anything untoward going on inside. And then I saw the ad in the back of New York magazine, the ad promising “table showers” and “erotic massage,” the ad with the topless giggling girl.

And the men keep coming. They’re rarer during the day, when I tend to be around, but you’ll still see them – Hasidim, with their long black coats that guarantee them G-d’s favor; bald guys with goatees and slitted eyes who take the stairs two at a time so as to get inside sooner. I’ll be in the stairwell making a phone call as they bound past me, whisked inside the spa by a young woman who keeps her face hidden behind her hair. It is tempting to stick out a foot and trip them as they go by, but I shrink back against the wall instead. I don’t even want to share an air current with them, not a molecule.

Of course, I don’t really know what’s going on inside the salon, though I can guess, based on accounts I’ve heard and read from women trapped working at places like it. Here’s an excerpt from a book review on FeministReview.com – the book is by Siddarth Kara, and it’s called Sex Trafficking:

“In one of the most devastating passages of the book, Kara locates sex slavery at a ‘massage parlor’ in Los Angeles. The young woman he meets was trafficked from Thailand with promises of a job as a waitress. Once in the U.S., she was told that she owed $20,000 to the ‘massage parlor’ owner she was sold to, which she would earn by having sex with several men a day. At first she refused, but was beaten and raped into submission. Most of the money she makes goes to the owner, except for a small portion that is sent to her parents. Kara offers to help the woman by calling the police, but she refuses his help because she is afraid the trafficker will hurt her parents in Thailand. The author talks about the anguish he felt about whether or not to contact the police. He ended up not doing so, but still isn’t sure if this was the right choice.” 

I wouldn’t say I’m anguished about whether or not to call the police, as I’m pretty sure the police know about this place, since I witnessed a detective with handcuffs and a badge being ushered inside one afternoon a few months ago. Was he on duty, investigating the place, or off duty, using their services? Either way, the cops know about the place.

But I am anguished about what I can do when I see evidence of sex trafficking right in my neighborhood. As I see it, my options are these:

1. Continue to glare at the johns I see going in and out of the place with my patented death stare, a stare that says, “I know you don’t think you’re a rapist, but you are,” a stare that says, “Is it really that fucking hard to pull on it yourself?” This option provides no satisfaction, as the johns universally do not meet anyone’s eyes, especially mine, and my death stare has resulted in neither death nor any decrease in traffic to the establishment.

2. Stand outside with a sign that says, YOU KNOW YOU’RE A RAPIST, RIGHT? IS IT REALLY THAT FUCKING HARD TO PULL ON IT YOURSELF? This option would be more satisfying, but would put me at risk for retribution from the pimps managing the place. And all of the anecdotal evidence suggests that pimps endorse violence against women, which leads me to believe that I’d get my ass kicked pretty quick if I tried it.

3. Shooting spree! I bet johns would avoid a place where there’d been gunfire aimed at “hobbyists” like themselves. That would shut the place down in a timely fashion, right? This option is very tempting, but has a number of drawbacks:

a)     Possibility of innocent casualties

b)    Fact that I do not own a gun, and do not know how to safely operate one

c)     I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy prison very much, although who knows? I could probably get a lot of reading done.

So I guess I’ll just keep doing what I do – working to educate myself and others about the issue of commercial sexual exploitation in the US, going to GEMS every week for the writing workshop, and hosting the GEMS tenth birthday party – maybe you heard about it?

Friday, May 8, 6pm, Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery at First St. Dancing, cupcakes, and readings by GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd and some of the GEMS girls. Pay what you can – all proceeds go to GEMS.

This party will get you laid! This party will advance your career! This party is even more fun than a shooting spree! So RSVP today!

Beneficial!

Holy cow! What an amazing night we had on Sunday at the benefit screening and clothing swap for GEMS, the organization that helps girls who have been commercially sexually exploited. Look at this gorgeous crowd of terrific women, waiting for the film "Very Young Girls" to begin:

The crowd ranged from old high school friends, to new Facebook friends, to longtime GEMS supporters, to concerned women in the social services/teaching/activism fields -- here's another view of all the terrific gorgeousness:

And here's some of the food (delicious spinach cups, and dates stuffed with chevre and slivered almonds), provided by our very own Georgia Jelatis-Hoke. Everyone should have their very own Georgia Jelatis-Hoke! But you can't have this one, as she is ours: 

No pics of the swap itself, as there was undressing goin' on, but here I am in the setting-up phase, in my fabulous vintage silk hostess pajama set:

I'm delighted to announce that we raised over $750 for the cause, and nine big-ass tubs full of really swank clothes and shoes for the girls at GEMS. But more than that, we raised a lot of consciousness about the realities of commercial sexual exploitation, consciousness that I know the attendees are going to spread far and wide. And if you weren't able to attend on Sunday, but would still like to see this very important film, it's screening on Showtime throughout February -- check this page for dates.

THANK YOU so much to everyone who attended, to the Under St. Marks Theater for hosting us, to tech goddess Lopi LaRue, to our very own Georgia Jelatis-Hoke, and to Elizabeth and Benny at GEMS for the admin support. You are all very precious gems to me! 

So there's this...

I'll be hosting a women's clothing swap and screening of the Showtime documentary "Very Young Girls" to benefit GEMS, (gems-girls.org),the organization that helps young women like those described in the video above. Sunday, January 4 -- doors open at 5, screening at 6, clothing swap 7:30-8:30. Email me for an invite.

I wrote about the screening I attended in April here; since then, GEMS has become the focus of my notoriously suspect volunteering instinct. I'm sticking to throwing benefits for now, lest I try to adopt a GEMS girl and take her to Disney World -- I'm also planning a literary benefit/party to celebrate GEMS' tenth anniversary in May.

Note: As we will be getting dressed and undressed, as well as smashing the patriarchy, the clothing swap and screening is a women-only event. But I'm not a sexist -- I'm happy to accept donations for GEMS from men, too.

More posting for dollars

While I'm shilling for causes close to my heart, let me mention again that the eBay auction to benefit the survivors of the gang rape and torture at the Dunbar Village homes in West Palm Beach ends Sunday. There's still time to bid on signed books, personalized critiques of your writing from authors in every genre, and more. The critiques are a great way to help your writing while helping others, and earning my undying gratitude. Win-win-win!

It's hard out there.

Last night, I went to a benefit for GEMS, an organization that helps girls who have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The benefit included a screening of the Showtime documentary Very Young Girls, a film that chronicles the struggles of some of the girls served by GEMS as they try to leave the sex trade, with varying degrees of success. It starts with the sobering statistic, brought to us by the US Department of Justice, that the average age of entry into prostitution in the US is thirteen.

Thirteen.

Our first subject, a straight-A student throughout junior high school, was twelve years old when she was walking down the street and found herself followed by a man in a car. The man told her she was beautiful, convinced her to get in his car, then took her to a hotel and had sex with her. After two weeks of "honeymoon," she says, where she repeatedly had sex with this thirty-five-year-old man who was promising to marry her, he insisted that she start prostituting herself to prove her love and loyalty to him. Which she did, for years, and when she tried to escape him, she was beaten and raped.

You could kind of hear people in the audience trying to tamp down their reactions -- clearing their throats quietly, breathing hard through their noses -- trying to be cool, trying to pretend that we all know this stuff happens, this isn't shocking to us, we're not that naive. And we're all looking at her baby face, at all of the girls' baby faces as they tell their stories, and we're dying.

It was when the footage of the pimps came on screen that the real out-loud reactions started. Home video footage of these two guys rolling around in a car, talking to the young girls with blurred faces they'd hailed over to their rolled-down window. A girl gets sweet-talked into the car; soon, she is sweet-talked into turning a trick. When she gets back in the car, the blur slips to the lower half of her face so we can see the devastation in her eyes. What's wrong, the pimps chide her, and tears roll down her face. Nothin', she says; I just never did nothin' like that before.

The pimps, we learn, filmed their encounters with this girl and others over the course of a few weeks; they were hoping to make a reality show about their lives. We see the girl again and again; see her threatened with two fingers to her temple (this is what happens if you try to leave); see her slapped by another girl at the pimps' behest (again, harder, now on the other side, even it out); see her respond to their prompts (what you gotta do to make Daddy love you again -- make money, that's right). This is when I started to hear it, the tight hiss of held breath escaping in disgust from between clenched teeth. From me, and everyone around me.

About sixty or seventy minutes into it, we see GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd, who started the organization out of her apartment ten years ago and has grown it into a full shelter serving more than 200 girls a year, who we've watched throughout the film as she leads therapy groups, motivating and protecting her young charges, even flying to Miami to negotiate with a girl who left GEMS to get back with her pimp (and how we collectively sighed with audible, premature relief when the girl took that plane ticket) -- Rachel has just been awarded the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award. She's on stage, in front of a cheering crowd, reminding them that the Oscar for Best Song has just gone to a song called "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp."

She spits the word pimp, and I want to spit with her. These disgusting child rapists, these adults who sell children to other adults -- "It's not hard out there for a pimp," she thunders, thumping the podium. "It's hard out there for a thirteen-year-old girl who has been the victim of sexual exploitation!"

And we all go nuts. Cheering, clapping, and letting those sobs we've been choking back escape in big gulping gasps. Rachel Lloyd. Thank fucking god.

The movie ends with a round up of Where The Girls Are Now. Some of them are all right. Some of them are not. Some of them are with us in the audience tonight, and they join Rachel and the film's directors on stage for a Q&A.

During the Q&A, someone asks about some of the scenes from the film, where fourteen and fifteen-year-old girls are sentenced to juvenile detention for the crime of prostitution, though they are not old enough to legally consent to sex (the adult johns who've paid for sex with these children, meanwhile, are slapped on the wrist, released, and given the opportunity to clear their records after six months). What kind of legislation should we be supporting to stop judges and prosecutors from punishing the victims of these crimes?

Damn if she didn't take the words out of my mouth. Turns out it's called the Safe Harbor Act, and it's been stalled in the New York State Legislature, which, until recently, was headed by former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer. Who was removed from office for having sex with prostitutes.

Another question comes from a beautifully groomed woman with white hair. She wants to know about the feasibility of establishing a safe house upstate for the GEMS girls, a house that's further away from the pimps who seek to lure them back to the strolls just a subway ride away. How much money do you need, she asks. And damn if I wasn't about to ask that same thing, too.

Short answer: Whadda you got? They can use it. Got money? Great. Got time to devote to the cause? Great. Got some clothes you want to donate; maybe you want to give a computer? They'll take it. But what's most important, says Rachel, is that you give your awareness; that you share what you learned from the film and the brave girls who were its subjects with everyone you know. That when someone talks about how glamorous the sex industry can be, or how the girls are asking for it, or how men have needs and it's always been this way and we should just legalize it already because what's the harm, that you stop and put them in touch with the reality of it.

So I wrote my check, and I'm putting together a clothing drive, and I'm writing this post right now. And I swear to god, the next person who uses the word pimp in a facetious manner is going to get an earful from me. Pimp is not funny. It's not cute. It doesn't mean to promote in a beneficial way, or to make something better and shinier, like it does on MTV. It means to sexually and emotionally abuse people, mostly children.

It's hard out there tonight for girls just a few blocks from my house. Ninth Avenue. Hunts Point. Bedford-Stuyvesant. It's hard, even for the ones who got out of the life, the ones who are at GEMS right now, sitting in therapy group with Rachel, talking about how they still sometimes miss the men who turned them out. If you can do anything to make it easier, I urge you to contribute what you can to GEMS.

And if you can kick a pimp or a john in the balls, so much the better.

Breaking the gender barrier!

Ladies, and now also gentlemen! I present to you a development in interactive technology three years in the making: The sexual integration of the Girlbomb blogroll.

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumroll, please!

(Ahem!)

Friends of mixed gender, once, a callow young(ish) sexist named Girlbomb presided over the blogroll, but as the first act of the new Janice Erlbaum regime, I hereby end the sexual apartheid and decree that men are no longer second-class citizens! No longer will Bill Scurry toil alone in his ghetto as the "token male" of this site; men will finally be recognized for being the awesome people they are! Specifically, my male friends:

M. David Hornbuckle
Jeff Mac
Beehive Hairdresser

M. David Hornbuckle is the author of the new book The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter, available as an e-book from Cantarabooks. In David's words: "Billy Wayne Carter is a rock star who becomes the public face of the rebel movement in a second US Civil War, a war based on art. There's lots of Southern gothicism and sex and paranoid po-mo rantings. Fun for the whole family...except the kids...and the old people." Oh my god, wait...is that ageism? Because that has no place on this website!!! Anyway, this old person liked the book -- check out the excerpt on the site.

Jeff Mac is the Man behind Manslations.com, a site where women are invited to talk about their relationships with a nice, sane guy who has their best interests at heart. Is that the craziest shit you ever heard of? He totally comes up with great advice, too, and dispenses it in the gentlest fashion. His Manslations book is coming out this fall from Sourcebooks, and he is currently available online right now for free.

And the Beehive Hairdresser, my favorite young man about town, is blogging damn near everyday about his life as a dude. I expect a book from him sometime, if he decides to write one.

Welcome, men!

Just...don't get anybody pregnant.