Commemorating the Death of a Woman

In the gloaming of a perishing evening, candles added a flickering luminescence trying to defy the descending darkness.  An idiosyncratic community had gathered in St Kilda to commemorate the unspeakably violent end of street sex worker, Tracy Connelly from stab wounds to the face and chest.  Hundreds of us from the neighbourhood, the sex work industry, the welfare industry, the Parliament, the council and the media made for a motley but united crew.  Well not entirely united for I stood there in the twilight seething with anger at the hypocrisy and cant of our Parliamentary and Mayoral speakers.  More of that later.

The candle lit vigil for murdered street sex worker Tracy Connelly (Photo Fairfax Media. Wayne Taylor)

The ceremony was very Post Modern Australia, a pastiche of secular and sacred, the non verbal and the verbose.  The power of ceremony and ritual fascinates me.  At the heart of great ceremony is the use of non verbal community symbols.  Whilst verbosity is a turn off, symbols will overpower words when a group of people gathers to share feelings.  For Tracy’s ceremony the non verbal included a sea of candles, a choir with a Christian repertoire, a minute of silence holding the candles aloft, contemporary secular singers and finally a plaintive rendition of Amazing Grace with its plea for the power of redemption.  But the most powerful symbol was the night itself.  Night is evocative. The danger of the dark and the inhospitable cold of midwinter were potent icons of the perils of street sex work. Modern Australians seldom gather together at night in the frigidity of winter.  Just standing there together was instructive and moving.  We held our candles aloft in unity. The wind held off and the flames struggled on against the night.  When a brother’s tears and palpable love for his dead sister stirred the crowd, the rite of commemoration was potent. It transfixed us.  We were shamed for the societal negligence that bought about Tracy’s murder.  We were left in no doubt that we could not dismiss this as the killing of the unwanted and unloved. This part of the ceremony, for those like me interested in ritual, was stunning.

But then the speeches started. My blood boiled in anger. You may recall from the last blog how a decade ago the Victorian Parliament failed to (partially) decriminalise street sex work so that the prostitutes would not regard the police as the enemy and the police could focus on protecting prostitutes not controlling them.  The Parliament, both sides of the fence included, in the face of community reluctance and the moralistic legacy of our religious past, failed to embrace law reform when it was offered.  Parliament has blood on its metaphorical hands.  So too do the reform critics including Leslie Cannold, a Senate Candidate for the Wikileaks Party in Victoria. 

Tracy with long term partner Tony Melissovas

Violence against women is most stark in two situations – when marriages breakdown and against sex workers.  60 Australian women were murdered last year.  The street sex worker component can be diminished if the prohibition is modified as it is for brothels. Prohibition in social acts from alcohol to abortion fails.  Indeed prohibition exacerbates the harms.

Tracy was murdered in her home which she used to take clients. Because she was homeless, her panel van was her home.  This is a story of poverty as much as anything.  She wouldn’t have been murdered if she operated from a lawful safe house. She wouldn’t have been murdered if her vocation was not illegal and the police could make her work place safe.  This was an avoidable killing. 

And so the piety of the politicians who opined on the scourge of the violence against women and said they would do anything to stop it, were dishonest hypocrites.  They claimed they would do anything but no one who spoke mentioned the simple law reform of partial decriminalisation.  It was disgusting.

Sex is often confronting. Paid sex is very confronting and morally ambiguous. Religions stuff up sex and their legacy in the secular world is to add a layer of moralistic inhibition that prevents good policy.  Tracy’s death was avoidable.  Unfortunately good policy is avoidable when cowardice grips our politicians.  Their blather diminished a beautiful ceremony.

What is your view?

How do we craft good ceremony?

How do we get parliamentarians with the spine to oppose stupid prohibitions?

Do the opponents of reform have blood on their hands, capitulating to noisy opponents or are they merely reflecting the community?

Over to you