The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul – Andy Hayward. The number of transphobic related murders in Turkey is one of the highest in Europe. Hayward explores the world of trans sex workers in Istanbul who share with him their day-to-day experiences, intimate thoughts and emotions against a backdrop of prejudice and violence.

Watch the trailer for The Trans Sex Workers of Istanbul here: https://vimeo.com/218785390

Run Time: 22 mins

Sununú: The Revolution of Love – Olivia Crellin. Fernando Machado and Diane Rodriguez have captured the media’s attention for being the first transgender parents in South America. Fernando became pregnant by his girlfriend Diane and gave birth to a son. This documentary portrays the humdrum life of the couple, that is similar to that of any young parents. But outside of the family sphere, Diane and Fernando are tackling larger issues that have global consequences to our attitudes to gender and family diversity.

Watch the trailer for Sunnú: The Revolution of Love here: https://www.sununufilm.com/

Run Time: 25 mis

In Mexico over the past decade, several dozen journalists have been killed, abducted, and tortured.  Crime flourishes, and ties between cartels and politicians are deeply intertwined.

Yet journalist Lydia Cacho has persisted in uncovering these networks, risking her life to tell the stories of their victims and reveal the businessmen and politicians involved.

She was raped and beaten in 1999, an act alleged by some to be retaliation for her reporting; she was abducted and tortured by police for 20 hours in 2005; her car wheels were tampered with in 2007, nearly leading to a fatal crash; and she has received numerous death threats, the most recent of which appeared to come from a very high-level military or cartel source.

On Friday evening, she came to the Frontline Club to discuss her latest book: Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking.

Cacho spent five years documenting the global sex trade, at times playing roles such as a nun, prostitute, pole dancer and client.

“I found it incredible how similar the culture in Vietnam is to the culture of Mexico,” she reflected.  “Families that are living in extreme poverty … [coming] from generations of people that have never had a real chance, they never had a break.”

The story seemed universal: sex traffickers promising poor families to employ their children as maids in a big city, giving them an education, income, and chance at a better life.

“Which parent wouldn’t want that to happen?” Cacho asked.

But the price that sex workers pay – giving up their sexual subjectivity, and with it their integrity, to a clientele of mostly older and more powerful men – Silvio Berlusconi famously among them – is nearly always demanded when they are too young, and too deprived, to recognize the transaction taking place.

Throughout the world, Cacho lamented:

“People are becoming commodities … trained that it’s alright to become an object, [because] you know, this is just a business.”

On 30 April of this year, Cacho’s friend and fellow journalist Regina Martinez was found beaten to death in her home in Xalapa. Martinez, too, had made a career of exposing crime and corruption in Mexico.  Still, Cacho continues.

“I know my job is useful,” she explained.  “Sometimes it’s hard.  And sometimes it’s really good, when you get a [criminal] sentence, or when you get the time to go salsa dancing, and have some tequillas, and just laugh about everything, including the death threats, and just remember that there are a lot of good things in life:  love, and good sex, and all that.  Then you just combine the whole thing.”

“One thing I learned after I survived jail and torture was … I would never give these Mafias my happiness.”

As the event concluded, Cacho was met with a standing ovation.

Watch the event here:

I have wanted to write about Sonagacchi since I moved back to Kolkata for one reason: in a country where morality is all pervasive, here exists an isolated world, centuries old, which has lived and grown with India’s democracy.

In the beginning, Sonagacchi — literally ‘The Golden Tree’ in Bengali — was where the city’s well-to-do gentlemen housed their mistresses during the days of the British Raj. Today, it has transformed into a massive red-light district; the once grand mansions converted into tiny flats which are rented out to the women who ply their trade there.

I went to Sonagacchi last week, with my colleague Sumati Yengkhom of The Times of India as my guide and guardian, to see for myself what life there is like. More significantly, though, I went there to try and understand what matters to the women there, a week before the district, along with large parts of the country, went to the hustings.

This elections, the electoral discussions in West Bengal has been dominated by the withdrawal of the Tata project from Singur — where the cheapest car in the world was to be produced — and the violence over land acquisition that rocked Nandigram in 2007.

In Sonagacchi, I discovered that very little influences the women there except for the trials and tribulations of their daily lives.

Filth and feces that line the narrow lanes of Asia’s largest red light district come close to overpowering the senses. But with a mere handful of sex-workers wandering about this early in the afternoon, it is the poll paraphernalia that squarely catches one’s attention in Sonagacchi.

The ubiquitous wall graffiti, custom-designed flex posters and an array of party flags breathe life into the squalid dank alleyways. Under tall, dilapidated buildings that come together crowding the narrow sliver of sky above, a group of sex workers sit nonchalantly. With her back against a bright poll graffiti, a middle-aged woman talks after a little persuasion.

"We have no interest in party politics. All I care about is who will do the most for the women who ply their trade here, their children and families. My vote will go not to those who merely hear our demands, but those who do something about them," she says. The unfulfilled promises of many an election evident in her terse tone.

Squatting beside the dark fetid waters that rise out of ancient drains, another woman, with a sharp streak of vermilion on her forehead, speaks in clearer terms. " Nandigram and Singur have little resonance here. We are women who live and work here. We need to think about our lives. No other issue will dominate the voting," she declares through her betel-stained teeth. Those that sit around her nod in agreement.

Singur might not sway the votes of the scarlet women of Sonagacchi, but they are anything but reluctant to exit the electoral loop. Indeed, it is this determination to honorably cast their ballots that has driven ‘Durbar’ — the local sex workers forum — to procure voters identity cards.

"There are 9,000 sex workers in Sonagacchi. Although most of them have their names on the voter list, barely 10% have voter identity cards. That is why we approached the Election Commission and, so far, we have been able to get about 300 new cards issued for sex workers residing here," Durbar’s project director Bharati Dey revealed.

The number of new voter identity cards might yet be disproportional to the actual population here, but the very fact that sex workers — who have little or nothing in the way of legal documents to prove their identity — are been officially given the mandate to vote, is igniting interest in the hustings.

But mere interest will not be enough to avoid illegitimate voting on May 13, when the approximately 11,000 adult franchise holders of Sonagacchi will queue up to vote. The red light district, unfortunately, has a history of unregistered voters casting their ballot in large numbers.

"During every election, the party cadres come and take our girls to vote even though they don’t have voter cards. Sometimes their names aren’t even on the list. Yes, more girls have cards this time, but this will still happen. We are just asking them not to vote more than once this time," a sex worker at Durbar disclosed, while labouring on her Bengali alphabets.

Outside, the narrow lanes begin to fill as the twilight deepens. As numerous gaudily-painted women descend for a night of work, few are in the mood to answer questions. "I am a citizen of this country too. Card or no card, I will vote. There’s nothing more I have to say," one dispatches sharply. The neighbor shouts loudly in agreement through a grilled window. Now is not the time for talk.

Here in Sonagacchi, where the world’s oldest profession will shortly confront the world’s largest democracy, the poll rhetoric that has engulfed Bengal holds little weight. It is the local ground realities that matter here, not the small car which never drove out of Singur.

This story appeared in The Times of India, Kolkata edition, on May 11, 2009.