Letter to Councilwoman Madelle Shirek 

Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek 

May 30, 2004 

Berkeley City Council
2180 Milvia Street
Berkeley , CA 94709

RE: Angel’s Initiative deliberation, May 18, 2004

Dear Councilwoman Shirek,

This letter is a lengthy response to your comment at the May 18^th Berkeley City Council meeting: "I wonder how the people at the Pacific School of Religion would like it if they had a 'house' next to them?” As one of the major proponents of this initiative for the decriminalization of prostitution, this comment left me feeling profoundly misunderstood and upset. So I write today to express what I find to be misrepresented about our cause in the statement and to explain my own motivation and passion for this particular issue.

I want you to know that this is far from the truth in my case. I’ve in lived in such communities my whole life, including South Berkeley , where I’m currently a resident. I’m an ex-welfare kid, who went to Malcolm X Elementary and Willard Junior High in the 70s. In fact, my deep, abiding, life-long interest in protecting women against violence was caused by being raped myself behind Ephesians Church when I was nine years old walking on my way home from Malcolm X. But, at the heart of my motivation is my enduring solidarity with the poor, single moms who raised me back in the 60s and 70s and who were almost always stigmatized for their sexual status but, nevertheless, fed, clothed, and housed us kids against incredible odds. Many of these women were prostitutes. Some were lesbians. Some (like my mother) were guilty of “miscegenation.” What unified these mothers was the poverty and the sexual stigmatization. It is out of my loyalty to these women and to the issues of women and poverty that I have my zeal for Angel’s Initiative.

At its heart, Angel’s Initiative, for me, is about the civil rights of poor women, the majority of which are women of color. I started my Ph.D. program in Biblical Studies with this commitment, and I focused on women and orphans in the Bible. Then welfare reform happened. Since things have gotten worse now for poor women, I have shifted my focus to where many women end up after welfare has been abolished – prostitution. So, I am writing my dissertation on biblical prostitution interpreted from the standpoint of prostitutes themselves. I believe that if we want to solve the problem of poverty, it is absolutely crucial to be in dialogue with women such as these. They know what’s wrong with our system, intimately. When Angel’s Initiative came along, I signed on immediately to help with this cause in order to put my life experience and extensive dissertation bibliography to practical use. I just want you to know that I’m not one of those people who live up on the hill somewhere and don’t know what it’s like to live in a low-income community of color. I’ve lived in one my whole life, and because of this, I’m a proponent of this initiative. Because of this, I’m a liberation theologian and dedicate my life to addressing the situation of the most marginalized. My aim is to take away the stigma attached to the sexuality of poor women. As a biblical scholar, I know that there is no biblical basis for condemning prostitutes. Jesus was nice to prostitutes, consistently refusing to scapegoat women for so-called sexual sins and encouraging others to do likewise (Matthew 21:31, Luke 7:36-50, John 4, John 8:1-11).

Another assumption that may be reflected in the above comment is that this initiative is promoting the proliferation of prostitution. This is not my agenda. My motivation is that women, who for whatever reason find themselves selling sex, and by extension all poor women, would be able to fully access their civil and human rights. Women who work the streets have almost no recourse to police protection, to report crimes against themselves, although they are by far the largest group of victims of violence. And, this is all for the crime of having sex for money. Much of the violence perpetuated against women is legitimated somehow by a woman’s sexual status, which I find profoundly unjust. Sex is not a crime (or it shouldn’t be). Violence against women for whatever reason is the appropriate focus for law enforcement!

To what purpose and end do we punish women for selling sex? I don’t understand why anyone would actually think that the criminalization of poor women is the answer to street violence and urban blight. Has the war on drugs reduced drug use in our neighborhoods? Has “three strikes you’re out” reduced crime? Or, has it simply funneled our precious resources into the prison industrial complex? Maybe that money could be better used if invested in our communities instead. The female prison population is on the rise, the majority of whom are incarcerated for drugs and/or prostitution. The majority of these women are African-American and mothers. I see this as being directly connected to welfare reform. Are we as a community happy to lock up women, because the crimes they are committing are sexual? Is it because they are poor women that people are so unsympathetic towards them? Why? Do these periodic stings and street sweeps on San Pablo actually reduce the incidence of prostitution in our community? Study after study shows that prostitution is not reduced by criminalizing it, and that, in fact, criminalization causes it to proliferate under the worst possible conditions, making the streets dangerous for women, whether they work in prostitution or not. Sexual predators know that prostitutes are fair game, and anyone who can be identified in this category deserve the same treatment. That’s why we’re always asking for the sexual history of rape victims, which puts women in the position of having to play the game of sexual respectability in order to obtain basic human rights. I think that’s wrong. It is from this angle that I think Angel’s Initiative promotes the well-being of all women in our community, but especially poor women, because violence against women is already wrong no matter who they’re having sex with, why, and for how much. The appropriate focus needs to be is on the civil rights of poor women and their safety. Many of these women are your constituents, and they deserve better from us as a community.

Avaren Ipsen, Ph.D (cand.) at G.T.U. and UC Lecturer
2919 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705