‘I never, ever imagined this day would come’
Getting a damehood was like ‘‘being brought in from the cold’’, says sex workers’ rights activist Catherine Healy.
The founding member of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective said she dissolved into tears when she received the letter offering her the gong.
‘‘I still keep thinking we are going to be arrested at dawn, not acknowledged. I never, ever imagined this day would come.’’
For years she and her cohort fought the stigma of being sex workers and campaigned for sex workers’ rights. She endured the embarrassment of family members, which, over time, has turned to pride for the role she has played in the movement for change in the industry.
Healy became New Zealand Prostitutes Collective coordinator in 1989 and led the campaign to decriminalise prostitution.
She helped develop a model bill to decriminalise the work and safeguard the human rights and occupational safety of sex workers, which was passed in 2003.
That model has received international recognition.
Healy swapped her job as a primary school teacher to become a sex worker in the 1980s.
She worked in a brothel Wellington’s Willis St.
It was a deeply social time, she said, with prostitutes and clients crammed into a little illicit bar in the brothel, drinking and talking into the wee hours. It was such a contrast to her morning meetings in demure school staff rooms. The juxtaposition of those two very different lives was stark.
But the profession came with its own set of hurdles. Not so much in the form of dodgy clients but from the law, which stated that it was illegal to solicit, but not illegal for a client to pay for sex.
People would say that the sex work was violating, but it was the indignity of the law which made her feel truly violated.
The Prostitutes Collective came about through a meeting of minds.
The women she worked with in were strident and stroppy and annoyed with the stigma and misconceptions of prostitution. Healy, 62, was in awe of them. ‘‘They were talking at the time about needing a union and I was really struck by that.
‘‘There were nine of us and we just started to meet and talk.
‘‘We would sit in my flat in Mt Victoria, the house billowing with cigarette smoke, and just talk.’’
They talked about a community place where sex workers could come to. They talked about their desire to stop the spread of HIV/Aids. ‘‘We just wanted to be treated like normal people.
‘‘We wanted to change attitudes, we wanted acceptance. Most of all we wanted to change the law.’’
The collective now operates with 12 fulltime staff and a swag of volunteers in five branches across the country.
Healy, of York Bay in the suburb of Eastbourne, said her damehood was in recognition of the many people who had worked hard and fought together for change in the industry over the past 30 years.
‘‘It’s extraordinary to see how far we have come. This shows the acceptance of this industry. We are a part of society, not apart from it.
‘‘It’s about reducing the stigma and acknowledging that we are an inclusive society in this country.’’
‘‘We are a part of
society, not apart
from it.’’
Sex workers’ rights activist Catherine Healy