Who in their right mind buys a home overlooking one of the most active and long-standing tranny strolls in Toronto?
The Homewood Maitland Safety Association,
that’s who, a group of around 10 residents that, every Friday and
Saturday night from 11pm on, have been holding placards, yelling
slogans and shining flashlights on the trade that, for the past 40
years, has congregated at Maitland and Homewood, in an attempt to drive it
out of the area.
It goes without saying that I generally have
zero pity for people who move into a neighbourhood only to “discover”
the reason their house was several hundred thousand dollars cheaper
than ones two blocks over is because there are hookers — and tranny
hookers no less, the macaws of the demimonde — effusively modelling
their wares just yards away from their zinnia beds. People who then
want the hos —some of whom have been there for more than 30 years, who
also live in the neighbourhood and have established a relatively safe
place to conduct their business — to be gone.
But I am not
alone in this sentiment. Other residents around Maitland and Homewood,
some urban professionals, and just the type you might assume would be
fuss-budgets, are mortified by the HMSA and came out to speak against
them last Friday night when a counter-protest was organized by local
sex-worker activists. These residents knew what the neighbourhood was
like when they moved in. They are happy to have activity on their
street late into the night — they say it keeps robberies down, and they
are cordial with the girls, who are cordial back.
If you only read the comments sections
on sex worker and trans activist blogs, you would get a very poor
impression of the HMSA and some of the prostitutes even claim to have
been physically harassed by them. One named Page told me she had juice
thrown at her and has the stained dress, à la Monica Lewinski, at home
to prove it. The HMSA residents say that they, too, have faced
physical harassment, to say nothing of cleaning human shit off their
property. When I asked Page and fellow strollers Soda and Simona if
they know who pooped on HMSA member Allan’s front porch, they couldn’t even
imagine. When I told them that HMSA members say the racket is
unbearable late at night (and this is the association’s major issue,
the noise) both Page and Soda say they are quiet and respectful and
generally leave before 1 am, but Simona does cop to being a bit
strident in her business style.
Meanwhile, the comments on
the sex-worker blogs are appalling, with some members of the HMSA
calling counter protesters cunts, making idiotic transphobic remarks
and, most bafflingly, telling counter-protest organizer Wendy Babcock
to “wash the sand out of your vagina.” But then, the counter-protesters
don’t come across so brilliantly either. The event was organized
without consulting the women on the stroll (who did give their approval
retroactively) and often smacks of leftist self-congratulating.
Talk
to the workers in person and you will see that many of them are smart,
urbane, social girls, and as residents themselves, part of the
neighbourhood fabric as much as anyone else. Talk to the HMSA in person
and you can’t help but notice that some of them are psychotically sleep
deprived. Everyone deserves a good night’s rest; life can be torture
without it — many people who live downtown know what that’s like. My
neighbourhood is on the tail end of gentrification so while at the
moment I don’t have whores bellowing outside my bedroom window, I have,
for the past four summers, had earsplitting and noxious home
improvements all around — a nightmare for a freelance writer without
the funds to rent an office. Though the workers I spoke to who work the
Homewood Maitland stroll say they are calm and courteous (and indeed, I
met several who were), it’s a different story when the more cracked-out
of their street-walking consoeurs really get raring.
The
HMSA members do not want to move out of houses they have sunk their
life savings into, but is the solution to post threatening messages to
johns on craigslist and hassle all the girls working? While the group
does claim their efforts have made a difference in the traffic, no
amount of appealing to their local MP, the mayor or even the 519 has
brought out official assistance. As I said to the group, if the
Canadian government can’t see fit to decriminalize prostitution after a
recent study was published implying it would be the best solution to
the violence inflicted on mainly street-level workers, do you think
anyone is going to listen to the complaints of a residents'
association, which, on paper, is only made up of five people? As HMSA
spokesperson Michel says, “The sex workers and the residents of this
neighbourhood have been betrayed and abandoned by the political class.”
Will
it even matter in several months when Verve, a multimillion-dollar
condo complex goes up at the north end of the stroll? Remember the
final scene in Apocalypto, when the Mesoamerican tribesman
finally escapes his captors, only to see Spanish explorers looming on
the coast? In other words, because these residents — while on the
vanguard of the neighbourhood’s gentrification — bought their houses
comparatively cheap, the people who will be spending a fortune on
glossy, pre-renovated units are going to be even more entitled and way
less negotiable. In the long run, this small residents’ group may be
the least of these workers’ problems.
When the
demonstration wrapped up on Friday night with no violence or arrests
(the cops were there with several cruisers and what one of my friends
called “one of those take-away vans”), Babcock galvanized the
protesters when she spoke passionately about being there to monitor the
HMSA as long as they were out there picking on the girls. I went back
the next night and it was HMSA on one side, trannies on the other and
not a counter-protester in sight. (Recently a Facebook
counter-protester page, “Take Back Maitland & Homewood and fight transphobia & sex worker oppression,” has been set up by Babcock to assign shifts).
In
my dreams, there is a meeting at the 519 between the residents and the
girls where everyone gets to know each other’s names and stories and
there is some sort of peaceful agreement made and on summer nights HMSA
members Michael and Allan can enjoy a glass of
white wine on their porch while Mandii (“with two Is, like Hawaii”)
saunters by and makes a droll, Mae West-ian remark and they all laugh.
But I’ve been a whore and I’ve been a resident and I know the snail’s
pace at which rights and settlements for both these groups progress.