melissa.petro/Instagram
Melissa Petro and her family.
- Ten years ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for a teacher named Melissa Petro to be removed from her job when her past as a sex worker was discovered.
- Petro sat in reassignment for months, doing nothing and waiting for the city to conduct its investigation.
- But Bloomberg personally called for her removal and for the city to take legal action against her - just one example of the stigma and discrimination that sex workers face.
- Petro says that sex-work advocacy is "a litmus test for a truly progressive candidate" - and that Bloomberg doesn't pass.
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There are plenty of reasons to root against a billionaire trying to buy his way into the presidency, but for me it's personal.
Ten years ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg - now a 2020 presidential candidate - personally asked for me to be removed from my job as a public-school teacher and called for the city to take legal action against me, as was documented in numerous news reports at the time.
All this because I admitted that I'd worked in the sex industry before teaching.
"We're just not going to have this woman in front of a class," Bloomberg was quoted as saying by the New York Daily News.
This was the beginning and the end. Bloomberg and I never met. He never commented further on my situation. He decided my fate, and that was that.
The headline on that Daily News story? "Mayor Bloomberg says he wants confessed hooker teacher Melissa Petro yanked from classroom."
The press coverage demonized me. I was dubbed the "hooker teacher" and made into the butt of jokes. And yet in the intervening years I was able to turn that exposure into a platform for humanizing sex work.
Sex workers are an extremely marginalized group of people - one of the most disadvantaged in the world, a 2015 Amnesty International article said. We are at a heightened risk of human rights violations and abuse.
But thanks to tireless advocacy, the national conversation is shifting, and politicians are beginning to take sex workers and their needs more seriously. This is especially true of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, with candidates being pressed to stake their positions and Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang courting the votes of those who respect sex workers.
Sadly, few people took me seriously back when I was a schoolteacher - least of all my mayor.
Sex workers are human beings who deserve respect
Sure, call girl to classroom teacher isn't exactly an orthodox career path, but it can be done. I know, because - despite rampant prejudice and discrimination against sex workers - I did it.
I worked as an exotic dancer on and off in college and as a call girl on Craigslist for a brief stint while I was in grad school for creative writing. In 2007, I retired from sex work for good.
After a rigorous application process, I was awarded a coveted New York City teaching fellowship. I taught art and creative writing at an elementary school in the Bronx while attending evening classes to earn a second advanced degree, this time in education.
I worked hard to become a schoolteacher. Serving children and families had become a passion, and I was damn good at my profession. None of that mattered when, at the start of my third year as a teacher, a reporter from the New York Post showed up at school.
The next morning, I woke up to a photograph of me on the cover of the tabloid under the headline "Bronx Teacher Admits: I'm an Ex-Hooker."
The Post's headline referred to an op-ed article I'd published some weeks earlier on the Huffington Post. "Thoughts From a Former Craigslist Sex Worker" criticized the censoring of the "adult services" section of Craigslist and defended the rights and dignity of sex workers.
In that essay, I spoke openly of my past. As with everything I'd written and published before, I used my real name. A Post reporter put two and two together, connecting the op-ed article to an essay I'd written some months earlier in which I talked about being a teacher. It was all public.
Sex workers face considerable stigma and discrimination
For months I sat in reassignment - better known as the "rubber room," administrative offices where tenured teachers are sent while the city conducts investigations.
While I sat in detention doing nothing, the media painted me as a poster child for bad teachers and a reason to end teacher tenure. Meanwhile, in the same papers some sections over, Rep. Anthony Weiner (aka Carlos Danger) and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (Client 9) plotted their heroic returns to the political scene.
The double standard was undeniable: While scandalized men are given second chances galore, women who society says behaved badly are branded for life.
It seems that some people still believe there are two kinds of women: the impudent, shameless, and morally unrestrained woman willing to have sex for money, and the virtuous, decent type of girl who would never even consider doing that kind of work.
Social scientists call this split the "Madonna-whore dichotomy." As a teacher who was once a call girl, I violated expectations that a woman's sexuality and her ability to nurture are mutually exclusive. This whole saga, from the tabloid reports to the mayor's denunciation and the employment drama that followed, showed me firsthand how a woman's identity is regulated by a still patriarchal power structure.
I believed then, as I still do, that I had the constitutional right to share my opinion and personal story. As I was a governmental employee, that speech should have been protected.
And yet even with the high-powered feminist lawyer Gloria Allred by my side, I was no match for the institutions that had made me their target. Rather than fight for my right to be heard and respected, I agreed to resign from the New York City Department of Education.
Sex work is a serious political matter
A decade later, I've recovered from the trauma and carved out a successful career as a freelance writer. I'm a wife and mom. I'm a citizen, even as a former sex worker, and I deserve respect.
From my run-in with him 10 years ago, and with no further comment on the issue, Bloomberg, it's safe to assume, doesn't respect sex workers. Fortunately, other, more progressive candidates do.
Warren, for example, has said she is "open" to the decriminalization of prostitution and other sex work.
"Sex workers, like all workers, deserve autonomy, but they are particularly vulnerable to physical and financial abuse and hardship," Warren said.
It's a good start - but when it comes to specifics, the candidate with a plan for everything remains uncharacteristically vague. And her record on the issue is not above criticism.
More recently, Yang called for "decriminalizing sex work on the part of the seller." In other words, he supports removing the penalties imposed on sex workers but would presumably continue to criminalize those who purchase sex. That's not decriminalization - it's called the Nordic or Swedish model, or "end demand," and it doesn't work.
Hearing candidates stake their positions on the issue, however imperfectly, makes me cautiously optimistic. Sex-worker rights are women's rights, health rights, and labor rights. The issue is a litmus test for a truly progressive candidate - and Bloomberg does not pass.
The winning candidate will embrace a woman's totality, even - and especially - when it includes sex work.
I don't care how much money he has. Take it from a former hooker: Bloomberg excites no one. Instead of rooting for the candidate with the most money, let's root for a candidate with the courage to respect all their constituents, even those of us who've sold sex.
Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).