Why Anora is NOT a Love Letter to Sex Workers
Sean Baker, like many white men in power, stole the story
Sean Baker (director of Academy Award winning film, Anora): “I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories. They have shared their life experience with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you — I share this with you.”
What does it mean to share this award with me, a sex worker? I live in a Nebraska neighborhood where the snow piles up on the side of the road and my neighbors have cars on blocks. There’s a party house up the way where I sometimes deliver Narcan. One of my favorite drug dealers, Michael, always says, “You’ve given someone a second chance, a blessing.”
There is a persistent knocking in the hood—an old chicken coop that has long been emptied of chickens. The old wooden door smacks against the larger structure every time the wind picks up. Hawks are always above, and the raccoons are ruthless. The street walkers on meth are my favorite—they always compliment my “Fuck ICE” sign and the coneflowers I grow instead of grass because they know, to the core of their being, that these social institutions under which we all live are always and forever stacked against us all. They understand solidarity in a way that no Academy Award winning white man ever could.
One of my neighbors cannot afford water, so in the depths of the night when I’m drunk and writing on my porch—a porch that is more than 100 years old, swaying and creaking with every blizzard, every windstorm that threatens to break the centennial windows— I observe her dumping buckets of excrement into the street. Sometimes, the feral cat named James parades over to my home, and I feed him garbage food that would otherwise go into the compost. Sometimes, in blizzards, I see his little paw prints making tracks to my home. He steps over the discarded shooters and broken glass to warm himself on my slouching porch.
My daughter loves this cat. She often cares for him, food and milk and whatnot. She is allowed to explore the neighborhood so long as she pays mind to the multiple sex offenders on this block. Indeed, when a man—because it is always a man—gets dropped off from a prison sentence for sexual abuse, they are almost always dropped here. The Nice White Liberals and the Trumpsters all agree that offenders should be out of sight, out of mind, and so they end up in my neighborhood. Here, in this space where I am apparently sharing an Academy Award with a man who will never know what it’s like to live in a neighborhood like this.
The smoke shop up the way gives me a teachers’ discount. Whenever I buy legal weed or vapes, they are amazed to hear that I am a teacher—it’s such a thankless and stupid hustle for the money.
Perhaps I should tell them that I am an Academy Award winning ho.
I am deeply concerned by the discrepancy between discourse and material reality. To use the film Anora as one example—the discourse that this film is sex-work positive, that Baker celebrates the complicated existence of sex workers, is bullshit. The material reality is that none of us (sex workers) gain anything from Anora’s escapades, none of us are materially better off because Baker said he loves us at the Academy Awards. In fact, there is substantial evidence that he stole the whole damn thing from sex workers, actually causing harm to our community.
So, I suppose, the question is how do (ostensibly) renowned filmmakers make a real, material difference in the lives of marginalized people. First of all, give up your privilege. Yes, give it all up. Put your money into projects that are made by the very people whose voices you claim to want to elevate. Bring us to your board meetings and introduce us as the creator, which of course, we are. If you have the ability to pitch films, invite us to that proverbial (or literal) table and explain that we are experts. Pay us for our lived experience.
Because listen, Baker—your shared Academy Award doesn’t pay the bills. And if you ever worked as a sex worker, you’d know that profound material reality.