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Chanelle Gallant is an author, strategist and consultant who has been an organizer in movements for racial justice and sex workers rights for over two decades. She is the co-author of Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice and has contributed to dozens of publications including Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good and the six-part magazine series Protest and Pleasure. She co-founded the first chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice outside the US, sits on the board of directors for SURJ (US), the Catalyst Project (Oakland) and the Social Justice Movement Advisory Committee for the Toronto chapter of Resource Movement. Chanelle has been in leadership in multiple sex organizations and helped to organize the largest sex work mutual aid fundraiser in Canadian history. She began organizing against the police in 2000 as a core member of the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee after the raid on the Pussy Palace. Chanelle grew up in a poor family that has been impacted by criminalization and incarceration and works as a donor organizer and advisor, social movement strategy consultant and trainer.
My Forthcoming Book
Not Your Rescue Project:
Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice
Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice is a landmark abolitionist primer on migration, sex work, policing, and the "anti-trafficking industry"—and a powerful argument about who is really leading the way toward justice: migrant sex workers themselves.
Hire Me
Build power, develop analysis and strategy, and grassroots fundraise.
In my consulting work, I focus on one of the toughest parts of fundraising work for most activists–moving the money in our own communities. Shame, guilt and fear undermine the powerful work of donor organizing. People with wealth need support on how to understand and embrace–rather than fear–how they relate to the access they have to resources. I know from experience that organizing can be nourishing, joyful, exciting and even pleasurable–and this includes donor organizing! Through working with me you get access to concrete tools but more than that, a new possibility–the permission and the strategic value–of joy in donor organizing.
Featured Writing
The far right uses this manufactured fear of sex workers and trans people in order to capture political power.
Who benefits from the creation of highly developed anti-trans and anti–sex work politics? The criminal justice system.
While much remains to be done, the shift marks a welcome sea change for the sex-worker rights movement and its historically rocky relationship with feminism.
Current sex work laws in Canada make it impossible for sex workers to make a living without discrimination.
For the past year, low-income Asian women in Newmarket, Ontario have been engaged in a fierce battle with the town’s council, which has been working to close down their massage businesses by claiming that the workers are both disreputable criminals and sex trafficking victims.
Chapter 14: Rights Not Rescue: Defending Migrant Sex Workers from Policing, co-authored with Elene Lam, is part of this collection that imagines a different world where police power is eroded and dissolved forever.
Editorial fact-checking is important not only for the sake of journalistic accuracy but also as a tool for addressing broader issues of trust and inclusion.
Xtra is exploring what sexual liberation means in the 21st century through the six-part series Protest and Pleasure by activist and writer Chanelle Gallant.
All massage workers need stronger rights and less policing.
Looking back at the women’s bathhouse raids and their aftermath, one organizer says that reforms don’t lead to real change and the only fix for policing is to abolish it.
The murder of a massage worker has led to a historic charge of incel-related terrorism. But that’s just a symbol, not real action, and not the route to meaningful change for sex workers, or women at large.
At least two Canadian sex workers have been killed in 2020. Callous legislation is a big reason their work was so unsafe, and it’s still putting women at risk.
The virus might not discriminate, but society sure does. How white people can push for an anti-racist future.
Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at the grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing.
Co-author with Andrea Zanin, this chapter in Dis/Consent contributes to the argument that the conversations happening today around consent and sexual violence ignore and erase the multiple forms of oppression that are part and parcel of sexual violence.
How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life?
The first collection of its kind to feature the art, activism, and writings of QTBIPOC in Toronto, Marvellous Grounds tells the stories that have shaped Toronto’s landscape but are frequently forgotten or erased. Chapter co-authored with Monica Forrester.
We need a #MeToo movement to confront sexual harassment and abuse from intimate partners.
Red Light Labour addresses Canada’s legal regime regulating sex work with an advanced analysis of past and present policy approaches, and considers the ways in which laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their workspaces, colleagues, and clients. Chapter co-authored with Elene Lam.
Any Other Way is an eclectic and richly illustrated local history that reveals how these individuals and community networks have transformed Toronto from a place of churches and conservative mores into a city that has consistently led the way in queer activism.
As a sexual assault survivor, I want other white women survivors to understand that rape culture and racism are a package deal.
A research project and guideline for journalists and writers to report on sexual violence in Canada.
While some feminists have applauded these harsher laws against prostitution, sex workers and their allies continue to struggle for justice. In this roundtable, we go beyond legal arguments to see who is benefiting from these laws.
“Well, then I guess there’s no God.” I decide this as I walk home from my best friend Anabelle’s house in the suburbs of Ottawa…
A sex work activist on why it's so important to believe Stoya.
The Smart Sex Worker's Guide to Sustainable Funding contains practical information on funding strategies for sex worker organisations. It discusses developing a funding strategy, applying for grants, financial management and community-based fundraising.
Do you know what it’s like for a dominant top to get a crush, for someone like me, whose mouth waters for submission from my lovers? I still swallow hard and hope the person I like will text me back. I just don’t blush.
Select Speaking & Interviews
The 519: On September 14, 2000, Pussy Palace – a bathhouse event for women and trans folks – was getting into full swing…. That night, the party – held at Club Toronto, the space known today as Oasis Aqualounge – met a similar fate other establishments had recently endured when they were raided by police…
For over a century, Western states have scapegoated Asian migrant sex working women as “temptations” or victims to justify tighter borders, anti-immigrant restrictions and more policing–yet these workers have been left out of social movements. We explore how solidarity with migrant sex workers can strengthen movements for migrant justice, and the abolition of police, prisons, borders and racial capitalism.
Now Toronto: In honour of Pride 2023, Queer & Now spoke with several of the people involved in various protests against bathhouse raids that took place in the GTA.
Locating Sex Work in Conversations on Care
Anti-sex work “feminists” are well-organized, funded and legitimized right-wing forces. Join sex worker activists as we discuss the TERF agenda and how leftists can fight the sneaky forms of fascism that today pose as “feminism”.
Hate and exclusion of sex workers and trans people is not a feminist position; it's a threat to democracy and justice for everyone. Join sex worker and trans activists thinkers in conversation on how leftist feminists are fighting the sneaky forms of fascism that today pose as “feminism”.
What does LGBT2S+ health-care have to do with defunding the police?
CTV News: Chanelle Gallant is one of two original members of the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Committee, Along with JP Hornick, she has created an open letter to Toronto Mayor John Tory and TPS Board Chair Jim Hart opposing the appointment of Myron Demkiw as the city's next chief of police.
Toronto Star: Group of women affected by the crackdown — described as a “flagrant” violation of charter rights — writes open letter to mayor and TPS board members decrying Myron Demkiw’s appointment
What is the role of sexual liberation in the fight against racialized capitalism and patriarchal violence? Presented with Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and M. Adams.
The far right mob storming the US Capitol building on January 6th caused outrage across the world, but this kind of event is part of a long history of white organized backlash to Black-led struggle and victories. Join Showing Up for Racial Justice to learn more about this historical trend and to join the work of fighting back.
Why do so many people assume that migrant sex workers are all victims of human trafficking? What would it take to move from a "criminalization approach" to migrant sex work to a liberatory approach?
NOW Magazine: Channelle Gallant, fundraising director at Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network, says, “I have been working with and advocating alongside migrant sex workers for years now and none of them have ever expressed the need for the protection from a federal counter-terrorism unit. But they have been very clear about the need for better labour and human rights protections in their workplaces.”
Another Story Books, in collaboration with The 519, organized a teach-in about trans folks and allyship, as a response to transphobic actions at major institutions within the unceded indigenous territories currently known as Toronto.
The Washington Post: Negotiating consent is central to the actual work of sex work.
Conversation and filk screening with Leanne Simpson, Zainab Amadahy, Chanelle Gallant and special guest, Kerieva McCormick Glasgow-based Romani activist. Moderated by Carol Lynne D'Arcanglis and emceed by Sheryl Lindsay.
Esquire Magazine: Women in the industry say now they'll have no choice but to work the streets.
Xtra: On Nov 30, 2016, Xtra Spark received this letter from a group of LGBTQ women in Toronto, demanding accountability from police and elected officials for the recent Project Marie sting operation.
The Advocate: Pride Toronto's clash with Black Lives Matter brought up some old skeletons in the closet of the city's LGBT history.
The Globe and Mail: On Sept. 14, 2000, Toronto Police raided the Club Toronto bathhouse during an event called the Pussy Palace, organized by the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Committee.
CBC News: Chanelle Gallant, a member of the Pussy Palace Collective that was the target of a raid in 2000, says the Toronto police apology isn't meaningful.
Radio Canada International: Sex-workers are gathering in Toronto today with other interested parties at a public forum to address growing problems advocates say, are brought on by anti-trafficking campaigns.
Organizations I Work With
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Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) National is a home for white people working for justice. When we fight racism, we all win. We want you on our team.
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Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network advocates for the rights of sex workers in Toronto and beyond.
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Looking to organize for sex workers’ rights, racial justice, and resourcing our movements? Check out these other organizations that I love and respect.