The Unrepentant Whore
How Jamie Lee Hamilton changed the way we look at Canada's underclass
by Michael Harris
From the June 2010 issue of The Walrus
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.06-society-the-unrepentant-whore/If missing women are silenced women, Hamilton has made it her mission to be fully present and accounted for. An aboriginal, transsexual sex worker from one of the country's poorest neighbourhoods, she's a kind of activist polyglot, able to speak with whatever voice best suits the situation. She presents as insistently at ease, adding "dear" and "honey" to her sentences like dollops of crème fraîche. Still, mention her name, and journalists, politicos, and armchair commentators turtle in their heads with alternating fear and exasperation: she's infamous for her public and embarrassing arguments with anyone who crosses her. (Even one of her fiercest supporters told me, "You'd be safer writing a profile of a Mafia don.")
