the policymakers and litigator’s roundtable on decriminalizing sex work at cc18 was fucking hilarious. we’re going around the circle, name, pronouns, organization, why we’re here, and it’s all lawyers, social workers, and law students. gets to me. “avia, they/she, i’m a full service sex worker from chicago and i’m here to spy on you”
the entire atmo of the room shifts instantly. a lot of people are viscerally uncomfortable. one person, about three seats down from me, solemnly, wordlessly snaps five times. the facilitator, after a long pause, says “…fair enough”.
we continue introductions. more lawyers. then we get to the person who snapped. “i’m [name], no pronouns. i’m also a full service sex worker from chicago here to spy on you.”
anyway, we swapped numbers
how bad were their opinions?
the lawyers? straight up promoted LEAD and teaming up with anti-trafficking orgs. i actually heard the words “cops are effected by decrim too” come out of a real human’s mouth. it was a fuckn trip.
im not familiar with LEAD but holy shit???
LEAD is “law enforcement assisted diversion”, which is a… “solution”… wherein rather than sending sex workers and drug users to prison, the cops send us to community centers, etc, generally still with the threat of jail time if you’re noncooperative. and like, you’re still getting picked up by cops. it’s still traumatic. they’re still the same people who rape us before and after they arrest us. just swapping out booking with social workers who don’t have our interests at heart nor think we have the autonomy to have our own interests at heart doesn’t help.
the idea, see, is that this is an incremental change on the road to full decrim. but the thing is, it’s completely unnecessary. laws can be non-enforced before they’re repealed. but whatever, cops have quotas, private prisons have quotas, and capitalism is effected by decrim too.
gotten a couple asks about “wait why are anti-trafficking orgs bad”, “why do we want decrim”, etc. adding a bit on here since it already has the shit about LEAD on it.
full decriminalization of sex work is what we’re shooting for—“we” being most sex workers, swer-run organizations, and civilian allies—, where other models are legalization and “end demand” or the nordic model.
legalization is a model wherein sex work (usually indoor sex work, in brothels and the like) is fully legal with the right paperwork, training, etc. theoretically this makes things safer, because you can mandate hiv/sti testing, ensure that only adults are engaging in sex work, etc. but it actually does more harm than good: heightened police interaction, and legalization alongside no cultural shifts in the perception of sex workers, puts us at risk, and the “buy-in” model still criminalizes many survival sex workers, who are disproportionately queer and queer youth.
#enddemand is where, in short, selling sex is decriminalized, but buying sex is criminalized. theoretically this gives sex workers the ability to go to the police for help, because we’re not breaking the law anymore, and also, well… ends demand, which is apparently a good thing. in reality, there will always be demand, and putting pressure on the clients just makes more of them scared. this means it’s harder for sex workers to pay our bills, and it’s also directly correlated to heightened violence by clients. they’re committing a crime now, and we’re not. that means we can fuck them over. that means we become the enemy, and that’s the kind of shit that gets us killed. additionally, as mentioned earlier, when not coupled with cultural shifts in the perception of sex workers, we’re still at risk even if we’re not breaking laws. whorephobia’s a thing.
anti-trafficking orgs are… complicated, but they’re definitely not our friends. according to them, all sex work is bad, sometimes because non-trafficked sex workers obfuscate the needs of the trafficked (because you can’t always tell us apart), sometimes because sex workers apparently straight up lack the autonomy to understand that our jobs are inherently debasing and dehumanizing and whatever other slut shaming, misogynistic bullshit you wanna pull.
anti-trafficking orgs aren’t pushing for decriminalization, as you can imagine, and that hurts… everyone, including the currently-trafficked (which in most cases ends up including literally every single minor in sex work), because the criminalization of sex work makes it impossible for us to safely come forward to report rape, assault, and other crimes committed against us by clients, by traffickers, by strangers, or by the police. because we all lack access to these resources, the issue is compounded.
I do not agree with this, and I’m not willing to take a policy position incompatible with the eventual elimination of all “sex work” whatsoever.
I am not even entirely sure how to respond to the minors-in-sex-work thing. “Give them pensions and crush anybody who has knowingly patronized them” is not necessarily the right answer, but it is the true answer.
And this all must be read critically; posts written by individuals are one thing but it’s not necessarily easy to know who is behind organizations, or how representative any one person is.
But if I am to advocate anything helpful at all, I must read this.
Lord, help us! Christ, help us! Saints, pray for them and us!
Jesus said to them, “I can guarantee this truth… prostitutes are going into God’s kingdom ahead of you. (Matthew 21:31)
so. there’s a lot here. you tagged this post “#none of these people seem to be privileged BS hobbysts [sic] #but I don’t trust them to have fully honest communication with more seriously exploited women”
i’m not a hobbyist, you’re right. i’m a trafficking survivor and an underclass survival sex worker and a street-based activist within my own community fighting for our safety — working to make sure that other sex workers have access to STI testing and prophylactics, to condoms and lube, to warnings about dangerous men, to childcare, to housing, to food and to community support.
what are you doing for us? you decide, without knowing me or my story, that i am not “seriously exploited”, and that i am being somehow dishonest in representing my own needs and the needs of my community, that i don’t even speak to other sex workers? i’m in the trenches, so to speak. where are you? where is your support, where is your advocacy, where is anything other than your useless prayers?
you’re not willing to take a policy position incompatible with the elimination of sex work? congratulations, not only is your position unbelievably naive, it’s explicitly, directly dangerous to us.
a demand for sex workers has always existed and it always will. the bible itself considers hiring a prostitute less a sin than adultery—“a prostitute’s price is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts for your life itself. (proverbs 6:26)—and as i’ve discussed before, fssw/”prostitution” in the classic sense is very literally lifesaving for a number of vulnerable people. trying to destroy sex work as an industry in any context other than completely gutting capitalist structures and getting rid of the concept of work will literally only ever serve to further endanger us — these vulnerable, exploited women, girls, and others you claim you support.
not liking the concept of sex work does not mean you can’t support its decriminalization. in fact, if you want people to be able to leave the industry, you should be supporting decriminalization. trafficking victims are criminalized under prostitution laws directly alongside non-trafficked sex workers. and many of us would love to be engaged in other work, but because of our criminalization in many cases getting other work is difficult or impossible. we’re traumatized, we’re vulnerable, and your moral crusade is going to get us killed.
I don’t see a lot of post here about this so I’m writing one hastily. Basically a bill called FOSTA just passed in the House today. The bill is supposedly to punish websites that knowingly or unknowingly host content promoting sex trafficking. However they changed the language to allow the federal government to prosecute any website that hosts content promoting prostitution/sex work.
That means:
*No advertising platforms like Backpage that allowed us to work inside, stay safe, and spend more time with our children *No bad date lists or screening websites like VerifyHim *No peer platforms like Tits and Sass *No sharing information on how to screen and stay safe. That includes giving referrals. We won’t be able to ask for or give other workers referrals! *Mainstream platforms like Twitter preemptively banning sex workers
And no, this does not keep trafficking victims safe either. Backpage and other online platforms have been crucial tools in identifying trafficking victims. This bill is to fuck over sex workers and to chill free speech.
Sex workers and allies, we’re fucked as shit if this bill passes and Trump signs it (he tweeted in support of the bill and so did Ivanka). We MUST stop this bill in the Senate. To do that, we need to call our senators NOW.
– Get your senators’ numbers here: https://callyourrep.co/ And use this script from Support Ho(s)e:
“Hi, my name is ___and I live in ___(city in district). I’m calling to urge Congressperson ______to vote NO on #FOSTA, House Bill 1865 because it infringes on online free speech and community harm reduction practices.”
– If you’re lazy (like me) you can even text RESIST to 50409 and the RESIST bot will deliver your message to your senators
graphic from National Center for Transgender Equality
The Senate is voting on it on March 12!!! Please CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW!! I’m not exaggerating when I say if this bill passes, sex workers will die. Literally. Sex workers will die because we won’t be able to access bad date lists, share screening/health tips, or advertise indoors.
“#can someone do an ID on that graphic please” –@thequantumqueer
bear with me, the graphic is formatted weird so this will be too
[image ID: infographic titled “What do SESTA and FOSTA say?” published by Reform Health and Justice consisting of two columns. The left column contains excerpts from the bills with arrows pointing to the plain english descriptions of what the excerpts mean in the right column.
(H.1865, Section 3)
Excerpt: “(a) PROMOTION OF PROSTITUTION”
Plain text: “Includes all prostitution, not simply trafficking situations”
Excerpt: “§ 2421A. Promotion or facilitation of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking”
Plain text: “Promotion or facilitation of prostitution includes harm reduction and anti-violence tactics including:
Sharing safety information and techniques such as how to screen for violence
Online advertising which allows people to work in safer locations and be more discerning about clients
Hosting information about individuals who have previously victimized people in the sex trade (known as Bad Date Lists)”
Excerpt: “(a) IN GENERAL – Whoever uses or operates a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or attempts to do so with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.”
Plain text: “This extends to anyone using the internet – service organizations, sex workers, peers and trafficking victims. Passage alone would have a chilling effect for organizations, companies and peer groups.”
Quote (not from bill): “When she told her pimp SFRedBook was gone, he shrugged. Then he told her that she would just have to work outdoors from then on.”
(H.1865, Section 5-6; S. 1693, Section 5-6)
Excerpt: “Section 1591(e) is amended – 1591(e)(4) The term ‘participation in a venture’ means knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation of subsection (a)(1).”
Excerpt (continued): “(d) In any case in which the attorney general of a State has reason to believe that an interest of the residents of that State has been or is threatened or adversely affected by any person who violates section 1591, the attorney general of the State, as parens patriae, may bring a civil action against such person on behalf of the residents of the State in an appropriate district court of the United States to obtain appropriate relief.”
Plain text: “Instead of creating guidelines for how to support trafficking identification and investigations or support the safety of trafficking victims and sex workers, SESTA would use civil suits targeting advertisers to figure out how to obey the lawafter a crime has been committed”
Plain text (continued): “This open-ended liability would shutter existing platforms and push sex workers and trafficking victims into further isolation – where violence and exploitation are more prevalent”
Section of graphic titled “Why are online platforms essential for safety?”, not part of bills or descriptions:
“Online advertising platforms allow people to work in doors, screen potential clients for violence, and significantly reduced the violence and exploitation faced by sex workers”
“A 2017 study from West Virginia University and Baylor University found a 17% drop in female homicide rates correlated to Craigslist opening its Erotic section – because it made sex work safer”
“Passing SESTA and FOSTA means increasing violence against women.”
Rush's tumblr archive 