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    Sex Workers Are Not Collateral Damage: Kate D’Adamo on FOSTA and SESTA

    By
    Caty Simon
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    (Courtesy of Support Ho(s)e Chicago)

    Both sex workers’ rights and anti-trafficking organizations have been watching a bill winding its way through Congress for a while. Here at Tits and Sass, we’ve had plenty to say about it. SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, the Senate version of the bill, would have been disastrous enough—it would create a trafficking-related loophole in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law which allows the internet to function by not holding service providers liable for user posting content. In practice, that would outlaw all sex worker advertising sites by opening them up to endless lawsuits, since any of them can be used for trafficking. That would send vulnerable people back into the streets and other dangerous venues and back into the hands of potentially abusive managers. Just think about the economic panic which followed the closures of Craigslist, MyRedBook, TNA, and Backpage’s adult section and multiply it a thousandfold if you want to imagine the impact this could have on the most defenseless members of our community. And as usual, when the sex trade is driven further underground, trafficking victims suffer as everyone around them is criminalized further, and they are further isolated with no one to turn to but their traffickers.

    But the version that passed the House by an overwhelming majority last Thursday, FOSTA, the Allow States And Victims To Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, was even worse. It criminalizes “promoting” and “facilitating” prostitution without defining these terms, placing vital sex worker online harm reduction resources which both voluntary and trafficked sex workers rely on at risk, such as the verification sites and bad call lists we use to avoid violent clients. This blog you’re reading now could fall in the crosshairs of this legislation as well, as could other sites of sex worker community, making it much harder for an already closeted and stigmatized group of marginalized people to forge vital social and political connections with each other. FOSTA also includes damaging new additions such as a retiring Republican congressman’s clause expanding the Mann Act. It is a bill that has morphed into something much broader and more hurtful than its cosponsors originally envisioned, with law enforcement, social services, the ACLU, EFF, the National Organization for Women, AIDS United and even anti-trafficking organizations as well as the Department of Justice opposing it. Yet representatives rushed to embrace it in a show of bipartisan cooperation.

    It seems likely that the Senate debate and vote on SESTA will take place on Monday, March 12th. If SESTA passes the Senate, the next step would be reconciliation between FOSTA and SESTA into one no doubt catastrophic law. Today and tomorrow, just as sex workers, free speech organizations, and anti-trafficking organizations mobilized against FOSTA in the House, tweet storms and phone/fax/email jams are planned nationally against this Senate vote on SESTA. We urge all our readers to call their Senators and encourage their social networks to do the same. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for more information and a sample call script.

    Longtime sex work and trafficking policy researcher and Reframe Health and Justice partner Kate D’Adamo has led the sex worker and trafficking survivor charge against the House and now the Senate vote. Tits and Sass caught up with her last weekend to ask her what every sex worker should know about FOSTA and SESTA.

    How did you mobilize action on the House vote so quickly? Are there any other organizations and individuals whose efforts against FOSTA you’d like to highlight?

    This is so far from a solo effort! None of this would have been possible without Red from Support Ho(s)e and the group MASWAN doing some of the most fantastic grassroots organizing work. On the national support and lobbying front, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the National Center for Transgender Equality have truly shown up.

    I think things mobilized so quickly because people have been waiting for a moment to plug in. A lot of times sex worker rights, and movement work in general, can feel intangible; SESTA isn’t and its impacts certainly won’t be. Which also points to how long we have been laying the groundwork. When I talk about what would be impacted, it’s because this movement has been doing harm reduction and anti-violence work for years, finding ways to turn online spaces into community and safety. When folks are connecting online and calling their reps and senators, it’s because we can stand on decades of sex workers demanding liberation and justice.

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    Activist Spotlight Interview: Melissa Gira Grant on Playing The Whore and Policing The Policers, Part Two

    By
    Caty Simon
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    Melissa Gira Grant (Photo by Noah Kalina)
    Melissa Gira Grant. (Photo by Noah Kalina)

    Part one of this interview is here.

    You encapsulate the tired terms of the sex worker debate, in which the token sex worker is asked reductifying questions ad nauseaum: Is sex work exploitative or empowering? Is it violence against women? How can we help women (always women, and always cis women, never sex working men or trans women) “exit” the industry? And so on. (I think back to a radio interview I did recently with a progressive, well-intentioned interviewer, which I thought was going to be about how anti­-traffickers hurt sex workers, but which turned out to be “Blind Date with a Hooker,” take #1001–what’s a nice girl like you doing in a movement like this?) You claim we should refuse to engage in these stale performances. But given that we often have no access to the public except through this media ritual, how do we change the terms of this conversation to our benefit?

    It’s not easy to get around the debate, let me just start there. Here’s a few ways I try, with the gigantic caveat that these don’t apply to all opportunities. When I do speak in public about sex work, including to other members of the media, a line I draw right now—upfront—is that I don’t speak about my personal experiences in sex work. I’ll tell stories about what I’ve seen in my work as a journalist, and before that, I would tell stories about my work as an advocate or organizer. Just doing that can be enough to deflect the cliched kind of stuff, like wanting to know why you got into sex work, all the stuff that seems designed not to humanize you but to decide how “representative” you are. Depending on the outlet, you might even be able to turn that around. At the last debate I did agree to do, I turned to the anti-prostitution “side” and asked her, after she had insinuated that all sex workers had been abused as children, that I wondered what had happened in her own life, that had made her come to that conclusion. It was dramatic, but that was the point, and the whole room snapped to attention at the provocation—why was she allowed to ask those questions, and why wasn’t I?

    I’ve also turned down opportunities when I thought I was being brought in to play a part or just stand in as a caricature. Sometimes that’s quite obvious when someone approaches you—like when a business news cable network wanted me to come on and argue why prostitution should be taxed and legalized, something I’ve never argued for, not that it prevented them from telling me what my argument would be. Sometimes it’s more subtle—like when you’ve been asked to do a panel and you realize that of everyone there, you are the only one who is a out as a sex worker, and now there’s quite a lot of weight on you to represent everything about sex work. It’s still a hustle, all of it. Sometimes you can turn the conversation around, and sometimes a producer has already decided how they are going to cast you. And if being public is something you want to do, you don’t have to do it alone. Red Umbrella Project has a guide for navigating the media and sex work, how to deal with combative interviews, how to package a soundbite, how to vet the media. And just as sex workers keep lists of bad clients, I encourage people to keep lists of bad media. Screen them, and check in with other sex workers—I’m still doing that, because odds are if some reporter just emailed everyone they could find online looking for a source on a story, you probably know someone else they emailed.

    Or—another way around all of it is what you’re doing here—make your own.

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    Activist Spotlight: Pye Jakobsson On the Amnesty International Vote and Holding Allies Accountable

    By
    Caty Simon
    -
    (Photo via Amnesty International USA Flickr account)
    (Photo via Amnesty International USA Flickr account)

    As the vote this weekend at the Amnesty International General Council Meeting in Dublin approaches on whether the human rights organization will adopt a draft proposal supporting the decriminalization of prostitution as policy, I spoke, via e-mail, to Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) President Pye Jakobsson on NSWP’s petition to Amnesty urging them to vote in favor of it. Jakobsson is also the co-founder of Rose Alliance, Sweden’s sex workers’ rights organization, so she has key insight into the Swedish model of criminalizing sex workers’ clients championed by the the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, the prohibitionist organization behind the petition asking Amnesty to vote against the proposal for decriminalization.

    Can you comment on the notorious petition by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women urging Amnesty International members to vote against the decriminalization proposal when it’s submitted at the organization’s International Council Meeting in Dublin this weekend? It’s been signed by a gaggle of celebrities—Kate Winslet, Lena Dunham, Anne Hathaway, and Emma Thompson among them—and it received a lot of attention in the news last week. Why do you think so many in Hollywood are drawn to anti-sex worker anti-trafficking activism?

    I find the whole thing revolting. actually. Right, so I get holding babies is getting kind of old, and animal rights is too mainstream to gain any real attention, so now they are hugging trafficking victims.

    There are just so many problems with that, though:

    1) Grown up women are neither children nor puppies.
    2) People who are being exploited in the sex industry need rights, not hugs.
    3) Just because you once played a hooker doesn’t give you any extra special insights [in]to what sex workers and/or people who experience exploitation in the sex industry need.

    How can we fight back against that sort of star power to make our case in the court of public opinion?

    I really want to answer [with] some fancy, clever version of “we have truth on our side,” but so far that hasn’t been enough.

    Last weekend, me and a long-time activist looked at each other and said “Shit, we need to scramble up some celebrities.” Truth is, there are not many of those around. The actor Rupert Everett that supports ECP (English Collective of Prostitutes) is one. Rose Alliance has our own little celebrity if one is into kitsch European disco from the 80s, in our member (and yes, former sex worker) Alexander Bard. If you’ve never heard of his iconic group Army of Lovers, I dare you to look them up. But that’s it.

    I am not really sure we want to go after celebrities unless they have actually worked as sex workers. I prefer sticking to sex workers themselves as the experts. I do think that it is time to hold all our so-called allies accountable. You say you are on our side? Now would be a really good time to prove it. This last week several people within the UNAIDS family, Amnesty, and other big organizations have been risking their own jobs trying to do what’s right. Now, that is commitment.

    It is easy saying you are an ally because you feel all fluffy inside [on the] IAC (International AIDS Conference) when you walk around with a badge saying “Save us from saviours,” but what about the rest of the year? I know I am not very flexible on this—ask our allies in Sweden. We really don’t let them fuck around. There is no time for pretty words while people are dying.

    I really think we need to demand more of our allies. It is time for some old school hardcore activism—either you are with us or you are against us. And no, owning a red umbrella does not count. We need our research spread, our petitions signed and more doors opened. We need to be included in decision making processes at all levels, and those who claim to be our allies should facilitate that. I got allergic to…buzz words of sympathy without any action or commitment the […] second [Swedish sex worker] Jasmine got murdered, and I haven’t changed since.

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    Activist Spotlight: Nine, on Bad Policies and Holding Abolitionists To Account

    By
    Miranda Craig
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    nineNine is an itinerant writer from Northern Ireland, who spent several years working at an outreach project for sex workers in Scotland before being made redundant in 2009.  Recently, she has written and spoken against attempts by politicians and feminist organisations to criminalise the purchase of sex in Scotland, most notably in the barnstorming essay “Taking Ideology to The Streets: Sex Work And How To Make Bad Things Worse” and in her zine Sex industry Apologist, now on its second volume.  Nine’s writing has also appeared in Autostraddle and The Rumpus.

    I’d like to ask about the work you did supporting street-based sex workers, and what you’ve done since that came to an end?

    I spent six and a half years at a sex work project, from 2002 to 2009, providing outreach services to sex workers on the streets, in flats, saunas and massage parlors, and online. I gave out condoms and needles, linked people up with specialist services, took reports of violence and circulated them to other sex workers, provided emotional support, gave advice on legalities and personal safety—basically I just responded to whatever issues sex workers brought to me. However, we were sometimes limited in terms of what we could actually do, given that we were operating on pretty much a shoestring, and adequate support was not always available to sex workers from other agencies. I guess that’s what happens when the funding is almost entirely focused on sexual health, as if sex workers couldn’t possibly have any other needs. Hi, I may be ranting already.

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    Fundraisers For Sex Workers Struggling Post-SESTA

    By
    suzyhooker
    -

    Editor’s note: Inclusion on this list does not indicate that Tits and Sass is endorsing a particular fund.

    Newwhoreizons is “a wealth redistribution club by [sex workers] for [sex workers].” $newwhoreizons on cash.me to donate, newwhoreizons on a private Instagram account for information—DM to request to join the club or ask for help.

    Lysistrata is a member-led sex worker fundraising collective which originally formed after the Backpage adult ad closures. They maintain a standing emergency fund for marginalized sex workers as well as promoting and signal boosting individual fundraisers and events. You can donate on Paypal, Venmo, squarecash, or directly through their website. They also have a monthly donation option. You can request emergency assistance over email at lysistratamccf@gmail.com.

    Note: Both the organizations above have stated that they are currently receiving more requests for help than donations.

    The Black Sex Worker Collective is hosting its first community strategy meeting this coming Saturday, April 15th. Non-Black workers may attend as long as they don’t take up space and make sure to allow Black sex workers to speak and lead. You can donate to the collective here, tax-free through their fiscal sponsor Project Prosper.

    CUSP in Alaska is raising money for street outreach supplies to help the many Anchorage workers who’ve been driven into street-based work since this SESTA-fueled series of ad platform closures. They’re going to start a needs-assessment program, and if they receive enough money, they will be expanding their efforts into subsidizing workers’ phone bills.

    The Third Wave Foundation is starting a cross-class, multiracial, intergenerational giving circle for women, queer, and trans people with experience in the sex trade to raise money for sex worker-led organizations. Third Wave is framing this as a response to silence from the funding community in general to the passage of SESTA. Participation in the first round of the giving circle will be confined to the NYC area and the deadline for application is April 15th. They are specifically encouraging people of color as well as working class and low-income people to apply for these stipended fellowships. The circle will begin with $150K already raised and fundraise from there—it looks like a promising way for low-income and marginalized sex workers to access philanthropic resources.

    As you can see, this list is a bit thin so far. Readers, feel free to link any other fundraisers you’re aware of for sex workers hit hard by SESTA in the comments. 

     

     

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