This rationale resonates with many Americans. The public assumes that sex workers have sexually transmitted infections, work under duress, and have limited personal agency. The mere suggestion of decriminalizing sex work (removing all criminal penalties surrounding the sale of consensual adult sex) elicits strong emotional reactions. Prohibitionists constantly remind us that “you wouldn’t want your daughter to be a prostitute.” Lines like these whip up emotions, and make it difficult for the public to weigh the evidence in a neutral light.

To take one example, the argument that decriminalizing sex work would be detrimental to public health is false. Statistics shows that in jurisdictions where sex work is decriminalized, such as Australia, the rate of STIs among sex workers is lower than that of the general public. Sex workers are more inclined to use condoms than civilians, and are more likely to get tested frequently, because their sexual health directly impacts their ability to earn a living.

The national dialogue concerning decriminalization is too emotionally charged, and leaves no room for the voices of actual sex workers. We need to stop spreading the same “what about the children” dribble, which is devoid of any logic, and instead focus on the facts. Let’s not be influenced by arguments that target our emotions. Let’s instead examine the evidence, and listen to what sex workers want. The public’s emotions should hold no stake in the question to decriminalize sex work.

Nah, the far left generally accepts sex workers without question, particularly in anarchist circles, though a lot of communists are here for us too.
Radicals, real radicals, not the people who can spout theory without an ounce of praxis to back it up and adhere more to centrist norms than anything else, are here for us. Libertarians may be in theory, but trust and believe that they don’t care about us beyond their obsession with free and unregulated markets.

On that, this is what I originally posted on Facebook discussing Juniper’s post:

Over the last few years, along with a broader resurgence of left politics, the demands of the sex workers’ rights movement have also shifted (slowly, maybe too slowly, but loudly) away from individual demands for sexual freedom to encompass collective actions to ensure occupational health, labor rights, and freedom from criminalization for all sex workers. This shift picked up steam at the same time as I have stepped outside of formal sex worker organizing, as well as the informal online organizing that has come to dominate what many people think the movement is.

It’s in this context that the reporting and commentary I do is (mis)represented as activism. While I would push audiences to not seek my answers, but to look for answers in the collective demands of sex workers, I knew that they would find there conflicting demands. That some of those demands were couched in rhetoric and alliances I find to be fundamentally opposed to how I understand sex workers’ liberation from oppression – all beautifully broken down by Juniper Fitzgerald here at TIts and Sass. She names neoliberalism and libertarianism as obstacles to sex workers’ rights. She calls for this to be the moment that the movement recommits itself to collective liberation.

One challenge in having these conversations? How little we are prepared for them. Focused as it is on crisis much of the time, the sex workers’ rights movement has not had much space for political education. And what political education anyone may have coming into the movement, speaking of the US in particular, is not likely one that includes movement histories, of any movement. So I am cognizant of how this is a vocabulary or history not to be taken for granted. It is one that can be especially hard to come by in a crisis. But crisis is what this movement knows how to move in, or has had to move in.

In this moment, I would offer this challenge: can more sex worker rights’ activists consider the interconnectedness of the oppression faced by people in the course of their sex work with the oppressions they face in all parts of their lives – to begin to understand the privilege they bring to their sex work, the protection their whiteness affords them, their citizenship affords them, their lack of a criminal record affords them? And what needs to be built in order to institutionalize that recognition? Is it a bail fund? Is it a drop-in or workers’ center? A legal aid project? Teach-in’s? Housing collectives? What networks of care are demanded? I could come up with a thousand needs to be met. I am just as concerned with the spirit of liberation that must drive any of them. I don’t think it is a secret that I find it hard to support any sex work project that doesn’t address criminalization and doesn’t center antiblack racism and misogyny (including transmisogyny) in the oppression of sex workers.

I don’t think the answers are in just surviving, especially not now, or in patching wounds. So many of us are showing up to this already hurting, already distrustful, already in conflict. The answers will be found in working on how we show up, fully, and how we commit to our freedom together.

The point of this essay is that Trump is about to rip your choices from your cold, dead hands– or, he would, if you were American– and that your individualistic ‘liberation’ does fuck all for the Black and brown people who are being targeted by our militarized police state, including many of your colleagues. Can’t say I’m surprised you won’t look past the limits of your own life when you post about Jesus being Jewish, as if that had any relevance here beyond dog whistle anti-Semitism. Shameful.

Nothing I said conflicts with your standpoint, save siding with libertarians.

I’ve not asked you to consider mysticism or sisterhood. I’ve demanded we all think deeply about consumption, it’s promise of identity, and the ridiculous notion that any of us exist in a vacuum.

I’m all for bodily autonomy. Obvs. But to say practices in the North don’t impact others is ridiculous. And that’s why the platform will inevitably fail. Not because bodily autonomy is bad. But because it’s not complex enough.

Unfortunately, sex workers are rejected not only from the Right, but also from the Left. None other than the most prominent feminist in the US, Gloria Steinem, rejects the notion that sex workers are human beings with human rights. In fact, the Green Party rejects sex workers’ rights completely, as does the Democratic and Republican Parties. And it was a Democrat by the name of Kamala Harris who denied us decrim in San Francisco in 2008. And don’t even get me started on those radical feminists who get platforms and money precisely because they hate us. Those feminists who claim to care about us, but won’t lift a finger when we are imprisoned, raped, or lose our straight jobs when someone finds out about our sex work past.

The only group that even begins to accept sex workers are the Libertarians.

I am not a libertarian (because I believe social programs are necessary), but that is the camp we are forced in due to the rejection from the other camps. So why should we bend over backwards trying to please people who don’t want anything to do with us? As for me, I am not lifting one finger, or donating one red cent to any groups that do not accept full decrim for sex workers. And I recommend others reading this do the same.

SwopBehindBars.org is a good place for us to start our activism, and if we care about those in the Global South, we should help sex worker orgs there as well.