The bill, H.R. 1865, otherwise known as the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act”, or “FOSTA”, passed the House last week even though it’s been deemed unconstitutional by the Department of Justice. This bill doesn’t do what it portends to, which is make it legal for prosecutors to go after internet companies who allow sex trafficking to be advertised on their websites. It’s already legal to prosecute sex trafficking and those who aid it. The current interest in FOSTA by our government officials is as a tool to indict Backpage on trafficking charges for allowing traffickers to advertise on their online service. This bill does a number of other things though, including threaten free speech on the internet, make it harder for smaller companies to grow and thrive, deny consensually working sex workers the safety of an open platform to find, vet, and negotiate with clients, and sends actual sex traffickers deeper into the underground where it will be harder for law enforcement to find them, much less prosecute.
By making internet companies liable for all content posted using their services (in a way which still makes it easy for large companies to deny knowing anything, and leaves smaller companies with limited resources high and dry), it forces internet companies to police consumers. This limits everyone’s freedom of speech and freedom of expression on the internet in the long run. Sex workers, sex trafficking survivors, free speech advocates, internet companies, even the Department of Justice, and a host of other groups have spoken out against this bill. Politicians are, as usual, happy to pass a badly written and poorly researched bill which looks good to uneducated constituents, all the while putting at risk the general public and harming sex workers who are disproportionately women, transpeople, frequently POC, and Queer. Surprised much?
A word on conflation: Do you know the difference between sex work and sex trafficking? An important thing to understand in our modern debate over freedom of one’s own body, is that there is a difference between sex trafficking and consensual commercial sex work. Sex trafficking is coerced sex work. Not all sex workers are coerced into their jobs. Many sex workers are happy with their chosen vocation.
Loosely defined a sex worker is a person employed by the sex industry. The sex industry is vast and includes strippers, professional dominants/submissives/switches, prostitutes, adult entertainment actors/producers/crew members/management, phone sex operators, web cam performers, sex surrogates, sexologists, and a host of other occupations. As you can see not all sex workers trade sexual contact for money. People who choose sex work come from and have a variety of backgrounds, fields of interest, levels of education, ethnicities, genders and sexes, relationship statuses, body types, and have varied personal and professional boundaries regarding what activities they will and will not engage in for pay. Every sex worker I know decides who they will take on as a client or employer, and what activities they are comfortable engaging in, with whom, under what circumstances, and when. Like any other industry there are even sex worker unions in some areas of the country which help SWs advocate for their needs on the job and help ensure their safety to a higher degree. Some people engage in sex work infrequently, informally, or for a short period of time in order to make ends meet (also known as “survival sex work”), and some sex workers view their job as a full time, long term occupation.
Sex trafficking (forced sex work, or sex slavery), is the term used to describe anyone who is forced to engage in sex work against their will, or who is coerced into it against their choice.
When law enforcement or the media talk about sex trafficking, they often conflate the issue with consensual sex work. They often go after, traumatize, and harm people who are making a living consensually and as safely as they are able to negotiating with clients in order to pay the bills.
Why does it matter that we make a distinction between sex workers and sex traffickers? The most immediate reason I can think of is safety. The safety of sex workers when consensually vetting, negotiating with, or working with a client is threatened when there is no discernment between what they are doing and what a victim of sex trafficking is being forced into doing. As sex workers are forced further and further underground under the guise of (due to a conflation with) “stop sex trafficking” measures, SWs lose access to a level of safety and protection which open air conversations provide. When everyone’s freedom of speech is restricted concerning sex work, and the places sex workers can be found are more and more remote or coded, a SW’s ability to reasonably vet clients, stand up to bosses who they feel are coercing them, report abuse/assault/rape, demand condom use, have access to meaningful healthcare, or any number of other wrongdoings becomes increasingly difficult to bring to light without the fear of retribution, being ignored, blamed, abused, or worse.
In study after study it has been shown that when sex work is decriminalized, STI rates drop as do rates of rape and domestic abuse in the general population. Decriminalization of consensual commercial sex work is not the same as decriminalization of sex trafficking. Everyone is better served by making these distinctions and going after the real bad guys. Bad guys who are frequently not women, trans people, queers, and POC (just sayin’). We need to demand more from our elected officials.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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