Read on Twitter
This talk on proposed policies that will directly impact those of us currently in the sex trades features no speakers who are currently in the sex trades. So, several of our members are attending and will respond here in real time from a collectively drafted document. #DecrimNow https://twitter.com/EqualityModelNY/status/1380612988433002504
If you'd like to read our official statement on the policy of partial criminalization branded as the "Equality Model" , you can do so here: https://www.swopbrooklyn.org/news/statement-against-the-equality-model #DecrimNow
Speakers are listed as "sex trade survivors and students". Our members are currently working in the sex trades, many of us are survivors, and some of us are also students. We seek to center those who will be most directly impacted by this policy and counter any falsehoods.
They open (we will not be naming names in this thread to avoid derailing anything into personal attacks) by stating that the goal is to bring voices of survivors to schools. Yet survivors who are current sex workers are not included.
They are saying respectful engagement in the chat is allowed, but our past experiences in engaging directly with 'Equality Model' supports has shown us that it is futile, so we've decided to respond here for others to read.
They acknowledge that all panelists are People of Color and this is a hard to time for communities of color. We fully agree and affirm the need to center People of Color in advocacy.
The panelists have introduced themselves and indeed, they are all survivors and none are current sex trade workers. Again, it is primarily and overwhelmingly people who are currently in the sex trades who will be impacted by this legislation and their absence is notable.
They are using the term "prostitution" in addition to "human trafficking." For people who claim to want to decriminalize us, they are using the language of criminalization: "prostitution" is the crime. We believe sex work to be a neutral term.
Further specifications can be used such as "full service sex work" or "brothel-based work" or "street-based work" if needed. A member explains the history, utility, and limitations of the term "sex work" here: https://twitter.com/EmilyDWarfield/status/1297224085219540993?s=20
That thread cites the activist who coined it ( https://twitter.com/carol_leigh ) and an activist who has coined an alternative term, "erotic labor" ( https://twitter.com/thotscholar ).
These are internal, intracommunity discussions, and those who are not currently trading sex should use "sex worker" unless instructed otherwise.
Immediately and at length sex work and sex trafficking are being conflated. The former is said to be responsible for the latter. Immediately decriminalization is being conflated with legalization, and false claims are being made about what partial criminalization does.
This is a lot to address, but we will do our best! Please bear with us!
Myth 1: Sex work and sex trafficking are the same.
This is not true legally nor is it true in the majority of the subjective experiences of those in the sex trades.
Myth 1: Sex work and sex trafficking are the same.
This is not true legally nor is it true in the majority of the subjective experiences of those in the sex trades.
We are able to understand the distinction between trafficking and laboring under the constraints of imperialist white supremacist patriarchal capitalism in industries like agriculture, fishing, and textile, and the same is true of the sex industry.
There is no evidence that demand primarily drives the sex industry. It is a fact that sex workers need to pay our bills far more than our clients need to engage in recreational sex. We can look at what happened during the pandemic to see how the end of demand played out.
Those of us trading sex to survive were plunged deeper into poverty. As speakers are currently discussing, this is indeed predominantly Women of Color, women in the Global South, migrants and other marginalized groups like queer, TGNC, and disabled people.
We only survived due to the emergency mutual aid we provided for each other: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020872820962202
Clearly, our demand for income is a pretty key driver of the sex industry.
Clearly, our demand for income is a pretty key driver of the sex industry.
There is no evidence that sex trade criminalization decreases demand (let alone our need for money). The US has had full criminalization for over 100 years. But if you need more evidence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5529480/
We do not intend to argue against the constraints of intersecting oppressions that inform the choices we make to survive. Yet we demand you #LetUsSurvive, and partial criminalization endangers us. It does NOT decriminalize people trading sex.
What the "Equality Model" aims to do is repeal the "prostitution"/sex selling pieces of Article 230. Please read the sections they want to retain regarding "permitting" ( https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/230.40) and "promoting" ( https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/230.20)
Those "pimping" statutes include anyone who benefits financially from prostitution: third parties who aid in sex workers’ safety like drivers and security, landlords who rent to us, our partners, spouses, adult children, roommates and anyone else we live with and share expenses.
And? It includes us when we work together. When we bring each other in on 'duos', refer each other clients, and share spaces instead of working in isolation. @EqualityModelNY does not decriminalize people trading sex, but continues to criminalize us under other statutes.
They are arguing that "sex work" is a term designed to minimize the violence of the sex trades, that it cannot be work because it is violent. This is a privileged perspective of work that sees it as a source of empowerment rather than survival.
It also distracts from the fact that partial criminalization increases violence. We won't respond to their derailing arguments over what constitutes 'choice' in systems of oppression; we seek to reduce harm and provide more options. Here's how @EqualityModelNY increases violence:
In Nordic model countries, landlords are forced to evict us, and sex workers are charged with these kinds of “pimping” offenses and those who are immigrants are then deported. This is not theoretical. Follow @RedUmbrellaSwe to see how it is playing out right now in Sweden.
There is ample evidence for this. Here is a summary: https://www.nswp.org/resource/the-real-impact-the-swedish-model-sex-workers-advocacy-toolkit This impact is felt disproportionately by migrants: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-018-0338-9
We are now hearing the lie that those who support full decriminalization are privileged, aren't street-based workers having penetrative sex, aren't poor women of color. This is a lie.
In NYC ( http://decrimny.org ) in the US ( https://www.decrimnow.org/ ) ( https://www.decrimma.org/ ), and around the world ( https://www.nswp.org/membership-and-governance) it is poor, low-income, working class women and TGNC people of color who are most heavily policed leading the campaigns.
This is because-- unlike these panelists who have never worked under partial criminalization and will never have to-- they do not experience the violence of @EqualityModelNY.
Any level of criminalization increases both violence ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27113456/ ) and HIV ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30037733/ ). The evidence for this is overwhelming and we can only tweet so much, but https://sexworkresearch.wordpress.com/ is a great clearing hub for research
The only evidence in support of partial criminalization is methodologically flawed, conflating full decriminalization with legalization as the panelists here have done. They are different regulatory policies and this is disinformation to conflate them (graphic by @DecrimNowDC)
This panel claims to want to center those who have experienced violence in the sex trades, but it repeatedly centers sex buyers. Let's talk about the sex buying laws and how maintaining them will work.
First of all, the people arrested on these charges reflect the racism and classism of policing overall: it is overwhelmingly poor, low-income, working class Black and Brown men https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-cops-cash-in-on-sex-trade-arrests-with-little-evidence-while-black-and-brown-new-yorkers-pay-the-price
We know that police only harm communities of color. They are killing young Black and Brown people every day. We also know that criminalizing clients harms US. It continues our subjection to policing and surveillance
Maintaining the criminalization of buying but not selling means that the clients have the upper-hand in the negotiation process. Our current safety strategies like screening and working in well-lit areas become difficult to impossible.
We know this because of the research from jurisdictions with partial criminalization that we've already linked to, and we know it because of how we've already been impacted by SESTA/FOSTA https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504218792534
They are citing studies refuting some of these points but not linking to them. Again, it is because of the methodological flaws in these studies.
They continue to use the same strawmen over and over, the same philosophical debates over choice again and again, without looking at the material impacts of their policies.
We all want more options for people in the sex trades, for sex workers and survivors alike. As this study shows, we are often the same people at different points in time: https://www.courtinnovation.org/publications/NYC-sex-trade Despite their claims, this legislation doesn't provide it.
They assert that criminalizing, arresting, jailing, brutalizing poor Black and Brown men is "accountability" for gender based violence. It is not. It is further violence, both gendered and racilaized.
This legislation has not resulted in further options for people in the sex trades anywhere it has been implemented. It only provides further money to racist law enforcement.
We demand #DecrimNow to #LetUsSurvive and then we demand more than survival!
We demand #DecrimNow to #LetUsSurvive and then we demand more than survival!
Where are the non-coercive social services? Where are the evidence-based social services? Not in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, where all prostitution-related offenses in NYC are processed https://www.nswp.org/resource/criminal-victim-or-worker-the-effects-new-yorks-human-trafficking-intervention-courts
There is so much anger here at buyers, so much explicit discussion of rape and violence and "coming inside them", but no explanation of how criminalization has ever been accountability or ever provided alternatives or ever prevented exploitation.
As we have repeatedly demonstrated, criminalization creates further harm. When police are murdering Black and Brown people, to call for more policing as a solution to violence is cruel and inane. We want #HousingNotHandcuffs
Ahhhh here is the "pimp lobby" myth! We've already explained that "pimping" laws criminalize sex workers and anyone who associates with us. "Pimping" is also an anti-Black term: https://www.google.com/search?q=pimp&client=firefox-b-1-e&sxsrf=ALeKk00n-gKIOfequ5Q-k-Mliej17w0rkQ:1618680760754&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2_f7d54XwAhXXF1kFHXbqCUgQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1421&bih=711. There is no "pimping" law in NY State.
We discuss management, abusive management, and traffickers, not "pimps". Some of us do choose to work for management for a variety of reasons, just like plenty of other workers in other industries. Abuse is still criminalized under full decriminalization of sex work
When ALL management is criminalized, it discourages reporting abuse; if we complain about those kinds of violations we will lose our jobs as well as our housing. It also, once again, criminalizes us for working together and criminalizes anyone who lives with us or rents to us.
There is no industry in which management argues for workers’ rights. Abusive management and organized crime in particular thrive under conditions of criminalization-- they do not want us to have access to other safety strategies like working cooperatively
Sex worker organizations are some of the most underfunded organizations on the left, because any organization endorsing full decriminalization will have trouble receiving funding. An example of why: https://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/us-anti-prostitution-pledge-first-amendment-challenges-and-public-health-priorities-nicole
Most of our organizations are informal, volunteer run and led, and when we are paid it's through our own crowdfunding work. Go ahead and look up sex worker orgs on https://www.guidestar.org/ and see. Then look up the orgs in the "Equality Model" coalition: https://www.equalitymodelny.org/who-we-are
There is simply no such thing as a "pimp lobby" advocating for full decriminalization that would allow us to work safely without management. For more on this racist myth: https://utorontopress.com/us/getting-past-the-pimp-2
It's emotionally and intellectually exhausting listening to the same lies and strawmen for so long. We have no interest in defending "sex buyers and pimps". We are here to center the needs of those currently in the sex trades + to advocate no more policing in communities of color
It's not trauma-informed (as they claimed at the beginning) to (TW!)
discuss "rectal prolapses" and "disintegrating organs" without any warning. Overwhelming people with violent details to avoid having to engage in evidence-informed policy practice is abhorrent.
discuss "rectal prolapses" and "disintegrating organs" without any warning. Overwhelming people with violent details to avoid having to engage in evidence-informed policy practice is abhorrent.
Listening to this survivor bombard us with these details without warning and then discuss the violence she experiences in the classroom-- the dissonance is stunning, and the member tweeting this says that as a survivor and student who has also been triggered in the classroom.
Thankfully this panel only has 13 more minutes in which to rehash the same racist lies about "pimp lobbies"
A panelist is now arguing that economic coercion should legally be considered coercion for the purposes of trafficking, which is bad news for all industries everywhere currently existing under capitalism.
Economic coercion will never be addressed through criminalization. Abolition now, #DecrimNOW, #HousingNotHandcuffs
Blatant lies that those selling sex will no longer be policed and will get resources! Please advocate against these lies and help us educate folks FOR S3075 “Stop Violence in the Sex Trades” Act and AGAINST S6040 "Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality" Act
Shame on @EqualityModelNY for refusing to let the people who will be impacted by their terrible legislation speak directly or even ask questions in this panel.
I'm logging off to go to class but another member will be taking over to handle our mentions!
I'm logging off to go to class but another member will be taking over to handle our mentions!
