Sex Work And The Law
Image courtesy of Vox
By PANKHURI DAYAL ‘23
13 missing. 2 found dead. Countless others raped and assaulted. In July 2018, these appalling incidents marked the one-month anniversary of the passage of the dangerous FOSTA-SESTA laws in the US. Signed by President Trump, these laws aim to help curb sex trafficking. They attempt to reduce human trafficking by making websites liable if they have third-party ads for prostitution, including ads for consensual sex work. For example, if someone advertised sex work on their Twitter account, Twitter itself would be held responsible. However, despite their noble intentions, these laws actually have the opposite effect and target consensual sex workers.
By censoring any discussion of sex work online, these bills force sex workers to put their lives on the line just to make ends meet. The Internet makes this kind of work safer by providing two main things: firstly, an opportunity to vet clients and secondly, the support of a large online community. Over the Internet, sex workers can speak to clients beforehand about boundaries, check if they have a history of violence, and ultimately decide if they feel safe with that customer, all while protecting their own identity and being able to leave the conversation should they wish to. However, as they now have no other way of finding clients, FOSTA-SESTA strips sex workers of all these protections and instead pushes them right back onto the streets and into dark alleyways, shady motel bars, and the arms of abusive pimps. For example, in an interview with Vice.com, a sex worker known as Katie said that the last time she tried to leave her pimp, he beat her with a tire iron. Due to FOSTA-SESTA, she is being forced to work for him again just to put food on the table, as she can only find customers through him.
While I’m sure many of us feel horrified by this story, such experiences are becoming increasingly common because of these laws. In fact, a study conducted by West Virginia University showed that sex workers having the ability to advertise themselves on Craigslist directly reduced the female homicide rate by 17.4% due to their being able to move indoors and away from pimps (huffpost.com). As Briq House, the Communications Director for the Sex Worker Outreach Project in the USA, puts it, “Without proper ways to establish identity, set service boundaries and screen people properly, this bill could turn casual meet-ups into life or death situations.”
Just like we care about the online communities that we are a part of, such as all_usstudents@milton.edu, our dorm Schoology pages, or, for the Robotics team, their Discord chat, online spaces are invaluable to sex workers. They can be used to find short-term help such as food and shelter, as well as warnings about abusive or dangerous clients. This network also ensures that a worker going missing or not checking in with friends for a while does not go unnoticed. The Vice article also interviewed a sex worker known as Lola who recently commented that “FOSTA-SESTA has wiped clean essential spaces for all of that community, because it took away the online platforms and tools sex workers use to communicate.”
On top of endangering consensual sex workers, FOSTA-SESTA manages to make finding trafficking victims, an already nearly impossible task, even harder. Years of research have shown that online avenues allow officials to work more effectively. The Vox article stated that in 2012, the number of identified sex trafficking victims was less than forty-two thousand, and thanks to these online avenues, a 2018 State Department report found that this number had increased to more than 100 thousand in 2017. However, with FOSTA-SESTA destroying these useful digital platforms, more and more trafficking victims will be lost without a trace or any hope of being rescued.
With all of this in mind, it seems glaringly obvious that these damaging laws should be repealed. I’m not alone in thinking this. In December 2019, Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee of California introduced the SAFE Sex Workers Study Act, a bill that calls for a federal study to examine how FOSTA-SESTA has impacted sex workers' safety. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden plan to introduce a similar bill in the Senate. This governmental action is a critical first step in healing the damage that FOSTA-SESTA has inflicted on an already marginalised and susceptible community. But, unless we continue the fight against these destructive laws, the kidnappings, rapes, and murders will persist without justice.