Yves here. Sex work is legal in Australia. I’m linking to a New South Wales guide by the Sex Workers Outreach project which explains the rules there. The depressing part is that it’s not hard to come up with sensible laws, but we Americans won’t go there. And yes, when I was in Oz, I lived about a six minute walk from Kings Cross, Australia’s most notorious sex district. I would walk through there at least once a day, including at night and never felt unsafe or even uncomfortable (although you did watch your wallet in any busy part of Sydney; there was a fair bit of pick pocketing). And in keeping, high priced real estate was hard by in my ‘hood, Potts Point, and Elizabeth Bay.
Here, Hallie Lieberman describes how a supposed war on child porn and sex trafficking is a Trojan horse for a campaign to find new ways to criminalize and restrict sex work. For instance:
Sex trafficking and consensual sex work are one and the same, according to the NCOSE [National Center on Sexual Exploitation], which stated in a 2017 amicus brief that “the majority of prostituted persons should be classified as victims of sex trafficking”.
By Hallie Lieberman, a historian and journalist who writes about sex and gender. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice and other publications. She is the author of ‘Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy’, and is currently working on a book about the history of male sex workers. She is on Twitter: @hallielieberman. Originally published in openDemocracy
An ‘anti-trafficking’ US law that has been accused of endangering sex workers faces a crucial hearing this week.
The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA/SESTA), which became law in 2018, claims to hold websites liable for promoting or facilitating prostitution or sex trafficking.
But critics say it has actually increased trafficking, as well as threatening sex workers and free speech.
Under the law, a website can be sued if a user discusses prostitution or sex trafficking – and the site’s owner can be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. This means some platforms have introduced bans on all content relating to sex work.
Former sex worker and sex-trafficking survivor Justice Rivera told openDemocracy that this is “pushing people to more risky forms of work, like full-service sex work, or something that’s on the street”.
Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an organisation that defends sexual freedom as a fundamental right, first sued the federal government over the law in June 2018.
The foundation argued that FOSTA/SESTA violates the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech. But a court dismissed the case months later, ruling that Woodhull and its co-plaintiffs, Human Rights Watch and online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, had no legal standing.
This decision was overturned by the Court of Appeals in January 2020, and last March a court ruled in the government’s favour. Woodhull is now appealing that decision, and the Court of Appeals will hear the case on 11 January.
‘Getting Porn Off the Internet’
A 2020 study of the effects of FOSTA/SESTA found that 72.5% of sex workers had faced economic instability since the law’s introduction.
In San Francisco, the number of street-based sex workers tripled in 2018 and there was a 170% increase in human trafficking cases. CBS said both spikes appeared “to be connected to the federal shutdown of sex-for-sale websites”.
This increased hardship is because websites that sex workers previously advertised on have been shut down, including Craigslist personals, as have websites that were used to verify clients’ identities.
Similarly, in July 2018, police in Indianapolis admitted they were having more trouble finding sex trafficking victims because sites used by pimps have been taken down.
Sex workers’ groups say they were not given a chance to present their views on FOSTA-SESTA before it became law.
Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, told openDemocracy that “the adult industry would love to work with the government to find solutions”.
In passing the legislation, Congress also overlooked a letter from US assistant attorney general Stephen E Boyd, who raised a “serious constitutional concern” over the fact that FOSTA/SESTA retroactively criminalises actions that weren’t illegal when committed. Boyd also warned the law would make it harder to prosecute traffickers.