rikodeine:

anguisettesnakedtruth:

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

I’ve said it before and i need to say it again

I am not comfortable with the very clear lines people are currently drawing between sex work and trafficking. I understand the impulse to do it, I think it stems from the same defensive impulse that led to the “empowerment!” conversation–we are fully realized people and we have meaningful consent and we want to emphasize that!

However, sex work and trafficking DO overlap. Inevitably, at this point, since federal and state definitions have been broadened so far that one can simultaneously traffick oneself and be a victim of trafficking, a legal situation which helps no one but the law enforcement who get funded from arrests and profit from confiscation.

So to be clear and to maintain a nuanced and constructive dialogue, I, personally, am throwing “trafficking” out the window unless specifically referring to the illegal movement over borders of coerced workers.

In its place we have several categories:
consensual adult sex workers
survival sex workers
underage survival sex workers leaving violence at home, often sexual exploitation or abuse
sexual abuse (most likely to happen within the home)
consensual adult sex workers who are also in DV relationships

commercial sexual exploitation (of minors or adults, also AS LIKELY within the home as on the street) like:
sex workers who migrated knowingly to do sex work but then found themselves in exploitative situations on arrival (very real)
sex workers who work in shitty situations but because of laws, lack of economic opportunity, and unsafe circumstances created by laws, &c have no better financial option
and totally unwilling people who are being held captive and raped. This situation, even law enforcement agrees, is by far the least frequently seen. But it does happen, we know this because of Jill Brenneman (who remained a sex worker and sex worker rights activist after) and because of that recent case of SSI fraud where a woman was keeping multiple people imprisoned in her basement to collect their checks, torturing and abusing them, and also apparently selling sexual access to at least one of them.

Please stop saying that sex work and trafficking are opposites. It’s not furthering the conversation around our rights and safety and it’s ignoring certain realities: many sex workers WOULD quit sex work if they had a better way to make money: if the world and employers were kinder to people with PTSD, trans people, people with mental illness or chronic pain that makes other work impossible.

We ARE fully realized people and we are consenting–and our consent has MEANING!–but the global situation is also complex and it’s acceptable and okay to acknowledge that many of us operate within constrained circumstances where no, we aren’t THRILLED or empowered but we are still fully cognizant of our best options and are choosing this while others have fewer options and some DID choose this but now work in situations in which their consent has been ignored or invalidated–I mean that’s happened to me.

we lose NOTHING by continuing to add nuance and our full lived realities to this discussion and people WILL try to turn it against us but we can’t let their shitty ethics and agendas keep us from having an honest and open conversation about our realities and the realities of the sexual economy, as well as sexual abuse and exploitation.

Which is not to say that the prohibitionists’ time would nt be better spent in helping to destroy rape culture and misogyny rather than… Us.

I was probably too flippant in one of my posts last night regarding this so: important ^

“We ARE fully realized people and we are consenting–and our consent has MEANING!–but the global situation is also complex and it’s acceptable and okay to acknowledge that many of us operate within constrained circumstances where no, we aren’t THRILLED or empowered but we are still fully cognizant of our best options and are choosing this” this is so important.

I refer to the situation I was in as sex trafficking since it was forced (you all know the story) but also because when antis talk about sex trafficking, they claim they’re talking about people like me, they assign this label to my situation and use it to dismiss what I have to say as a voluntary worker now, so even tho my situation didn’t involve migration or crossing borders (as the original definition did) I can at least call them on their bullshit by using the same terminology they do, if that makes sense. But that’s necessitated by the fact that the term is used in so many different ways to the point where it’s basically become a buzzword.