Human Trafficking is Not Always a Crime

"In the first place, a persistent problem in combating trafficking is the lack of willingness of victims to report the crime. One of the reasons is the fear to be prosecuted themselves for prostitution." (Wijers, M., www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/10/04/18542912.php)

As we come to the eves of election day, there have been more and more discussions within the online sex worker activist community regarding sex trafficking. Perhaps it is the accumulated frustrations I feel towards problematic patterns of discourse that I've noticed in this movement. Perhaps I'm just extra grumpy today.

But today, I am offended by this statement.

Now, I am not denying the fact that huge numbers of trafficked people have fallen victim to horrible violence, rape, extortion, coersion, and worse. And somethings needs to be done. Decriminalizing prostitution will remove another invasive law legislating the choices we make with our bodies, and provide another avenue of empowerment for women in trafficked situations. Hooray for that! But let's be real here - decriminalizing prostitution will not save trafficked individuals.

And anyway, who said that they all wanted to be "saved"? What if the reason human trafficking is so hard to pin down is because some of the so-called "victims" *want* to be there?

Does anyone else find this sentence offensive? The word "victim" makes me cringe in its self-righteousness. And the predictable "blame the victim" explanation to defend years of ineffective, non-productive scapegoat legislations and wasted tax dollars. Maybe the author is right - maybe it is a "lack of willingness".

And maybe that shouldn't be the problem.

The truth of the matter is that human trafficking is not always directly violent contract between trafficker and traffickee, but the fact that it is illegal makes it harder to consistently maintain a standard of safety, just like one of our arguments for Proposition K.

If you think about it, a person making the choice to be trafficked is also a person engaging in sex work. And a comrade to this struggle.

Thus, I am wary of the language we use to discuss human trafficking, for fear that it could perpetuate more stereotypical generalizations about an issue layered within the complexities of poverty, need, immigration, and consent. I feel it is especially important for sex worker activists to be conscious of these issues - as well as be able to acknowledge that our perspectives on trafficking come from a much more privileged place - when speaking about human trafficking. Because this community is, in some ways, seen as an authority at the forefront of sex workers' rights, and each of our perspectives can hold powerful influence.

With the Prop K campaign, we are experiencing first hand how difficult it is to re-differentiate the various definitions - (ie. voluntary sex work vs. coerced sex trafficking) - once they have been misguidedly clumped into one broadly overgeneralized wad of moral turpitude - Prostitution! And just like not all prostitution is bad, not all human trafficking is bad either.

And it is important to make this distinction in order to prevent the further marginalization of people (usually poor and from the 'global south'..) who choose to engage themselves in a trafficking trade when all other options for survival are no longer available to them.

Vote YES on Proposition K!

"Dress Like Yr Going to A Funeral..."

... is what P told me on the phone. When I asked her what kind of event this was, what to expect, she said,

It's more of a... *formal*.. event. Like dressing up. I mean, like fancy. Well, you don't have to wear a prom dress or anything. Or, er, a tuxedo, but um.. well, you know, its more *formal*..

Very cute. It made me laugh.

Shoot, you mean I *shouldn't* wear my prom dress then?, I smiled.

What she could have just said was, Can you dress less crusty, and please behave yrself tonight.

Because last night, I went to a Democratic Fundraiser dinner! In solidarity with our Proposition K campaign, nine of us wined and dined it with a couple hundred people that I have less and less patience for. Yes, that's right, a $150-a-seat, all-American whitebread Dem experience! But hey, we're in SF, so there were definitely a few black and brown people too. Yay for diversity!

But, you know me, I'll rarely turn down free food and the opportunity for a new experience! I knew it would probably happen, but I wanted to shoot myself in the head after about 2 minutes of arriving. Give me a goddamn glass of wine, and stand next to the other person in the room who looked as if she felt as awkward as I did at that moment. She's a 17 year old college student interning for Nancy Pelosi, and I'm a 27 year androgynous hooker anarchist, and yet we found solace in our common ground:

These people give me the creeps.

So I stand there, tactfully stiff, and smile, secretly feeling like my very presence there is a fraud, and the ruse seeping through the clenched grin of my teeth must be giving me away. I don't belong here. I really don't. But for the sake of the game, I pretend that I do.

The hour and a half of 'democratic' hot air from speakers that ensued had my eyeballs falling out my head in loathe boredom. There is something about the monotonous drone of a politician's voice.. And that bitch Kamala Harris had the gall to stand at that podium, look directly at our table, and tell the entire room to vote No on Proposition K.

The proponents of Proposition K are saying that decriminalizing prostitution in San Francisco will create a safer environment - and that is simply not true. So I urge you all in this room to please, vote no on Proposition K.


Some bullshit like that. What a fucking jip. This wasn't a goddamn debate, and she took advantage of the situation to take a malicious and slanderous dig at us to our faces that left us defenseless to respond. R almost flipped her shit, but it was a comfort to know that there were other people in the room who hissed at her in our defense, and that this scene probably won us some points in the end.

But its funny to note that our hooker table paid twice as much - $1500! - to attend an event that we were not even invited to, and they sat us in the far back corner of the room.

It's so the filthy prostitutes won't contaminate the rest of the room, I heard a neighboring ally joke with a smirk.

But i don't want to be a hater, and i really do appreciate the opportunity to have experienced this $150-a-seat event for free, even if its not my thing. It was good to sit at a table with my comrades. Its a strange feeling to be working for something that i feel so strongly about within a system that i completely disagree with. The shady realist and the cynical idealist in me are at contradictory odds, and i have to concentrate to keep my anger in check.

My life and my mind live so far outside this system of socio-political values.. I know full well how to work within it, and I will when I have to. But no sir, I don't like it.

Taking the Pledge

Taking the Pledge is a 13-minute film featuring sex workers from Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Thailand and more! They describe the problems created by the 'anti-prostitution pledge' required to receive USAID and PEPFAR funds.

In English, Khmer, Thai, French, Portuguese and Bengali, with English subtitles. Watch in full-screen mode to read the subtitles.

Produced by the Network of Sex Work Projects.

Erin Siegal shot the interviews and edited the film.



Thanks to W for sharing it!

Only Skimming the Surface of Human Trafficking and Decriminalization

I have been thinking a lot about the complexities within human trafficking itself. I feel that much of the Prop K campaign comes from a place of sf empowered sex worker privilege - 'the right to choose an occupation, and the right to be able to do it in safer conditions without fear of arrest etc - and oh, of course we are against human trafficking.'

The way that its addressed often seems to imply that all human trafficking is coerced, when in fact, its not always the case. There are people who voluntarily allow themselves to be trafficked - especially in poorer parts of the world - because it's the only opportunity that presents itself towards fighting their shitty situations in life. So it becomes a consequence and a reaction to poverty, but a choice - which - because it remains criminalized, persecuted, and pushed underground - carries much higher risk of violence, rape, coercion, extortion, battery, arrest, and deportation. Getting 'shipped back' to their personal hells, or leaving a black mark on their record that permanently affects their ability to get a 'straight' job for the rest of their lives. Or fill in some other catch-22 here that keeps people 'in their place' rather than providing services to address the actual conditions of their needs.

In the bigger picture, the coercion seems to stem more from the unjust systems that allow these kinds of trades to flourish and remain a desirable option. And yes, the trafficker is a shameless opportunist - and probably also a big asshole.

So whats a ho to do? Sometimes, simply treading water on the daily is a full time job that leaves little time or resources for anything else. And the extreme incongruities within the legal, legislative, economic, health, and education systems (and our faux-dem/rep capitalist big business government spreading its global parasitic disease as a whole) maintain the social homeostasis in the distribution of wealth, power, and righteous morality that are killing us all.

Yeah, the first step to untangling this colossal mess is to decriminalize, but I am afraid that if Prop. K passes, people will feel contented with the immediate gratification of this victory, and disappear back into the woodwork. Which could potentially fuck everyone over since it would be the most precarious and impressionable time that could potentially define the direction that this movement will head next. And what exactly is that direction?

Desiree Alliance really brought to my attention how difficult it is to build bridges between all the different communities of sex workers, but also how completely necessary it is to do it. Because this is a conversation that we all need to have together to figure out a strategy that works for everyone. Not just privileged, idealistic sex workers like me.

Sex Work and Sex Trafficking Are Not the Same

As you all may have already heard, Prop. K would decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco - but what needs to be talked about more is how decriminalizing prostitution will affect immigrant communities, and communities of color!

The opposition to Proposition K claims that by decriminalizing prostitution, it will allow sexual slavery and human trafficking to flourish unchecked in San Francisco. The reality is that decriminalizing prostitution is the first step towards developing a clearer, less discriminatory, and more effective anti-trafficking strategy than the one we currently have.

In the current state of sex work, there is no distinction in the eyes of the law between 1) sex work between two consenting adults, and 2) the forced abuses of sexual slavery and human trafficking. This is a fundamental problem that misleads people about sex work and prevents the development of an effective strategy of fighting sex trafficking - by criminalizing prostitution, it makes it easier for sex traffickers to hide behind the arrests of sex workers working by choice. And it allows the police to use prostitution as a scapegoat for their racist agendas.

Voluntary sex workers are arrested and prosecuted for prostitution, even though it is a consensual choice, and sometimes the only way to make ends meet. Victims of sexual slavery are threatened into silence and isolation, while their traffickers remain at large. Immigrants who are not sex workers are raided under the guise of a sex trafficking sting operation, and deported for being “illegal”. Voluntary sex workers who cross state lines are arrested for “trafficking” themselves, a felony punishable by 16-20 years in prison.

So far, there have still been no reported convictions of actual sex traffickers in San Francisco – yet statistics show that it is a flourishing $8 billion dollar international industry, with San Francisco as one of its major commercial centers. And there are continuous raids, sting operations, immigrant deportations, and racial profiling-based police harassment of voluntary sex workers and communities of color– all in the name of “saving victims of sex trafficking”. The current system is ineffective and discriminatory – and why are we arresting the people that we are claiming to help?

Immigrants, poor people, radical freaks, and communities of color have gotten caught in this perpetual cycle of systematic oppression and persecution. And again, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor (and in prisons) - and the privileged few (white people) continue to impose their colonial values on diversity while telling us that we should be goddamn ashamed of ourselves.

Decriminalizing consensual sex work is the first step towards effectively fighting sex trafficking because it would allow for an open dialogue that distinguishes between this important difference between voluntary sex work and coerced human trafficking. It would narrow down the usual suspects to the places where sex trafficking is actually happening - therefore allowing law enforcement to focus in on finding real victims of sexual slavery and stopping their perpetrators.

It goes so much deeper than you or me or this proposition, and we need all the help we can get to get this to pass. It can be a crucial move towards untangling the chokehold of multiple oppressions and violence against sex workers and marginalized immigrant communities. Ultimately, I actually don't believe in the real effectiveness of the voting system, but in this case, I feel it's a necessary first step towards something better - at least for now until a new way of life.

And there will still be a long, long way to go, after this is said and done.

Proposition K: Decriminalize Prostitution On November's Ballot

Proposition K is an initiative that will be on San Francisco's ballot this upcoming November 4th. If it passes, Prop. K would decriminalize prostitution in the city, creating possibilities for safer and better working conditions for sex workers by bringing sex work above ground. It would improve public health for workers and their clients by allowing for open, honest dialogue with healthcare providers, as well as with one another, about what is really going on.

Sex workers would be able to unionize, or otherwise work together, to protect themselves from STIs, violence, and more. They would be able to report incidents of coersion and rape without fear of arrest. It would reallocate funding towards more productive resources such as health care, social services, and vocational training, and take emphasis away from incarceration and persecution.

It would be a historical victory for sex workers everywhere, because it would set a landmark precedence, and send the message that - hey, finally sex work is being acknowledge as a legitimate form of work!

More to come.

For more information, please check out www.yesonpropk.org