"The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the only agency that keeps track of how many children the legal system rescues from pimps nationwide.  The count, which began in June 2003, now exceeds 1,600 as of April of this year, according to the FBI’s Innocence Lost website — an average of about 200 each year.

Through interviews and analysis of public records, Village Voice Media has found that the federal government spends about $20 million a year on public awareness, victims’ services, and police work related to domestic human trafficking, with a considerable focus on combating the pimping of children.  An additional $50 million-plus is spent annually on youth homeless shelters, and since 1996, taxpayers have contributed a total of $186 million to fund a separate program that provides street outreach to kids who might be at risk of commercial sexual exploitation.

That’s at least $80 million doled out annually for law enforcement and social services that combine to rescue approximately 200 child prostitutes every year.

These agencies might improve upon their $400,000-per-rescued-child average if they joined in the effort to develop a clearer picture of the population they aim to aid.  But there’s no incentive for them to do so when they stand to rake in even more public money simply by staying the course."

-- Kristen Hinman, in Lost Boys on villagevoice.com

If you haven't read this new installment in the Village Voice's series exposing the myths around sex trafficking, I suggest you do so.

 

Last night, I was doing some reading about the most popular political panic of the mid-80s, and stopped to tweet, "Sex work activists should read about the political manufacturing of the crack 'epidemic.' 25 years ago, it was crack; now it's trafficking."  I'm no expert on drug issues, but I feel like I should explain my comment in more detail, so here is a (non-exhaustive) list of parallels between the crack epidemic and the sex trafficking epidemic.  I think it would benefit sex workers' rights supporters to look at how another moral panic was whipped up and profited from by those with special agendas.

Medicalized diagnoses, criminalized cures

First, I have to start out with an important note on how language is used as a tool to frame an issue in one's favor.  Proponents of both the crack craze and the idea of sex trafficking as a vast and ubiquitous problem (and inseparable from consensual sex work) use language of health problems like epidemic, plague, disease, and addiction, but their proposed solutions to both are arrest, shaming, further marginalization, and punishment.  Imagine if police responded to the health problem of people having the flu this winter by conducting taxpayer-funded raids, kicking in the doors of homes where people were suspected of staying home sick - arresting them, subjecting them to fines and imprisonment, and even keeping a public registry of the dangerous monsters who have been convicted of carrying the flu, preventing people who ever had the flu to be able to lead a non-flu-tainted life.  But we don't do that to flu sufferers for that "epidemic."

Causes and effects

Continuing on with of the topic of medical euphemism is the issue of confusing symptoms with causes of social ills.  The crack "epidemic" was framed by politicians on both sides of the political spectrum as not a symptom of poverty, inequality, and larger social disparities, but as the cause of social problems in the first place.  Urban ghettos weren't getting worse because of the lack of social services, educational opportunities, affordable healthcare, and quality jobs, they were simply suffering from crack cocaine.  Sex trafficking is also seen not as a response to social forces such as some countries having more wealth than others, the desire to go abroad to earn better money, few employment options for undocumented migrant workers, or the difficulties in legally entering a Western country if you're poor.  No, sex trafficking is the social ill to be eliminated, and all that complex stuff about class, race, immigration, and gender gets neatly swept under the rug in favor of an explanation that lets people scapegoat manufactured omnipresent boogeymen while failing to address real social problems.

At last, an issue everyone can support!

As mentioned above, the crack panic wasn't just a right-wing pet project, but a topic around which both liberals and conservatives could battle to see which party could take the loudest and harshest stance.  No more worrying about pesky minor problems like the economy and joblessness, let's give everyone a chance to come together and agree: the real issue plaguing the country is crack/sex trafficking.  There are few topics around which both Democrats and Republicans will battle over who supports/condemns it more, and when such is the case, you have to consider the idea that such an issue is being used as a shiny distraction.  (See also: hysteria around terrorism being successfully deployed by all politicians to keep people from thinking about eroding civil liberties and a tanking economy.)

Both panics exploded in popularity during major economic downtowns

The crack epidemic could be said to have peaked in the late 1980s, the same time as the US was experiencing a recession.  Our current recession and financial meltdown dovetails perfectly with the rise of interest in and coverage of sex trafficking.

The solution to both problems is not harm reduction, but arrest and locking people up

Billions of dollars were spent on stateside law enforcement as a means to curb the "epidemic" of crack addiction, but where did that get us, as a country, aside from having the world's highest rate of incarceration?  Likewise, does anyone really feel safer in when their tax money is used on costly police stings that arrest and jail prostitutes in hopes of being able to fin even one "trafficking victim"?  Lots of money is wasted on "cures" that do nothing to help real victims, do everything to drive both victims and criminals further underground, and ultimately only achieve good PR and further funding for police, politicians, and other people with a stake in selling the moral panic.  The solution is never to provide services to people at risk of exploitation, but to use arrests and imprisonment to try and cover up things that cause discomfort among members of the middle and upper classes.

Who needs evidence when you have hysteria?

Question the anti-crack rhetoric, and a public figure would be attacked as "soft on crime," and detractors could obtusely ask how one could be in support of the crack plague taking over the country.  Similarly, if you question any part of the agenda of those selling and profiting from the sex trafficking scare, you are painted as being in favor of raping children and the sexual enslavement of millions.  The topic is framed and such over-the-top hysterical ways, it leaves no room for reasonable discussion of the facts.  Anyone who questions anything is a monster.

Emotional-tinged "statistics" trump real data

Parents were told that young people around the country were falling victim to crack addiction, and that "an entire generation" was hooked on the substance.  However, even according to government surveys, cocaine use/experimentation of any kind had peaked among young people in 1982, and in 1986, while the media was touting the coming crackpocalypse, daily cocaine use of any variety among high school seniors was a mere 0.4%.  (How many of them were crack users in particular is unknown.)  Less than 4 out of every 1000 seniors is obviously not "an entire generation" addicted to crack, but boring facts like that have no place in a moral panic.  (Just like boring facts rarely get any play in discussions about sex trafficking, where people prefer to fantasize about how millions of children are being captured and raped at every turn.)

The "epidemic" is portrayed as a personal threat to all Americans and their children

Those with something to gain have managed to hype both crack and sex trafficking as attacks upon the fabric of our culture over which everyone must worry, painting pictures of crack dealers hiding behind every corner, ready to get Johnny Quarterback hooked on drugs, or kidnap little Betsy Countryclub from her ballet lessons and sell her into a child sexual slavery ring.  Everyone is a target, and the evil people are poised at this very moment to ensnare your children.  There's no time to think, only to worry hysterically.

It's not about race and class, except when it is

With both the crack and sex trafficking panic, there is this pervasive undercurrent of fear of the other, fear of nonwhite and poor people, fear of them infiltrating us and ruining everything "we" built.  The crack epidemic was about fear of poor, urban Blacks and Latinos, mostly young men who might be in scary gangs.  The sex trafficking epidemic, when not about stealing your children for sexual slavery, has the more subtle racial component of a fear of migrant workers sneaking into "our" country and doing morally distasteful things with our husbands, our dads, our brothers, corrupting us, tearing at our family values, and making us impure by association.

Extreme cases are way more exciting than our routine problems

Alcohol, car crashes, and tobacco kill tons of people, but that's not very exciting, and such "mundane" deaths hardly every make the news.  But comparatively-rare crack-related deaths and injuries became a top political issue for both parties.  Likewise, spousal abuse, domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault are accepted as facts of life, only making the news when there's some bizarre, celebrity, or "funny" angle to the story.  Yet, when occasional cases of barbaric forced sex trafficking or the pimping of an underage girl are uncovered, it's held up by proponents as a major problem that is happening to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the country.  The focus is always on exploiting extreme cases for political gain and financial contributions, and insisting that extreme cases are the norm.

The issues play well on TV and make for dramatic publicity stunts

In 1989, George Bush Senior held a famous press conference to hype the crack problem where he showed bag of the substance and declared that it had been seized in a drug deal in the park across the street from the White House.  A photo of Bush holding the bag was printed in newspapers around the country, proving that crack was everywhere now, even in "good" neighborhoods, and thus, warranted the panic of all Americans.  However, the backstory to that photo-op is much more interesting.  Since no drugs, let alone crack, were available for purchase in Lafayette Park, the government needed to manufacture a situation that would make for good televison.  An 18-year-old African American high schooler was cajoled to come to the park to sell the crack, a young man who famously asked the undercover DEA entrapping him, "Where the fuck is the White House?"  I can't recall the last time a week went by that I didn't read about an anti-trafficking publicity push, carefully coordinated and framed for maximize sensationalism.

Now, the "war on drugs" is largely recognized as a failure

I can only hope the war on sex workers, framed as the "war on trafficking," will meet the same fate.  I'd love to hear how anti-drug war activists were able to shift public perceptions from the early 90s onward, because we should really emulate whatever they've been doing.  (Or how to play up everything the government and moral crusaders are doing incorrectly.)

 

If you have more interest in this topic, the most awesome and in-depth thing I read was The Construction of America's Crack Crisis by Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine.  Hat tip to their research for providing a bunch of the information in this blog post.

After 8 days of rolling around Los Angeles, the billboard run concluded yesterday.  (We were given a full bonus day because winds last week prevented the company from being able to safely deploy.  That sounded weird to me at first, but looking at the billboard trailer, I can see how wind could easily tip the thing over.)

I've posted more photos (sent by the awesome Stacey Swimme, who also handled press inquiries) here, but here's a couple that give you the basic idea of the project:

The billboard didn't get the response I would have expected from the media.  I didn't think we'd make front-page headlines, but I thought that we would garner more blurbs.  Maybe the press is burnt out on covering protesty topics because of the Occupy thing, maybe this isn't that interesting to them, or maybe having a mobile billboard made it more difficult to be able to report on.  I think the only media coverage (outside of sex worker blogs) were these four items:

* LAist covered the billboard 3 months ago when fundraising concluded.
* LA Weekly covered the story on their blog, no idea if it made it into the print issue.  The article is inexplicably illustrated with a photo of an Asian woman licking a toe.
* XBiz, a porn/novelty industry trade magazine/site covered the billboard.  This is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "sex work" on the front page of their web site, which makes me happy, because so many porn people like to think they are different/better than other sex workers.
* ABC local news in LA did a story, which was supposedly positive, but there's no video online.

But, press or no press, countless thousands of people in LA had a chance to read a definition of what a sex worker is, and I hope that the project has helped spark a lot of conversations.  I'm very proud that something I organized got off the ground, and I'm already wondering where to take a public awareness campaign next.

A few months ago, SWAAY's mail box received a neat package in the mail from Respect, Inc, with an impressive sampling of useful literature, and cute condom packets.  Click on the photo to enlarge, and see PDF versions of Respect, Inc's literature on their web site.  I love seeing what other groups have to offer, and these set a great example of what sex workers' rights activists can be doing to serve their communities.

Los Angeles, CA, November 1, 2011 -- After being rejected by every billboard company in Los Angeles, the sex workers' rights project SWAAY (Sex Work Activists, Allies, and You) has launched their public awareness campaign with a mobile billboard, which will be running for eight days from November 1 to November 8, 2011.

SWAAY's text-only billboard reads, "Sex worker: a person who consensually exchanges their own sexual labor or sexual performance for compensation. Sex work is not the same as forced sex trafficking or sex slavery. Learn about the people and facts behind sex work at SWAAY.org." Any variation of the group's message was banned by Clear Channel, CBS, Lamar, Regency, Van Wagner, Avant Outdoor, LA Transit Authority, and Outdoor Solutions, but was finally picked up by a mobile billboard company.

The sex workers' rights billboard was paid for by 115 supporters on EpicStep.com, a Kickstarter-like website that allows grassroots activist groups to crowdsource the funding of a media campaign. Previous billboards successfully launched through Epic Step include messages in support of WikiLeaks and accused war crimes whistle-blower Bradley Manning.

SWAAY was founded in June of this year to address the public's misconceptions due to the lack of factual and accessible information about sex work, and to fight against the outright lies and "junk science" statistics pushed by moral and religious crusaders who advocate for further criminalization and stigmatization of sex workers.

A sex worker is a person who exchanges their own sexual labor or sexual performance for compensation, such as an escort/prostitute, porn star, stripper, dominatrix, phone sex operator, sensual masseuse, or web cam performer. Sex workers are part of the larger sex industry - which includes adult movie directors, club owners, webmasters, retail stores, and more - but are distinct because their job involves making money off of their own sexual labor, not writing about, photographing, managing, or selling the sexual labor or performances of others.

The St. James Infirmary, a San Francisco clinic that provides free healthcare to sex workers, has faced similar struggles this month with their own media campaign. Originally planning to use billboards to spread their "Someone You Know is a Sex Worker" message, the nonprofit's ads were rejected by Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor, but eventually found a home on Muni buses.

"Bad laws and hurtful social stigmas work together in a vicious cycle that makes life more dangerous and difficult for the people who engage in sex work," says Sabrina Melmoth, a volunteer with the group. "SWAAY seeks to chip away at both problems by sharing non-sensationalized, first-person information about life as a sex worker, and advocating for the full decriminalization of sex work."

A press conference will be held later this week.

###

Throughout my life, I've often felt like I'm in the middle.  (Which is a positive way of phrasing that I don't fit in well anywhere.)  I have too many fiscally-conservative views to be a proper leftist, but I'm not cheering for the uninsured to be left to die like some libertarians.  While I have an unshaved crotch and don't have a mainstream LA porn appearance, I lack the tattoos and rainbow hair to demonstrate that I'm "smarter than your average porn star," as one popular alternaporn site marketed its collection.  I also don't mesh perfectly with the American subculture of "empowered" sex workers, whatever that's supposed to mean.

There's this profile tacitly promoted by current sex workers' rights activism of how exactly one should look and behave if they are truly empowered: it's a movement for punks and anarchists, for feminists, for people devoted to deconstructing gender, for people with liberal arts degrees, for sex radicals and kinksters, for Pagans, for artists, and most importantly, for people who don't fit mainstream beauty standards.  In short, the typical person drawn to ho activism is the typical person drawn to any sort of activism: one who constructs their identity around to how they are not like the rest of society.  As a person who straddles the weird/normal border, I don't always feel like I fit in with American sex workers' rights activists, so I can only imagine what it's like for someone whose only "non-normal" trait is their occupation.  I have no solution to the problem of the over-representation of "lifestyle outsiders" other than to do my best to encourage more typical sex workers to step up and claim their stake in their own movement.

Inspired by Annie Sprinkle's Anatomy of a Pin-Up, I thought I'd make an Anatomy of an Empowered Sex Worker.

Do you have what it takes to be empowered?

I realize my blog hasn't seen much action in the last few weeks, but I've been keeping myself quite busy with work and other things lately.  So, for now, I wanted to spotlight a new meme-ish Tumblr called Sex Worker Problems.  It's concise, it's relatable, and speaks to a variety of sex work experiences and sex workers.

I just sent this submission myself:

At fucking last!

Despite having completed the billboard fundraiser almost two months ago - thanks to 115 awesome supporters - the SWAAY billboard campaign has been on hold.  I haven't been trying to keep anyone in the dark, but every time it seemed like headway was being made, the billboard would get shut down by someone else, which is frustrating.  Even now, after signing a contract, agreeing upon a start date, and the billboard itself having been printed, I'm still nervous to publicize that date, because it feels like jinxing things.

Every major (and many minor) outdoor advertising companies in LA rejected the pro-sex worker billboard, leaving our ad guys guys at Epic Step pretty shocked that a polite text-only billboard would encounter such a massive wall of resistance.  (San Francisco's St James Infirmary has also faced an uphill struggle lately to find a company willing to accept their money.  Their ad campaign ended up finding a home with Muni bus ads.)  I really have to hand to to Epic Step, as the small company went above and beyond to find a way to get our message out.

The billboard was rejected by Clear Channel, CBS, Lamar, Regency, Van Wagner, Avant Outdoor, LA Transit Authority, and Outdoor Solutions.  However, the big three companies are no strangers to taking money from controversial causes and campaigns.  Clear Channel, Lamar, and CBS have hosted billboards featuring racist, anti-gay, anti-church/state separation, and anti-sex worker/anti-client billboards.  On the other hand, CBS and Lamar have hosted pro-marijuana ones, and CBS had a WikiLeaks billboard, so these companies are no strangers to "weird" causes that I support, either.

You can click see a large version.

This is not to say that I think people should not be allowed to express views that differ from my own, simply to point out that the big three advertising companies have no problem with other controversial campaigns.  They are clearly making decisions with who they're willing to do business - which is their right - but they've decided that the ad dollars of religious nutjobs, the police, racists, bigots, and even those who are (potentially) breaking laws are more acceptable than the ad dollars of sex workers.  (I'm pretty flattered that sex work is even more controversial to ad companies than WikiLeaks, honestly.)

In the end, the guys at Epic Step found RoadSign Adverts for us, which is a mobile billboard company.  Mobile billboards seem to be a bit of a "last resort" option for those rejected from the mainstream, and have been favored by folk like strip clubs and anti-abortion activists.  SWAAY's billboard will (assuming nothing else goes wrong) be starting later this month, and will be driving around in LA for 7 days.  I'm hoping that maybe this will be a blessing in disguise, and that the mobile billboard, because of their rarity, will garner even more attention than a standard stationary billboard.  The mobile billboards are more expensive, so what we fundraised to pay for 4 weeks of a standard billboard only buys us 7 days of a mobile one.

Since the billboard size was a bit different than a stationary billboard - taller, but less wide - I did change the text very slightly to make it fit better. I imagine supporters wouldn't mind.  Here's what LA is going to be seeing soon:

So, three cheers for Epic Step and RoadSign Adverts!  I'll write a proper press release for distribution when the truck starts running, but for now, I wanted to bitch about the backstory and rejections.  Also, looking ahead, I've asked Epic Step to start feeling out billboard companies in New York City and Washington DC, since I would like to make this a national campaign.  I don't know if I'll start the next fundraiser in November or in the new year, since holidays have everyone vying for donations and money, but we'll see.  I'm excited to see what kind of attention this project is going to generate.

Last month, Dan Savage's podcast (episode 255) featured local dominatrix Mistress Matisse, who had been his go-to guest for all things kink and sex work related.

In the podcast, one caller wanted to tell her parents that she is planning to become a dominatrix, and was curious how to have that conversation.  Matisse was happy to declare she's never told her parents about her own work, and had a huge dismissive laugh at the caller's silly interest in honesty, and sadly, Dan joined in.  It bummed me out that those two, of all people, think the idea of being open about being a sex worker is ludicrous.

I called in to leave comments in favor of being out as a sex worker - citing both personal and political reasons to do so - which I am happy to say were included at the end of episode 258.  (Direct link to download here, I start ranting in my squeaky little voice at 46:53.)  Unlike Matisse's answer, which was simply to mock the caller and dodge the question, I also suggested that the caller look for a local sex workers' rights group to get involved with a community and network with others in the business, and plugged the SWAAY directory.

I'm glad that Dan decided to include my call in podcast 258, and I hope the original caller heard my advice.  And Dan, if you ever want a sex worker guest for your podcast who can field questions without laughing at callers or making fun of sex workers who can't afford their own incall, you know where to find me.  I might lack Matisse's decades of experience, but I also lack her none-too-subtle contempt for both sex workers' rights issues and non-upperclass sex workers.

Yesterday, I went to check my mail drop, and was happy to see an awesome new postcard from the St James Infirmary, one of my favorite nonprofits.  They provide free healthcare and other services to sex workers and their families in San Francisco, and they need donations from people like you to keep their doors open.

Just like with the SWAAY billboard campaign, the St James Infirmary was rejected by a number of outdoor media companies, like Clear Channel.  (Don't worry, the SWAAY billboard isn't dead, it's just taken ages to find someone willing to accept out money, but we've finally signed a contract and our billboard was sent to the printers this week.  I've been waiting to post about that ordeal until I have a definite launch date to celebrate.)  I'm happy to see American sex workers' rights groups getting on board with the idea that we need to engage the general public, so it's exciting to see this new campaign.

If you're in the Bay Area, the St James Infirmary is having a launch party on October 16th, so go celebrate with some of the most awesome sex workers' rights advocates in the country.

For the link-phobic, here are the lovely ads that will soon be appearing on the San Francisco Muni:

The last one, featuring Cyd, is my personal favorite.

(My only nitpick is that two of the posters mention being a mother as a means of showing the public that we're good people.  I realize that this is probably a smart political tactic, but it will always bother me when parenthood is eagerly thrust forward by "weird" groups - atheists, queers, sex workers - to prove that they deserve to be seen as real human beings.  So, if one is childfree by choice, or remorsefully barren, you deserve equality and human rights less than people who have kids?  But I digress.)

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