Sex Workers Warned Everyone About FOSTA-SESTA — Now Lawmakers Are Beginning To Listen

Kate D’Adamo is witnessing a shift.


For years, the Reframe Health and Justice activist has worked alongside corporations like the Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA, HIPS, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights to uplift sex workers’ voices and protect their access to the equipment that would help them build community and make sure their own safety. On a federal level, that often meant engaging with congressional staffers in Washington, D.C., In introductory conversations about sex workers’ rights. Some lawmakers wouldn’t hear what activists had to say; other meetings would result in little more than polite promises of keeping in touch. However then lawmakers like Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA), Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) listened — and, crucially, joined the fight.


“It’s a different level of conversation,” D’Adamo told MTV News. “With most of the offices we sit down it’s, ‘Thank you for sharing this. We’re really excited to learn more.’ With these representatives’ offices, we sat down and so they mentioned, ‘Alright, so what are we going to do?’”


Lee and Khanna were voting members in February 2018 any time the Permit States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) came to the Residence floor. FOSTA, a bill that every Democratic presidential candidate who served in Congress last year voted for, would hold online platforms responsible for the advertisement of sex-related services by third parties. The bill was purportedly introduced as a means to curb sex trafficking by holding digital agencies accountable for the context on their servers — however in its process, it would also hurt weak communities of sex workers by limiting their ability to conduct their firm on their terms, which might include supplying services online and screening customers prior to meeting. Lee and Khanna both voted against it; Republican Representatives including Justin Amash (MI) and Paul Gosar (AZ), voted against it on the grounds that the bill could infringe on users’ freedom of speech.


Nevertheless FOSTA passed almost unanimously, with a final vote of 388 to 25. To abide by the new law, Craigslist closed its Personals section in a task to curb what the corporation mentioned was a “misuse” of its service; personals are still available to users outdoor of the U.S.. Backpage, a user-based ad space known for hosting ads for sex-related services, was seized by the FBI. Platforms updated their terms of service to include stricter policies and language surrounding what several thought “suggestive” content; Tumblr banned pornography and nudity altogether. As a result, plenty of people say their posts have been suppressed, censored, removed, and some days banned altogether. The loss of those online resources makes several more at risk of abusive customers, pimps, and other predatory figures, and can force several of those into dangerous situations with little protection.


Once FOSTA was first introduced by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), proponents focused on the advantages it would ostensibly supply to trafficking victims, although even the Department of Justice raised concerns about the broad nature of how the expenses try to achieve those means. “There’s this weird narrative that there might be collateral repercussions for sex workers,” Nina Luo, a steering committee member of the advocacy categorize Decrim NY, told MTV News. As both she and D’Adamo told MTV News, the communities of sex workers and people subjected to sex trafficking overlap significantly. “By putting an entire population at risk, you’re actually making them more prone to exploitation,” she adds. At least 50 sex workers have been killed or noticed dead In the United States this year, according to tabulations by SWOP; a significant collection of these were trans ladies of color.


Activists have been sounding the alarm against costs like this long before FOSTA came to a vote. Nevertheless D’Adamo and other activists have regularly struggled to create congressional staffers believe how harmful they knew FOSTA (and its Senate equivalent, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA) would be on a mass scale — something Lee, Khanna, and Pressley seemed to understand.


“Hearing a congressperson not only mention, ‘I believe you,’ although mention, ‘I believe you and I want to actually step up and do something,’ that is the game-changing conversation,” D’Adamo said.


Any time speaking with  congressional leaders, activists often find themselves explaining who sex workers are and the factors they’re up against, given that skewed reporting about sex work is prevalent. A 2015 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality examined the experiences of trans sex workers in the trade; several respondents who'd engaged in sex work announced being harassed by police, mistreated by employees at shelters and prisons, and levels of unemployment and poverty that far outstripped the national average. Another study found that the more legislators criminalize sex work, the more those workers are subjected to violence and STIs, and the much less likely they are to receive healthcare and social services.


As a result, sex workers’ rights overlap with the decarceration and prison abolition movements, and also LGBTQ+ rights and criminal justice reform in general. “[The conversation] needs to be really integrated with economic justice and racial justice,” Luo said.


However that’s a complicated task once lawmakers don’t take into account the experiences of the people affected by their legislation. As Rep. Khanna remembers, Congress did not feature any testimony from sex workers or allied corporations as it heard arguments for and against FOSTA. Khanna agreed with D’Adamo and Luo that oversight is one of the reasons why FOSTA has failed to serve those it purports to protect.


“It’s not even like we had a debate in Congress and mentioned, ‘OK, this is going to drive sex workers out onto the streets and increase violence, although the advantages outweigh the risks,’” Khanna mentioned of the FOSTA hearings. “There wasn’t even a consideration of the impact.”


Right now, Khanna seeks to remedy that. On December 17, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, the congressman reported the introduction of the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, a bill enabling the National Institute of Health to study how FOSTA-SESTA has impacted sex workers’ safety, health, and proximity to violence, among other issues; the bill is being cosponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who voted for SESTA in 2018. Several activists and allies have also called for a full repeal of FOSTA-SESTA; this study serves as just one of several steps they’re taking to reach that objective. Khanna wants a repeal, also — along with complete decriminalization and regulation of sex work — but believes that allocating statistics is an essential step in further underscoring why laws involving sex work need to change.


“It’s almost impossible for Democrats to oppose getting more intelligence, also it could be hard for even some fact-finding Republicans to oppose that,” he mentioned, adding that attempting to repeal FOSTA-SESTA at this time would likely fail. “So let’s suggest a study to get evidence about the impact on sex workers, on the transgender community, on people of color, and then that report can assist galvanize a movement to repeal FOSTA-SESTA.”


D’Adamo calls the shift away from radical change and towards a study a “very, very hard decision” although agrees that, if a vote to repeal FOSTA failed, it would likely do further damage to the movement more broadly. “This is a study that opens the conversation and centers it on the health and safety of sex workers,” she mentioned. “That’s a conversation that is bigger than FOSTA-SESTA, and bigger than Backpage.”


“What we want is to center the conversation on the rights and safety of people trading sex and what that looks like through harm loss and decriminalization, and what that looks like as soon as we’re facing technology that is constantly kicking sex workers off their platforms,” she adds.


increasingly folks are joining the conversation around FOSTA-SESTA and the potential decriminalization of sex work altogether. The human-rights advocacy order Amnesty International called for the decriminalization of sex work in 2016, precisely because it reduces the level of trafficking and other harm that people who trade sex might be subjected to. Any time sex work was decriminalized in Rhode Island between 2003 and 2006 due to a lapse in law, the variety of rapes announced to police dropped 31 percent. The state is currently engaging conversations weighing its current laws against its brief period of decriminalization; legislators in Maine, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. Are following suit.


Nevada is now the only state in the nation where trading sex is legal, although there really are significant restrictions connected with where and why the work is conducted, which some traffickers exploit or don't think about entirely. Although some presidential candidates have indicated that they could be open to decriminalization, which as Re.Wire News explains is distinct from legalization, and isn’t simply about scrubbing the laws. According to Luo, true decriminalization also includes issuing people with the resources they require to live the ideal life they can, which can contain affirming healthcare and issuing a safe working environment. It also permits for people to supporter for themselves, both online and off, in and out of legislative offices.


And while sex workers have been championing their own rights and needs for years, Khanna believes it’s a congressional duty to ferry that work house. “I view myself as helping to put this on the radar, and working side by side with these groups who are really doing the heavy lift,” he explains. “But ultimately they require to be invited to the committee hearings. Their stories are the ones that need to be heard. Their advocacy is making the difference.”