Sex Worker Rights are Labor Rights (biting the hand)

February 22nd, 2023 · · Articles No comments

This is real world advice about concrete issues. Change is very straightforward. For a long time BPPP has thought of sharing about what should change on a fundamental level in relationships between those who have and give money and the recipients. This is the first posting. We call this impromptu series “Biting the Hand (that did not feed us).” We know it is hard for those without funds to say anything to those in power because the fear of being defunded or systematically shut out of circles and opportunities is very great. We also internally police ourselves, concerned that if one group or person says something, the funding “opportunity” will be “ruined for everyone.” The reality is that the only reason that sources of funding and donations exist today is because of those who fought for recognition, payment, spaces and so much more. The ones who were and are a “problem.” We honor all such disruptors. And we thank you. We need to keep going to create the change we seek.

Today’s suggestion: sex worker rights are labor rights.

We received an email from a funder asking for us to fill out a survey to provide feedback on their funding guidelines. That is a great suggestion. The survey is a highly detailed set of ten questions. Once again, great. Dig deep. Change. The problem? Asking sex workers to do this work without payment and/or any social capital to build our renown. Our response is below, anonymized. To be clear we have received many such requests from funders to fill our surveys without compensation. We hope this is helpful for funders and others with cash to give out, in the future. No. No. We do not dance for free.

Dear Colleagues: We really want to help you but we cannot do this work unpaid. Nor can we ask any unpaid individual sex worker to do this.
We have already given many hours of our time helping [insert name of just about any funder globally] and we have raised this issue ever since [your fund started being interested in funding sex workers].
We looked over the survey, it requires our professional input as sex workers, fundraisers and organizers.
A funder [insert any of the following: dedicated to justice/labor rights/gender equality/set up in our name/working with sex workers] should model Sex Worker rights from the ground up. That would include paying Sex Workers their hourly rate for this labor. Sex Worker rights are human rights and labor rights. Pls live these values.
Pls [insert name of funder] and co, refrain from explaining all the reasons why [insert the name of any funder or donor] can’t pay Sex Workers as consultants. We already received those emails and we don’t need to read them again. We want [you, the funder] to change. And when [you, the funder] changes, pls publicly acknowledge the groups that pressured for this with a thank you. That helps us build, be acknowledged as the thought leaders we are and be acknowledged for the advocacy we have to do (amid the trauma of lack of funding). You did not come up with these ideas on your own, we developed these ideas and work-shopped so many ways to be clear when speaking to you. We and others like us had to take a risk to speak back to you. You might see us as the “angry ones who can’t be nice.” Yet we had to struggle to make you change: painfully many times we have had funders dismiss us to our face when we stated that our work is of equal value. We will be so happy when these attitudes change and you give us our due.
This is our feedback.
BPPP

The Rights of Sex Workers in the Digital Age #CSW67

February 21st, 2023 · · Events No comments - Tags: ,

Our sex worker coalition holds space at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and this year our session will be moderator by Monica Jones (Founder and Director of the Outlaw Project). She will welcome international and local advocates including Sinnamon Love of BIPOC-AIC, N’Jaila Rhee of NJRUA, Beyonce Karungi, Trans Equality Uganda and Nosipho Vidima representing The BSWC.

Time: 6.15pm, March 9, 2023

Location: 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 (on the corner of East 44th Street)

Room: CCUN 2nd Floor

How to reserve your spot? Be there at 6 pm to get your spot. We may also update with an Eventbrite to assure seating. Keep an eye on the FB Event Page for more updates

More about the event: Sex workers’ rights are at the forefront of many social movements that are central to human rights for women and sex workers are innovators in technologies in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all. This in-person panel discussion will showcase sex worker leadership from across the globe to discuss digital technologies, online spaces and rights questions pertaining to access for women. We will describe how laws restricting sexuality, including sex workers, but more generally, limit women’s right to digital assembly (a vital way in which we all globally organize due to the COVID-19 pandemic), strategies for women’s rights in online spaces that defend our bodies, our speech, and the free flow of ideas. We will also review areas of multilateral and global policies that affirm the rights of sex workers and how fears about digital life are challenging these rights.


Earn it

October 18th, 2022 · · Articles No comments - Tags:

A guest post by Zee Xaymaca

The SWERFS are at it again, folks. 2022 has brought the latest in the onslaught against online privacy and sex workers’ rights. By now we know the drill; an innocuously named bill with heinous content is pushed through by the anti-sex work lobby under the guise of trafficking prevention. This season’s flavor of government overreach is back to a classic: interactive internet services and concerns about child welfare, in particular fears about “child pornography” or child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) . Enter the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2022 or the EARN IT Act of 2022.

If the term ‘Interactive Technologies’ has you scratching your head a bit, that was intentional. The definition of these services is distressingly broad. What they are talking about is the Internet. An interactive technology is any technology that allows multiple people to connect to a single server. This includes both private and public communications; from web searches to messaging platforms. Any system that allows access to the Internet Even in libraries.

The EARN-IT Act sets the internet up as the domain of a new National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention. This Commission forms the crux of the bill. The EARN-IT Act provides for the creation of a 19-person commission that is expected to prescribe best practices for Interactive Internet Technologies in curtailing dissemination of CSAM. The commission consists of “(i) The Attorney General or his or her representative. (ii) The Secretary of Homeland Security or his or her representative. (iii) The Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission or his or her representative. 
The remaining 16 positions on the Commission are filled by various senate leaders and together must include persons with law enforcement experience, have prosecutorial experience, have experience with internet technologies and lived experience with trafficking, among other criteria.”

Conspicuously missing from this line-up are ‘people who have experience navigating the provision of online sexual products and services’, legal or otherwise. One may be inclined to think that sex workers’ wealth of experience in navigating the internet discreetly and safely would be a hot commodity in the bid to balance the right to privacy enshrined in the constitution and the mandate to root out abuse in online spaces… But I digress.

Armed with a broad mandate and broader reach, the EARN-IT act prescribes some changes off the bat in the form of amendments to previously passed legislation. This is where the mechanisms of the commission become clear. The legislation includes 14 mandates and several additional revisions to prior legislation, and some so troubling they bear explication here.

The commission is tasked with coordinating voluntary initiatives offered among and to providers of interactive computer services relating to identifying, categorizing, and reporting online child sexual exploitation. For sex workers and related communities this is chilling. This means that the commission is allowed to coordinate with our service providers to hand over our online activity to the federal government. Increased surveillance has yet to yield results in curtailing sexual abuse material. However it has proven chillingly effective as a means of policing the actions of private citizens acting within their rights. The onerous website verification standards arising from anti-trafficking legislation is a concrete example of the harm done by crusaders making unsubstantiated claims of widespread trafficking that demands this particular response.  While there is no evidence that requiring sex workers to provide national ID before working online has any effect on the trafficking it is aimed at, it is clear that it squeezes vulnerable sex workers, (POC, undocumented, disabled or otherwise unable to meet excessive requirements) out of the market. This essentially forced disclosure makes advertising online a precarious balance between maintaining anonymity which is necessary for legal and physical safety, and access to their income stream. This is an authorization for a massive data drag net, arguably to find evidence of child sexual abuse. Yet, there are no prescriptions for what to do with the rest of that non-evidence material. It does not address the matter of privacy for those surveilled nor the victims they claim to search for.

In addition to a public-private sector partnership, the commission is allowed to deputize non-profits. “NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)  may provide hash values or similar technical identifiers associated with visual depictions provided in a CyberTipline report or submission to the child victim identification program… to a non-profit entity for the sole and exclusive purpose of preventing and curtailing the online sexual exploitation of children.” Put in simple terms, submissions to the cyber sexual abuse tipline, a federal database, will be made available to nonprofits that are looking to ‘curtail trafficking’. 

The glaring issue here is that these “tips” do not need to be substantiated before individuals have their information and sexual material distributed to non-profits that have no clear regulations as to how the organizations operate or utilize them. However, the question still lingers, “Is distributing identifying information and documentation about victims at the most vulnerable times of their lives to non-government interested parties the best we can do to protect them?” It is especially troubling since the dissemination of this information to non-profits gives little guidance as to operational standards for organizations that would be involved.

The call for “training content moderators”–without any assurance that such training would not be alarmist, transphobic, misogynist, xenophobic and racist–conjures images of the censorship we already experience on social media with regard to erotic or sexual content. We do, after all, live in a country that does not even provide comprehensive sexuality education to young people in schools. There is a strong push to de-eroticize internet spaces that is bolstered by this additional set of policing measures. Since it is evident in current censorship practices, it is safe to assume that these measures will further marginalize persons with low access to public discourse. 

Sex workers are sure to be caught in the drag net of the search for child sexual abuse. Our information will be made available to the federal government and organizations we may never have even heard of. Our content will be judged and shared by persons whose access we did not consent to. Finally, our content, especially content by Black persons and POC, will be weaponized by these government and private/nonprofit sector agencies to further the victim narrative of sex work and its conflation with trafficking.

These provisions are troubling even without the USA’s lurch toward puritanical conservatism. The collaboration between online platforms and the federal government is a looming threat to the “free expression” that once seemed to resonate with US ideals. There is no clear provision for how this information is used or held and by whom. The more information the government has on sex workers, the bigger targets we become and the more susceptible we are to legislative anti-sex work crusades. Make no mistake, sex workers just happen to be among the most profoundly affected by policies like SESTA/FOSTA and EARN-IT, but it concerns all of us. Our data is being weaponized against us in a plan for our erasure if we are considered a “security risk” or even just “different”.

Currently, the best practices in targeting and handling ‘evidence’ of CSAM and trafficking are intended to be suggestions. However, that is cold comfort, seeing as though long held rights and freedoms are being taken away at a rapid rate. The establishment of this commission heralds binding legal measures. Sex workers have warned everyone of the implications of such sweeping regulations. Sex workers have been the example of the uneven hand of censorship that targets those who are already marginalized. Society must take heed.

Resources:

S.3538 – EARN IT Act of 2022, full legislative history is located here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3538/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22earn+it+act%22%2C%22earn%22%2C%22it%22%2C%22act%22%5D%7D&r=3&s=1

A downloadable PDF of S.3538

Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act that defines “interactive technologies”: http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim)

Call for letters of support for GiGi Thomas

August 14th, 2022 · · Campaigns No comments - Tags:

GiGi Thomas, longtime advocate for human rights for all people and specifically trans people and sex workers, needs our help. GiGi may have the opportunity soon for the judge to reconsider and reduce her sentence. When the judge sentenced GiGi she was influenced by the outpouring of letters in support of GiGi, so we want to show our support for GiGi again. While unfortunately we do not have an exact timeline, we are gathering letters now which we will present to the judge when the time is right.

Please send a scanned PDF of your letter with you signature to freegigi22 @ gmail.com. 

If you don’t want to write a letter yourself, let us know and we can share the sign-on letter we are composing, which you could join.

Here are some tips for writing a letter:

[Note: If you know GiGi personally, please include such details as how long you’ve known her, any positive details about her and her contributions in the community, and anything you know about her struggles, trauma, and strength.]

  1. Dear Judge Cotton
  2. Mention that you’re writing about GiGi Marie Thomas, whose sentence is up for reconsideration.
  3. Identify yourself and your role(s)/involvement in the community (e.g. profession, volunteer work, LGBTQ community member, how long you’ve lived in area, etc.)
  4. Mention that you heard about GiGi’s case from the her community of supporters.
  5. Optional talking points **please make your remarks as specific and unique from your perspective as possible**
    1. Information on how you know trauma-informed mental health care care is important or about the great need for competent professionals to serve trans women of color, prevent violence, and help keep trans women safe.
    2. Details about GiGi professionally.
    3. Request that the judge to consider the incredible positive impact GiGi has had in the community.
    4. Describe how her work relates to your experiences.
  6. Request that the judge reduce GiGi’s sentence and support the provision of trauma-informed care.

“I’m advocating behind bars for transgender rights, keeping myself grounded in spirituality, and lifting up the spirits of others behind bars by giving them peer counseling, or even just a word of advice. I’m getting involved in programs to keep myself motivated.”

-GiGi Thomas

GiGi Thomas is a Black transgender woman who has worked for more than 15 years supporting people in need in the D.C.-Baltimore area. She served as a client consultant with the sex-worker rights and human services organization HIPS and completed a Masters in Social Work from Howard University. Over the years, GiGi helped thousands of community members find shelter and sustenance, reunited families, cared for the injured, and spoke out about injustice especially regarding the treatment of the trans community. Gigi’s peers describe her as “one of those people who just gives and gives with all they have,” and an “amazing woman” with “a heart of gold.

Since 2015, GiGi has been incarcerated and in 2017 she was sentenced to many years in prison, but the judge was moved by the number of letters she received in support of GiGi and said that GiGi should ask for a reconsideration to shorten her sentence at some point in the future. GiGi has now made the request and we are gathering letters in support of shortening her sentence. Like so many people in prison, GiGi is herself a survivor of violence and discrimination.

Read about a snapshot of GiGi’s work here: https://www.metroweekly.com/2007/01/community-growth/.

Other ways to support GiGi

You can also write to GiGi as she loves receiving letters, although she is not always able to respond. The requirements and prohibitions for mail are located here: https://news.maryland.gov/dpscs/inmate-mail-services/.

GiGi Marie Thomas, 456712-1562143

Roxbury Correctional Institute – Hagerstown (RCI)

18701 Roxbury Rd.

Hagerstown, MD 21746

You can also deposit money in GiGi’s account, which she can use to buy supplies for letter writing, food, and other necessities. We recommend using the online option as physical money orders sent to the lockbox do not always seems to reach her. More information here: https://news.maryland.gov/dpscs/inmate-trust-fund-services/. On the Access Corrections website, you will need to enter the state (Maryland), agency (Maryland Department of Corrections) and either her first and last name or her SID # which is 1562143.