URBAN SURVIVORS’ UNION CONDEMNS THE RECENT PASSAGE OF FOSTA-SESTA LAW WHICH IMPERILS THE LIFE AND WELL-BEING OF MANY ALREADY VULNERABLE PEOPLE, AS WELL AS THE OPEN AND FREE INTERNET
On April 11, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that passed the Senate by a margin of 97-2, including conservatives and progressives alike, that despite claiming to be ‘protecting’ the United States from the scourge of sex trafficking, instead stands to destabilize the lives of those engaged in voluntary sex work, put their lives in danger and create new and burdensome censorship of the internet.
Don’t let its name fool you: the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693) won’t help punish sex traffickers. What the bill will do is expose any person, organization, platform, or business that hosts third-party content on the Internet to the risk of overwhelming criminal and civil liability if sex traffickers use their services. For small Internet businesses, that could be fatal. With this possibility of devastating litigation costs hanging over their heads, many entrepreneurs and investors are likely to be deterred from building new businesses online.
This has already been seen not just with the shutdown and seizure of Backpages but in the coerced shutdown of Craigslists’ entire personals section, the shuttering of ‘Erotic Review’, one of the internet’s foremost avenues for sex workers to share their experiences (which can be life saving in many cases) and Reddit’s choice to delete several active boards relating to sex work on their platform. It can be seen further with sites such as FetLife and others considering doing the same or with Microsoft changing their terms of service to exclude sexual content, including their Skype video call platform which is often used by many sex workers doing entirely harmless ‘camming’ work. These and plentiful other examples not seen here show the ways that this has already had a chilling effect on platforms that include sexual content, putting at risk a great deal of totally lawful internet sites ability to operate.
Additionally and even more importantly, The Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking act conflates Sex Trafficking with consensual Sex Work. It wants to target all sites the way the government targeted Backpage, citing that it was used solely for the purpose of trafficking, when it is clear that is false. USU stands with our friends in the sex work industries and our friends at the Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA in believing anyone who is in the sex Industry against their will should be offered every resource and opportunity to get out. We also, however stand with SWOP in believing that those who willfully engage in the sex industry should have the freedom to work as they choose and be offered the same protection as any other type of labor worker. There are many Sex Workers who rely on meeting and screening clientele online as a way to stay safe. Without proper ways to establish identity, set service boundaries, and screen people properly, this bill could turn casual meet ups into life or death situations.
Among other dangers to internet freedom, SESTA would compromise what is known as the Good Samaritan provision by imposing federal criminal liability on anyone who merely knows that sex trafficking advertisements may be on their platform, whereas the law now gives them the authority to monitor their content and remove troublesome items of this sort as it is found. Platforms would thus be discouraged from reviewing the content posted by their users, cancelling out the incentive to review, filter and remove provided by the Good Samaritan provision. There are also concerns that it could violate the Constitution by way of ex post facto provisions.
The Urban Survivors’ Union, along with the New England User Union and in conjunction with our other allies in the growing and thriving drug user union movement know, as fellow members of a stigmatized, paternalized and condemned group, under draconian and counterproductive prohibition laws that only harm and never help our people, that the laws that govern sex work have failed in ways that mirror the disastrous War on Drugs. It is important that just as they stand for us that we stand for them.
Our movement was built on the back of other historic and inspiring rights movements that have come before us, including those for: civil rights, human rights, gay rights or, yes, sex worker rights. We acknowledge not only their work and the validity of their views but that all oppression is connected and that an intersectional framework of social justice is the only one that will bring true freedom, not just to our user community, not just to sex workers, but to this country and to our world.
We thus condemn not only Trump and the conservatives who believed, consistent with their often noxious and intolerant views, that this was proper but Democratic and independent Senators, among them Elizabeth Warren (D) – MA, Bernie Sanders, (I) – VT, Corey Booker (D) – NJ, alongside those in Democratic Leadership: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – NY and Minority Whip Dick Durbin – IL. By voting yes on this, they put blood on their hands and enable the sort of toxic and intolerant lawmaking that so-called progressive lawmakers are supposed to stand up against.
In fact, Sanders, days after the vote, cited popular rap artist Cardi B in a tweet in an attempt to bolster his youthful credibility, leading to a response by well known sex worker Sydney Leathers: “Hey Bernie: Cardi is a former stripper. You voted for SESTA which endangers sex workers. Please don’t try to use her for clout. We know how you really feel.”
We stand with Sydney. We stand with so many in our own movement who have felt the sting of criminalization in their lives. We stand with SWOP. We stand with the many, many mad, sad and scared women (and men and everywhere in between) we know who have felt, already, the chilling effects of this legislation. And we stand in sadness and anger for those who may well lose their lives as a result.
In Solidarity,
Urban Survivors’ Union
Comments