A Rant About The Erasure of BIPOC Survivors and BIPOC Sex Workers' Rights Activists/Advocates

Beware of anyone talking about a "pimp lobby"

One of my IG followers, someone who is not part of my personal networks but has been responding positively to my posts about sex work aesthetics, reached out to me with concern about the term “sex work.” They said they had read that pimps came up with it. I said no, the term was introduced into modern feminist debates by a sex worker named Carol Leigh. They sent me a link to this article from The Guardian, a news source I respect:

“Punish the men who pay for sex rather than the women lured into that life”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/25/punish-the-men-who-pay-for-sex-rather-than-the-women-lured-into-that-life

The confusing term in the article is “pimp lobby,” in a context which suggests that pimps are prime movers in the sex workers’ rights movement.

This is both insulting and ludicrous. It’s insulting for, among other reasons, the way it implies that sex workers themselves could not possibly disagree with the statements of the speaker using the term “pimp lobby.” The speaker in the article is saying that sex workers rights activists are a front for the interests of pimps, owners, and management. This ignores the vast aount of literature in which self-identified sex workers’ rights activists complain about pimps, owners, and management.

As much as many anti-prostitution activists like to say they are speaking for all people in the sex industry, they are more likely to be the ones speaking over sex workers, or, when they do pass the mic, giving voice only to previous workers who support what they say while deliberately suppressing dissenting voices. Anyone who disagrees is assumed to be the mouthpiece of oppressors and exploiters, whether due to experiencing some kind of Stockholm Syndrome or by being willing to sell out other workers to appeal to management and clients.

To say we are working for sex industry big-business owners is ludicrous when one takes into account that some of us advocate for unions. You don’t have to be deeply versed in the history of labor rights to know there’s no way the owner or manager of a business will support the development of a union in their house. Further, there’s an implication from antis that any worker who says they are working independently is either lying or could be doing only the kinds of work that have the least in common with streetwalkers and brothel workers, ie, doing no-contact online labor, and therefore knows nothing about the “real” world of the sex industry, and would therefore never use the term sex work. I’ve worked in a Waffle House parking lot near a truck stop, and I feel entitled to say I’m comfortable with “sex work” as an umbrella term, for, among other reasons, how it enables people who can’t risk being more specific about which kind of sex work they’re doing to still have a voice.

The person who had reached out to me was genuinely caring and concerned, someone seeking as much information as they could about the issues I’d raised. They weren’t trying to prove me wrong. And they were, like everyone else, including every worker on the planet, fighting against constant messaging and internalization from ill-intentioned or ill-informed people. I sent this article to them:

“In Full Sight” The ‘Pimp Lobby’ at the Amnesty AGM”

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3162-in-full-sight-the-pimp-lobby-at-the-amnesty-agm

Excerpt:

Nikita, an Afro-Asian sex worker in her twenties from London, was due to speak shortly after being labelled a pimp. She was shaken.

“We’d only been given three minutes and I didn’t want to derail any further by talking about how I was abused and preyed on by a pimp when I was in my teens,” she said. “It was too lurid, too painful. The accusation that my presence at the AGM fighting for workers’ rights indicated that I was one of the people exploiting workers rattled me. I was near tears.”

Amidst this hostility, Nikita further found her presence erased by a (white) pro-Nordic Model speaker who was supporting the motion.

“They are my sisters and I love them,” the speaker said, before telling the room that “they wouldn’t see any women of colour on the stage fighting against the motion” to further criminalise the sex industry.

“This amounted to directly ignoring my presence on the stage minutes before – and my disgust at the weaponisation of race to deny workers’ rights and the glossing over of the racism inherent in the Nordic Model itself,” Nikita says. “Her mistake didn’t even register on her face.”

It’s horrifying that antis campaign for their funding and support by misrepresenting sex work and harm reduction activists. By doing so they misrepresent the needs of both sex workers and trafficked people, thereby facilitating unproductive solutions that squander resources and endanger everyone. I’ve too often observed this method of invalidating sex workers. It’s upsetting to see it continuously popping up, used against the most vulnerable people in the industry, including people who are not at all praising the industry. I’ve been subject to erasure and misrepresentationfrom these same antis, but at least it wasn’t racist, since I’m white. Theyw ill go back and comb through everything I, or more relevant activists, have said, looking for something they can take out of context.

The racist factor is very prevalent and awful. Antis consistently erase or discredit BIPOC workers and survivors by framing sex workers rights as something only white-privileged or non-workers would support. They say we are financially supported by a huge sex industry cartel (so where’s my money?) to deflect from the fact that carceral and gentrifying governmental organizations are usually the ones funding them. They re-traumatize survivors who believe in the human rights model of harm reduction – including reducing harms done by police, management, clients, traffickers, and stigma. They don’t think about the practicalities of enforcement, only about the importance of making a statement. They also overlook the reality that in most places where sex work is criminalized, the clients are already criminalized as well.

“Punishing the clients and decriminalizing the workers” (ie the Nordic Model) effectively criminalizes the work, whether the workers are criminalized or not. It’s obvious how these laws will play out. Most sex workers are more afraid of police than clients. Police are often involved in facilitating and trafficking. Anti-trafficking organizations that aren’t informed by sex workers often provide exit solutions that are so unrealistic that workers choose to return to a different area of the work they originally wanted to escape.

And I repeat : being a client is generally illegal in many regions, certainly in the US. Using fraud, coercion, or force to get people into the sex industry, or make them stay there, is already illegal. Wage theft is already illegal. Rape is already illegal. Sexually exploiting children is already illegal. No sex workers rights activist wants to decriminalize any of that, and these are often the very abuses we are talking fighting against. The exchange of sexual services for money is all we want to decriminalize and that’s what the fight is about. I don’t have to think the sex industry is great to think that’s a good place to start fighting the existing abuses – none of which, by the way, are unique to the sex industry, as anyone who has studied trafficking knows. We aren’t trying to convince people we’re a bunch of happy hookers, and to say that we are is disingenuous at best.

To say that no person of color would engage in the sex workers’ rights movement is more than disingenuous: it is a deliberate misrepresentation intended to erase the work of countless people of color all over the world. For instance:

BIPOC Adult Industry Collective

https://www.bipoc-collective.org/

This organization also works with people who identify as survivors

Survivors Agenda

https://survivorsagenda.org/

whose agenda explicitly states that they support the “decriminalization of the commercial exchange of of sexual services “ https://survivorsagenda.org/agenda/full-agenda/

Take a look below at a growing list of some of the very present and very vocal BIPOC-centered orgs that the antis claim couldn’t exist. If you know of others who should be on this list, please name and link them in the comments and I’ll add them to this article.

ASWA

https://www.aswaalliance.org/

“The African Sex Worker Alliance (ASWA) is a Pan African Alliance of sex worker-led groups that exist to strengthen their voices, to empower and to advocate for and advance the health and human rights of female, male and transgender sex workers.”

The Black Sex Workers Collective

https://www.thebswc.org/home

“A philanthropic arts project seeking to amplify the voices of Black Sex Workers by addressing their needs through peer support, legal assistance, housing and other basic needs assessment. Our goal is to create a safe space where the unique experiences and needs of current and former Black Sex Worker voices are validated and responded with appropriate needs based resources.”

California Prevention and Education Project, founded 1984

https://sites.google.com/calpep.org/calpep/home

“Founded in 1984, CAL-PEP is a community-based, African American-centered organization dedicated to providing coordinated HIV, behavioral health, outreach, and navigation services to communities of color in the Bay Area.”

Davida

https://www.fundobrasil.org.br/en/projeto/davida-prostitution-civil-rights-health-rio-de-janeiro/

“Davida (“From the Life”) was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to promote the citizenship of prostitutes, creating opportunities to ensure their social protagonism and visibility by means of the organization of this work category, human rights advocacy, mobilization, and social control.”

GLITS

https://www.glitsinc.org/

“G.L.I.T.S is a Black trans-led advocacy and direct services organization that is dedicated to fighting systemic discrimination against marginalized communities, in New York City and beyond.”

SWEAT

https://www.devex.com/organizations/sex-workers-education-and-advocacy-taskforce-sweat-66995

“SWEAT has a 20-year history in organising sex workers, advocating for, and delivering services to South African Sex Workers. They have facilitated the birth of two movements – a Pan African Alliance of sex workers (African Sex Worker Alliance) and a national movement of sex workers called Sisonke. ASWA is now an independent organisation based in Kenya, and Sisonke is moving towards its own independence in South Africa.”

VAMP SANGRAM founded 1990

https://www.sangram.org/VAMP

“VAMP, an abbreviation of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, is a collective of 5,000 women in sex work in Maharashtra and North Karnataka. Since 1990, they have been working on issues of health and human rights of sex workers. They serve as a model of a strong sex workers collective in the region, at the local, national, and international level. Importantly, VAMP along with its own constituency of people in sex work, also works with transport and migrant workers in the region.”

It’s sickening to me, truly, to see the efforts of these people, and so many more, erased. I hate to see the painful and dishonest invalidation of BIPOC sex industry activists and thought leaders.

Nikita said that she is the expert on her own life. The malicious factions in the antis want to take that away. They want to be free to continually portray sworkers as people who are reduced to pitiful mindless animals, desperately in need of their definition of rescue. And the reality is that their efforts are so much more likely to be funded by religious, police, and government organizations than any of ours. Their worries about us getting validity and their relentless efforts to discredit and silence us seem like a waste of their time. I’m not saying, “Hey, don’t help those people.” I’m saying, “You’re missing some critical information that would make your efforts to help truly effective. Listen to the people who are involved and affected.”

Yes, even in places some westerners imagine to be impervious to sex worker politics

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/general/40041995

And here’s how bad rescues have been known to play out:

It is truly harmful to erase the input of any life experience in this area, particularly so to erase vulnerable BIPOC and trans survivors. This erasure perpetuates unworkable systems. Furthermore, there is a long list of people who’ve abused their positions as anti-trafficking activists, and an even longer list of police and government collaborations with traffickers.

It’s Black History Month, and that’s a good time – as if there’s ever a bad time – to combat this erasure. See “Black Sex Workers History is Black History” for more on Cal-Pep founder Gloria Lockett:

https://aidsunited.org/black-sex-workers-history-is-black-history/

This is a rant, done all in one day, and as always, while I’m doing my diligence, I’m working without an editor. If you see mistakes or problematic assertions, let me know. I can’t change emails that have been sent to subscribers but I can edit this piece on Substack.