What Sex Workers Want

Prostitution is legal in only a few parts of Nevada, but legalization initiatives elsewhere in the United States have failed. On Nov. 4, San Franciscans voted down a proposal that would have prevented city government from using city funds to prosecute either johns or prostitutes. Sex worker activists and the San Francisco Democratic Party supported the legalization efforts. But whether legalization would help reduce violence against sex workers is unclear. A 2007 study by San Francisco psychologist and prostitution expert Melissa Farley found that in places where commercial sex is legal—such as some Nevada counties, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands—both illegal prostitution, as well as the number of rapes and assaults against prostitutes, has increased.

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and Mayor Gavin Newsom strongly opposed the proposition's passage, saying it could compromise their ability to prosecute human traffickers and would not do much to help protect sex workers from violence. Maxine Doogan, the founder of the Erotic Services Providers Union and the proponent of the proposition, said that by repeatedly linking prostitution and human trafficking, the D.A. and the mayor were simply using "fear tactics" to defeat the ballot initiative.

Swimme and other legalization advocates say blurring that definition of human trafficking and sex trafficking is a mistake. They note that human trafficking numbers also include forced labor, a kind of modern-day slavery. The U.S. government estimates that the human trafficking industry involves 600,000 to 800,000 people worldwide—about 80 percent of those trafficked are women and up to 50 percent are children. It is difficult to identify how many of those women and men engage in non-consensual sex work in the United States because the practice often occurs in isolated settings like massage parlors or is organized via the Internet or phones. But it's clear that individuals trafficked across country borders or within the United States are prone to sexual coercion. And the U.S. Department of Justice reports that among those trafficked worldwide "there are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as 5, who fall victim to the sex trade."

Despite these numbers, some anti-trafficking advocates suggest that U.S. policy on human trafficking is too focused on prostitution. Ann Jordan, director of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative of the International Human Rights Law Group, said in her congressional testimony last year: "The broad scope of the U.S. anti-trafficking policy has been gradually narrowed to fit an anti-prostitution agenda that is based on the unproven belief that all prostitution (even legal prostitution in Nevada) is trafficking; and so criminalizing prostitution, as well as clients, is promoted as a purported means to stop prostitution and to stop trafficking for prostitution." But this policy is unlikely to change in an Obama administration. When questioned by pastor Rick Warren during the campaign, the president-elect drew a connection between prostitution and modern day enslavement, so it seems doubtful that he would consider a platform that would legalize the sex trade.

Short of legislative change, sex workers in the D.C. march are hoping for a seat at the table, says Swimme. Her organization and others want to be included in discussions by the secretary of state and the Department of Human Services on human trafficking, sex work and HIV-AIDs-prevention efforts. "Right now, while everybody is a criminal, nobody is talking about safety," she says. "And that is really what our message is: by criminalizing us we are being silent and our health and our safety are at risk. We are vulnerable."

© 2008