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Take a Stand Against the Anti-Equity Model: Asymmetrical Criminalization, or “End Demand” models for sex work policy, are devastating steps backwards for sex workers.In the past decade, sex worker rights organizers have made great strides in promoting the decriminalization of sex work as a policy goal. In response, opponents of sex worker liberation have put forward a variety of “alternative” models to decriminalization, all of which directly endanger our lives and livelihoods.
National Survivors Union, led by our Sex Worker Organizing Group, is calling on our fellow U.S. harm reductionists to join us in demanding true decriminalization of sex work and to reject the criminalization of clients and third parties.
What We Mean When We Say “We”:We are a nationwide, multiracial community of sex workers and trafficking survivors who face structural violence because we use drugs. A majority of our members are low-income, have been incarcerated before, and are disabled or chronically ill; about half of us are trans. Many of us are housing insecure or have been homeless, and many of us have worked outdoors. Some of us have organized in harm reduction and sex worker rights spaces for decades; many of us are new organizers from communities who have historically been excluded from these movements.
In the past, many of our members–including those who are Black or Indigenous trans women and have traded sex for survival while underage–have been told that we were “too privileged” to speak out in favor of decriminalization. The NGOs and politicians that push anti-equity models cherry-pick stories to suit their goals just as they use the deaths of drug users to further the drug war. We reject their faux concern for marginalized people who trade sex. If you want to help us, listen! We’re right here.
Why We Need Your Support:On June 26, 2023, the Maine state legislature passed House Bill L.D. 1435, which eliminates the crime of prostitution from the Maine penal code while retaining criminal penalties for patronizing sex workers (An Act to Reduce Commercial Sexual Exploitation, 2023). LD1435 also renames all mentions of prostitution to “commercial sexual exploitation” and refers to us in the passive tense (e.g., “sought for prostitution,” “being prostituted”). As a national union of sex workers who use drugs, we know we are not passive victims. Whether trading sex by choice, circumstance, or coercion, we have the power to organize for better working conditions and the resources we need to survive. Anti-equity models make our survival and self-organization harder, even as they claim to protect us.
How to Support Us:
Please read our full open letter hereMaine’s new law could start a domino effect, and we need all hands on deck. Sex worker advocates, fellow harm reductionists, and health professionals and legislators: join us in letting Maine and the rest of the U.S. know that criminalizing clients in voluntary transactions does not create “equality” or “equity”; it creates an atmosphere of criminalization and surveillance.
As harm reductionists know, no strategy, however safe, will work if it does not address the actual conditions of use: this is equally true for sex work policy. Embracing our expertise and hard-fought knowledge is crucial for the development of effective, inclusive, and rights-based solutions.
We are calling on you: when anti-equity bills come to your state, don’t let sex worker organizers be alone in opposing them. Sex workers have been a fundamental part of harm reduction movements from the very start. We need you next to us at hearings, co-sponsoring our teach-ins, and protesting alongside us. An injury to one is an injury to all:
Sign on now and reject anti-equity policy and demand true decriminalization!
