I really wish that this revenge tasted sweet. I wish that I could find a modicum of snarled “I fucking told you so”–type joy in the recent news from south of the border. Roe v. Wade, a privacy case itself, was overturned on June 24, 2022. It’s part of a larger push toward puritanism, sex work abolition, and control over reproduction that we, as folks in sex work, have been speaking politely, firmly, quietly, loudly, and screaming about for a long time.
I wish there was a feeling of fresh, juicy, teeth-gnashing revenge that came from knowing few people took us seriously. I wish it wasn’t just the same damn story over and over. My favourite song in tenth grade was the then-recently-released The Decline EP by NOFX (as problematic as that band can be). The end of the eighteen-minute single-track EP repeats the phrase, “We are the queer, we are the whore; Ammunition in the class war.” That was released in 1999, and here we are two decades on, still seeing the same patterns. People have been writing songs and making art and yelling from the rooftops about it long before then. I wish I even felt a bit smarmy about knowing the history and seeing the way that governments and ideological state apparatuses use queer folks and sex workers as fuel for moral outrage fires that will inevitably distract from the vast violations they’re trying to push. Instead, I just feel exhausted.
I wish the Instagram parent whose breastfeeding photo is taken down for obscenity would realize that her pushes against sex workers are why she can’t share her moment of pride and intimacy with the world.
Sex workers and 2SLGBTTQI* folks, especially those with racialized backgrounds, are the canaries in the coal mine who have been spewing fire about the dangers of paternalistic, puritanical, patriarchal, and generally bad lawmaking for time immemorial. I don’t like the common theme that the canaries are dead in that coal mine—that’s not true. We’re still here, we’re still yelling, and continuing to ignore us will only result in you losing more of your rights. Yes, you. Because sex workers look like anyone, so you look like a sex worker too. And so when we make laws targeting sex workers, we’re actually making laws that affect just about everyone.
In terms of bad lawmaking, there is an enormous push to conflate sex work and human trafficking or exploitation around the world. The set of borders and laws we call Canada is no exception to that trend.
I remember starting to see an increase of posts about child sex trafficking in about 2016, starting with an image of a young white girl in a frilly dress on a country road, staring back at the camera with a “why didn’t you help me?” look on her face—and the text matched that. More posts kept coming up across my social media feeds, underlining the need to act against human trafficking. Politicians started tweeting it out. A legitimate anti-trafficking hashtag was taken over and suddenly adopted an anti-sex work, anti-queer spiral. It wasn’t long until the American government of the time brought in FOSTA-SESTA (2018), a set of laws aiming to end human trafficking online. I want to point out that this was a bipartisan effort. Even Democrats and Republicans can agree on ending child trafficking, and that’s what makes it perfect for achieving a wider agenda than might be visible on the surface.
FOSTA-SESTA in America changed the way that people around the world are allowed to talk online about sex, queerness, pride, gender, sexuality, and health. In the name of ending trafficking, any website that allows users to upload content can be held responsible for the legality of that content. This has forced huge sites like Facebook and Instagram to use automatic and AI filters to identify potentially-“harmful” posts, such as ones that discuss sex, sex work, sexuality, nudity, and the list goes on.
I wish the Instagram parent whose breastfeeding photo is taken down for obscenity would realize that her pushes against sex workers (they’re icky) are why she can’t share her moment of pride and intimacy with the world. I wish she knew her insistence on fighting against trans folks was why her child will be subject to invasive genital exams to play sports in junior high. I do wish that felt good; I really do wish that I could take the low road and watch her ruin her own life with a satisfied grin on my face. But it’s all of our lives, it’s not a vacuum, and it’s already hurting us—and yes, the breastfeeding mother too.
It’s important to remember as we’re writing laws that we must write them knowing that, someday, there will be someone in power hoping to exploit any loopholes that exist within them. In America, the impending EARN IT Act’s ban on end-to-end encryption services can (and arguably will) lead to authorities being better able to find conversations that folks are having about where to access an abortion, or meet queer people, or help a young trans person find care. This is only one example from a deeply flawed piece of law.
And this isn’t exclusive to America, to be very clear.
Every single one of these steps backward counts down the road. Let me give you a great example from my own home province. In my home province of Manitoba, Bill 40-A, the Manitoba Hospitality Sector Customer Registry Act, seeks to have all short-term rentals (hotels, Airbnbs, bnbs, etc.) and hired cars (taxis, ride-sharing services, etc.) maintain a record of the names and addresses of all clients. This list can be accessed without a warrant by police. There are no stated best practices or methods for keeping these lists confidential or encrypted. Read that over again to really consider how much data that is, and how many people would be affected by it.
The bill would also require any short-term rental accommodation or drivers of vehicles, and “other persons” (so, anyone), to report any suspected human trafficking. The motivation behind keeping the records and requiring the reporting is to end child sex trafficking. Hooray! Like, only a monster would be against ending child sex trafficking, right?
But does the bill actually do this? It’s important to underline that child trafficking is already illegal. Abusing young people is already illegal. Warrants are already easy to get. What makes us think that giving the police even more power will make anyone’s lives better? We also know from the implementation of FOSTA-SESTA in the US that when we further surveil spaces that contain trafficking, those people leave the area and folks who are experiencing exploitation are less able to access help if they need it. If all these things are already illegal but nothing is being done about it, why exactly are we aiming to give even broader powers to the police forces?
Now for some of the real-life implications. Take the part about drivers and hotel staff reporting human trafficking. Sounds great, we should report human trafficking if we see it. But now we have to step back and remember that the conflation of sex work and trafficking/exploitation makes this into intentionally-murky waters. When I worked in travel, our airline gave us a list of trafficking “flags” to look for, including women with long manicured fingernails travelling alone, women with short skirts, a woman travelling alone who doesn’t speak English fluently, a white woman travelling with a Brown or Black man, a racialized woman travelling with a white man, and the list goes on. All of these are reasons to suspect a person of being “trafficked” (which includes sex workers in this time of conflation), and again, this looks like you and I, like our friends and family.
Folks from the trans and BIPOC communities, groups whose lives are particularly fetishized and non-consensually sexualized by the white cishet patriarchal world we live in, will absolutely end up with more and more “wellness checks” by police just because they rode in a taxi and paid with cash. The audacity.
How much, exactly, are we willing to give up in order to accomplish absolutely nothing, and perhaps make things even less safe for youth experiencing exploitation or violence?
But who do I need to hear this? White women. White women who keep voting for and otherwise supporting bills like these. I need you to hear that your short dress or your cute new nails on the cab ride home from your girls’ night out could result in armed police coming to check in on you. I know you aren’t used to this, so you might think that it’s a positive thing. But maybe it makes you a little less likely to go out and wear a short skirt next time. Maybe it means your neighbours had to see the cops show up at your house at three in the morning banging on your door. Maybe it means the police just occasionally do a few more drive-bys of your house. You know, just to make sure.
How does that feel for feminism? How does wearing what you’d like to wear and taking a taxi by yourself mean that the police can come and check in on you? Does that feel like a win? I need you to remember that these bills DO implicate you, because you look like a sex worker.
We’ve barely even dipped our toes into the long list of bills that claim to protect young and/or exploited folks but will end up squashing privacy for millions. Some examples include federal Senate Bill S-210 requiring photo ID to view porn on the Internet or television in Canada, a great way to find the queers if you need to; the online harms bill, targeting an end to terrorism and non-consensual image sharing by requiring anyone posting anything on the Internet to have those posts tied to their photo ID. You know, just in case the Government ever classifies anti-government speech as terrorism and you spoke out about the Prime Minister on TikTok, or you came out as queer on Instagram, or you talked about abortion on Twitter, and now the government needs to find you at home to follow up on those statements. There are so many more bad pieces of impending legislation, and sadly I’m running out of space in this article. These are all home-grown bills influenced by a global team of right-wing Christian organizations aiming for the abolition of sex work and control over reproductive rights under the guise of giving a shit about exploited youth.
How much, exactly, are we willing to give up in order to accomplish absolutely nothing, and perhaps make things even less safe for youth experiencing exploitation or violence?
So, what would make me feel that sense of deep, maniacally-laughing revenge? Guaranteed basic liveable income, decriminalization of sex work, harm reduction focus in policy-making, worker rights, unions (where people want them), healthy and open discussions of sexuality, decolonial action, Land Back, Indigenous sovereignty, bodily sovereignty, stomping out purity culture, defunding the police, and ending a system that keeps people so dependent on making enough money day-to-day just to stay alive.
The revenge of watching people who look like you and I flourish and grow, to live without the constant hum of capitalism telling them they aren’t good enough. The revenge of watching people post their breastfeeding photos, transition selfies, or sex working co-workers, and share their joy. The revenge of the death of a world that would rather have seen us dead. The revenge of a full life.
