TAAAP unequivocally supports full decriminalisation of sex work – not to be confused or conflated with legalisation models or with the Nordic model of criminalising clients – and self-determination & labour rights for sex workers.
You might ask why this is relevant to us and our goals as an aspec advocacy organisation. Here are three reasons.
LGBTQIA+ rights movements are largely owed to black trans sex workers.
Respectability politics in the queer community trample those fighting at its forefront underfoot. Aces and aros, particularly aromantic allosexuals, are constantly left behind by this same mainstreaming appeal to our oppressors. We refuse to erase or distance our movement from our sex worker comrades, especially for the sake of assimilation into an oppressive, carceral society that polices sexuality and queer people of colour.
Many sex workers are multiply marginalised – or rather, marginalised peoples face more difficulties making a living with “straight” jobs by nature of being marginalised – and policies and movements that help sex workers would help all marginalised communities.
Sex worker communities have a rich history of mutual aid, state resistance, and interpersonal relating outside of patriarchal, white supremacist, cisheteronormative nuclear family norms.
We value these community care practices and recognise them as essential to our collective liberation. Part of our vision is a future where this is both widely socially cherished and no longer necessary for survival.
The systems that oppress us all are deeply intertwined and must be dismantled together.
Our amatonormative societies punish sex and sexuality outside of committed monogamous romantic relationships in service of patriarchy and western cultural hegemony. This has a long and violent white supremacist history.
One of the earliest examples of legal moralism, laws using moral arguments as pretext to avoid backlash against the real political motives, was the 1875 Page Act in the United States. The Page Act barred eastern Asian women from immigrating to the US for “lewd and immoral purposes” or “for the purposes of prostitution,” constructing a hypersexual stereotype in order to enact racial immigration restrictions and thereby prevent (primarily) Chinese families from settling and reproducing. This was also around the beginning of the Jim Crow era, where black couples were coerced into marriage through the tenant sharecropping regime and in order to access federal or church services.
Today, legal moralism is the way legislators attack sex worker rights, internet privacy rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, often all at once. Examples include SESTA/FOSTA, EARN IT, and KOSA, using unassailable “protect the children” rhetoric at face value to mask attempts to ban encryption; censor sexuality, sex education, sex workers, and LGBTQIA+ communties; and increase online mass surveillance of sex workers, LQBTQIA+ communities, and other marginalised people.
Whorephobia and stigma against sex workers are also at the crux of sex shaming and how rape culture is enforced. Labels like “slut” and “whore” are used as solidarity-busters to drive wedges between those clinging to a picture of sexual virtue and those punished as sexually immoral to prevent us from organising. Shame is not the only or even the end goal of sex shaming – it is the social punishment and repression of women.
Women are taught to fear being associated with sexual immorality because it is used as license for disrespect and violence against them. They are taught that they can be socially punished by these labels. They function as an effective form of retaliation for anything because everyone is taught to devalue people who are labelled as sexually immoral.
If we do not stand with and uplift sex workers to disavow and end this stigma, we cannot fight sex shaming, rape culture, or amatonormativity.
Our struggles are tied up together. Our liberation is, too. A movement that fails any of us fails us all.
If you are unfamiliar with sex work law frameworks, you might also be wondering about what full decriminalisation means and why we consider it the only option. But you shouldn’t take that from us. Listen to sex workers speaking out and organising for themselves – they are the experts on their needs, their experiences, and the policies that affect them.
Further reading
Resource Collections
Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NWSP) https://www.nswp.org/resources
Red Canary Song Library (includes several resources on sex work laws and their impact; the racist origins of these laws, focusing on anti-Asian racism; know your rights; and harm reduction) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e4835857fcd934d19bd9673/t/5f18b5c9bddc2a20a8cbf8cb/1595455570273/Red-Canary-Song-Library.pdf
Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) https://swopusa.org/learn-about-sex-work/ and https://swopusa.org/resources/
Tryst Sex Work Resources https://tryst.link/blog/sex-work-resources/
Articles
“A Revolution Led by Sex Workers” by Chanelle Gallant https://xtramagazine.com/power/decriminalize-sex-work-206843
“Sex Work and the Law: Understanding Legal Frameworks and the Struggle for Sex Work Law Reforms” by Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NWSP) https://www.nswp.org/resource/nswp-publications/sex-work-and-the-law-understanding-legal-frameworks-and-the-struggle-sex
“Behind the Rescue: How Anti-Trafficking Investigations and Policies Harm Migrant Sex Workers” by Elene Lam, Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e4835857fcd934d19bd9673/t/5e890269138b9761ef91e9ed/1586037364780/Behind+the+rescue.pdf
“Understanding Migrant Sex Workers” by Elene Lam, Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e4835857fcd934d19bd9673/t/5e8902eb7de63058bf1fa6c6/1586037486472/Understanding+Migrant+Sex+workers.pdf
“Anti-Trafficking Campaigns, Sex Workers and the Roots of Damage” by Carol Leigh https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/antitrafficking-campaigns-sex-workers-and-roots-of-damage/
“Black Sex Workers’ Lives Matter: Appropriation of Black Suffering” by Robyn Maynard https://truthout.org/articles/black-sex-workers-lives-matter-appropriation-of-black-suffering/
“From eBay to OnlyFans, Trump’s Anti-Sex Internet Crusade is Silencing LGBTQ Culture” by Mary Emily O’Hara https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ebay-onlyfans-trump-s-anti-sex-internet-crusade-silencing-lgbtq-ncna1278927
“Sexual Surveillance and Moral Quarantines: A History of Anti-Trafficking” by Jessica R. Pliley https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/sexual-surveillance-and-moral-quarantines-history-of-antitrafficking/
“Rights, Not Rescue: A Response to AF3IRM in Defense of DSA Resolution #53” by Red Canary Song https://medium.com/@Redcanarysong/in-support-of-dsa-res-53-decrim-platform-8eb4d164588
“10 Myths About Trafficking in Chinese Migrant Community” by Red Canary Song https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e4835857fcd934d19bd9673/t/6052be06b706164bacfc7387/1616035334746/10_Myths_About_Human_Trafficking_in_the_Chinese_Migrant_Community.pdf
“Sex Workers Are an Important Part of the Stonewall Story, But Their Role Has Been Forgotten” by Scott W. Stern https://time.com/5604224/stonewall-lgbt-sex-worker-history/
“Sex Work is an LGBTQ Issue” by Survivors Against SESTA https://survivorsagainstsesta.org/lgbtq/
“Aspec Sex Workers” by The Ace and Aro Advocacy Project, from our Aspec Voices series highlighting perspectives of aspecs who often go unseen https://taaap.org/2022/06/02/aspec-sex-workers/
“To Protect Black Trans Lives, Decriminalize Sex Work” by Kaniya Walker https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/to-protect-black-trans-lives-decriminalize-sex-work
“Whorephobic Tech, Slut-Shaming and the Stress of Being Deplatformed” by Vixen Temple https://tryst.link/blog/whorephobic-tech-slut-shaming-and-the-stress-of-being-platformed/
“Divesting citizenship: On Asian American History and the Loss of Citizenship Through Marriage” by Leti Volpp https://www.uclalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/17_53UCLALRev4052005-2006.pdf
“The Page Act of 1875: In the Name of Morality” by Ming M. Zhu https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1577213
Books
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry by Laura María Agustín
Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law by Alison Bass
Porn Work: Sex, Labour, and Late Capitalism by Heather Berg
Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom by Elizabeth Bernstein
Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk by Melissa Chateauvert
Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry edited by Frédérique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander
Realising Justice for Sex Workers: An Agenda for Change edited by Sharon A. Fitzgerald and Kathryn McGarry
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
A Whore’s Manifesto: An Anthology of Writing and Artwork by Sex Workers edited by Kay Kassirer
Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy edited by Jiz Lee
Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition by Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema
The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong by Brooke Magnanti
To Live Freely in this World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa by Chi Adanna Mgbako
Whores and Other Feminists edited by Jill Nagle
A Vindication of the Rights of Whores edited by Gail Pheterson
Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI by Jessica R. Pliley
Slut-Shaming, Whorephobia, and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution by Meredith Ralston
Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights by Molly Smith and Juno Mac
The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women by Scott W. Stern
We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival edited by Natalie West and Tina Horn