Edit:
Here is a list of resources to learn about sex worker from actual sex workers who are engaged in the struggle for worker’s rights:
- https://www.nswp.org/resources/types/nswp-briefing-papers-248
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/white-mans-burden-revisited/
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/from-brothel-to-sweatshop-questions-on-labour-trafficking-in-camb/
- https://titsandsass.com/the-massage-parlor-means-survival-here-red-canary-song-on-robert-kraft/
- https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
- https://medium.com/@katezenjoy/dear-esperanza-5aa7db4d501a
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/decriminalising-sex-work-in-new-zealand-its-history-and-impact/
- https://www.mayamorena.com/anti-equality-model-campaign/2021/5/22/pscegcnr680fh4oazlmwe8i5527o9j
Bigger repo of theory / resources:
Books to check out:
Yep, this is the correct take.
I squirm every time i see another post by US university students about how we need to stop demonizing sex work when it’s a daily occurrence here that underage girls are disappearing from orphanages and no one says it but everyone knows that they’ll end up in brothels in Western Europe.
And these posts are always about how the people who criticise sex workers would love it if they were jailed and i’m like, no? Literally no one i know who would be considered someone like these people wants sex workers to be jailed, they want them to be freed.
But at the core issue is exploitation (but also yes, there is some privilege from anglo perspectives). One has to extricate the two problems and view them separately I feel. I dont think brazillian sugarcane collectors want to outlaw farming, but they do want to outlaw slavery of themselves.
with sex work it’s at least two pronged (or intersectional) problem: coercion/exploitation (worker rights and moral issue) and society’s disdain (brainworms long cultivated from bygone era) and privilege of more successful voices/global north being louder
Yeah that’s a serious issue even in this thread it can be seen that no one is “criticising” sex work from a moral standpoint yet the whole premise of the post is that somehow people would do that. So we have two opposing sides that are screaming at each other despite the fact that they agree.
I won’t be popular with this btw but there actually is a moral argument against sex work but not on the workers side.
what material measures are taken to protect the vulnerable from sex trafficking?
https://medium.com/purplerose0666/the-af3irm-agenda-b5ec31216904
I can only talk about Hungary, but there is virtually none. Where i live the victims of sex trafficking are overwhelmingli Romani girls and the cases i mentioned are the only ones that ever get reported. As you can imagine these people are mostly very poor and marginalized so no one really cares about it apart from the usual “yeah it sucks that happens, but…” bullshit.
Every once in a while these trafficking bands get busted and when it happens here, even though prostitution is illegal, if they are forced into it, cops don’t harass them any further as your article suggests. Though what happens next to these girls is foggy, since there is an institutional abyss in this area so most of them end up as a streetwalker anyway where cops are way less lenient.
