An Interconnected Issue
People of all genders, race/ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds participate in the sex trade for many different reasons and across a spectrum of circumstances. Issues relating to the sex trade are at the heart of numerous affiliated fields, including Women’s & LGBTQ+ rights, criminal justice reform, free speech, disability rights, gender-based violence, immigration and more. These movements are interconnected and benefit from the successes of one another.
New Moon Fund serves to help people and organizations understand the overlap between currently held values and issues involving the sex trade. This page provides primers on topics that overlap with the issue of commercial sex.
Affiliated Fields
Disability Rights
Feminism & the Advancement of Women
Gender Based Violence
Immigration
Labor Rights
LGBTQ+ Rights
Poverty & Economic Resilience
Public Health
Racial Equity
Reproductive Rights & Sexual Freedom
Tech, Privacy & Censorship
Criminal Reform & Policing
Because sex work is largely a criminalized enterprise, pepole in the sex trade are subject to policing, detention, and surveillance. Due to criminalization, people in the sex trade are vulnerable to isolation, discrimination, assault, harassment, deportation, and police violence. People who engage in the sex trade are over-criminalized, frequently targeted by police officers, and are often required to report victimhood as a means to receive help from judicial systems.
“The criminalization of consensual adult prostitution institutionalizes hostility between sex workers, their clients, and law enforcement. The full decriminalization of adult sex work is necessary to improve policing in the United States.” (DSW)
“Ending violence and discrimination, particularly from police, is a top priority for most sex worker organisations. Sex workers, like any other workers, deserve to work in safe environments.” (Red Umbrella Fund)
Learn more:
Juno Mac, TEDxEastEnd – The Laws Sex Workers Really Want
Incite National – Policing Sex Work
Nature Human Behavior – Causal Peer Effects in Police Misconduct
Open Society Foundation – The Many Consequences of Violance Against Sex Workers
Disability Rights
Learn more:
Open Society Foundation – “Sex Work is Work” Say Sex Workers with Disabilities
DSW – Dis/Ability and Sex Worker Decriminalization
Feminism and the Advancement of Women
Women participate in the sex trade for a variety of reasons across a spectrum circumstances, including choice, economic need, temporary circumstance, and force/fraud/coercion. Regardless of circumstance, women with experience in the sex trade are at risk of discrimination in housing, child custody battles, mainstream employment, higher education, society at large. We cannot stand for gender equality, women’s empowerment, and body autonomy while an entire segment remains criminalized, stigmatized and relegated to the shadowy margins of society. For these reasons, the issue of sex work and the sex trade is a feminist issue.
Learn More:
Red Umbrella Fund – My Feminishm Supports Sex Workers’ Rights
Sex Work is Integral to the Feminist Movement – Tilly Lawless, TEDxYouth@Sydney
Tryst – But What About the Children? Jessie Sage on Sex Work and Motherhood
“Money buys protection. It buys time off and privacy. And it buys nice, pretty shit. Money also buys food, housing, and health care. Getting paid enough to meet our needs—and more—feels good. I’m not romanticizing the sex industry, I know it has risks; I’m just not going to romanticize economic deprivation in the name of being a “good girl,” either. So do sex workers feel pleasure at work? Yeah. Because you know what feels amazing? Surviving capitalism.”
― Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Gender-Based Violence
The World Health Organization cites violence against women, particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence, as a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights. Gender-based violence is rooted in and perpetuates gender inequalities (WHO). People who engage in the sex trade are more likely to be vulnerable to gender-based violence.
In some public discourse, gender-based violence (GBV) is cited as the main catalyst for the existence of the sex trade. This theory posits that all purchasing of sex is the result of market demand for commercial sex caused and perpetuated by “men” who should be criminalized for the degradation and violence against “women.” However, these narratives around victimization/adult exploiter are non-reflective of street-based sex workers in the US. Anti-GBV advocates could gain from partnerships with sex worker organizations to learn how violent ideologies affect the consensual sex trade. In turn, sex workers can learn from anti-GBV advocates on how to more tactfully engage victims of trafficking in their narratives.
Learn More:
Hacking/Hustling – Erased: The Impact of SESTA/FOSTA and the Removal of Backpage
Immigration
More info coming soon
Labor Rights
Sex work, by definition, includes (but is not limited to) trading services for money or goods (prostitution), webcam modeling, erotic massage, fetish work, exotic dancing, sugar dating, pornography, etc. Consenting adults make up the majority of this labor force, but their ability to earn money, lead healthy lives, and have access to basic human rights is being eroded in the US as policymakers conflate consensual sex work with human trafficking.
Research overwhelmingly suggests that criminalization of sex work, including criminalization of buying, but not of selling, sex known as the “end-demand” or “Nordic” model, increases the risk of violence and threatens the safety of sex workers (ACLU).
Learn More:
ACLU – Sex Work Decrim Policy Brief
Tryst – Paternalism, Prostitution, and Paying For it on the Left
LGBTQ+ Rights
Queer issues are directly related to the sex trade; many LGBTQ+ identified people use sex work as a means for economic stability, validity, and self expression. Black trans women and other trans women of color are highly over-represented in the sex trade, and are considered to be among the most vulnerable populations engaging in this work. Trans women of color have also been pioneers and on the forefront of LGBTQ+ advocacy, HIV prevention, and harm reduction while also engaging in the sex trade.
LearnMore:
John Hopkins Center for Public Health & Human Rights – Beyond Decriminalization: Priorities and Possabilities for Marginalized Sex Workers
National Center for Transgender Equality – Meaningful Work: Transgender Experiences in the Sex Trade
Lamba Legal – LGBT Rights Groups Join Amnesty International in Call to Decriminalize Sex Work
Tryst – Whore History & Old Pros Marsha P. Johnson & Sylvia Rivera
“Many people believe trans women choose to engage in the sex trade rather than get a real job. That belief is misguided because sex work is work, and it’s often the only work available to marginalized women. Though we act as individuals, we can’t remove ourselves from the framework of society. Systemic oppression creates circumstances that push many women to choose sex work as a means of survival, and I was one of those women, choosing survival.”
― Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
Poverty & Economic Resilience
The subject of economic resilience remains ambiguous as labor markets and ideations of economic stability continually change. The 2007 recession and then later COVID-19 pandemic are the clearest reminders of how economies are fickle and job losses are incredibly stressful on the working class. As a result, sex workers advocate for the ability to remain autonomous over their services as a means to fight the relatively unexpected consequence of large recessions, where mainstream work is even harder to find.
(https://academic.oup.com/ilj/article-abstract/48/2/199/5051932?redirectedFrom=fulltext )
Learn More:
Tryst – Financial Discrimination Against Sex Workers & What We Can Do About It
Public Health
Sex workers engage in public health practice every day as part of their jobs and in service to their wellness. Decriminalization of prostitution has empirically shown to benefit public health outcomes, including reduction of HIV transmission. According to the World Health Organization, modelling studies indicate that decriminalising sex work could lead to a 46% reduction in new HIV infections in sex workers over 10 years; eliminating sexual violence against sex workers could lead to a 20% reduction in new HIV infections (WHO). Funders interested in advancing public health for better outcomes in the US can place value in the decrim model for sex work.
Learn more:
WHO – Global HIV, Hepatitis and STIs Programmes: Sex Workers
DSW – Decriminalize Sex Work for Public Health
Racial Equity
More info coming soon
Reproductive Rights & Sexual Freedom
More info coming soon
Tech, Privacy & Censorship
Private social media platforms like Twitter, Meta, and Reddit are used by the public to engage in opinion-sharing, discourse, and most importantly, advertising. Sex workers use these platforms to do the same.
Due to increasing crackdown on human trafficking (and the conflaction of consensual sex work therein), social media platforms have been cracking down on what’s allowable to say, share, and post online, gaining criticism of civil rights and free speech advocates around the globe. The Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act/Allow States to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA/SESTA) of 2019 was a codified limit to free speech that displaced thousands of online sex workers from their advertising platforms and severely impacted their well-being.
Learn More:
Daily Dot – Sex workers called it: ‘Anti-sex-trafficking’ law causes more sex trafficking
Tryst – Whorephobic Tech & Fear of Being Deplatformed