The fact that [a politician] doesn’t believe that there’s such a thing as a voluntary sex worker means she doesn’t live in reality.
– Genevieve Jones-Wright
Politicians like to represent themselves as “leaders”, but in reality they’re usually followers. Any politician who wants to win support must, by necessity, espouse beliefs popular enough with the electorate to actually get elected; he must therefore follow ideas that have already gained support rather than proposing new ones. In other words, though politicians like to imagine themselves as rainmakers, they are really barometers. That’s one of the reasons the very few US politicians to come out in favor of sex worker rights over the past few decades have either failed to win office or else were forced to abandon their principles for the sake of political expediency. So it’s both exciting and telling to see so many politicians now supporting decriminalization or at least opposing increased criminalization; when Amnesty International came out in favor of decrim I declared that we had passed the watershed moment in the war for our rights, and obviously a number of politicians must agree with me because they’ve realized that, while sex worker rights may still not be a popular position, it’s at least a safe one for a reform-minded candidate to adopt.
One of the few exceptions to my initial statement is Elizabeth Edwards of New Hampshire; only a few months after Amnesty announced its policy, and before any other politician had even commented on it, she introduced a bill to decriminalize prostitution in New Hampshire. And while the Good Old Boys network has choked the bill so far, Edwards has vociferously defended sex worker rights on Twitter and even attended a Whores’ Day rally last Saturday. If there were more politicians like her and David Grosso of Washington DC, I might not be so cynical about the profession. But even though the others who have popped up in the past few months may not have been as bold, the fact that there are so many of them is heartening.
Genevieve Jones-Wright failed to unseat the machine-backed Summer Stephan as District Attorney for San Diego, but the fact that she dared to run specifically against Stephan’s vile prohibitionism speaks volumes. Perhaps Daron Morris (like Jones-Wright a public defender) may have better luck defeating Seattle’s disgusting prosecutor Dan Satterburg:
Morris criticized Satterberg for accepting $140,000 worth of grant money from Demand Abolition, an anti-prostitution organization that advocates for more prosecutions of men who purchase sex. As former Stranger staff writer Sydney Brownstone reported in March, Satterberg’s office wrote in its grant application that it would seek to increase arrest of sex buyers by 50 percent…Morris…believes Demand Abolition’s approach ignores the input of sex workers. “Saying to a woman, ‘I’m deciding that you can never be free. I’m deciding that you can never be un-coerced in sex work,’ that’s just not the right approach,” he said…
Suraj Patel, running in New York for the US Congress, has strong words about FOSTA:
Earlier this year, Congress passed a deeply irresponsible and dangerous bill known as SESTA/FOSTA, which…has rolled back internet freedoms and inflicted deep damage on already-marginalized communities, putting lives at risk while setting the fight against trafficking back decades. Sloppy legislating is nothing new from lawmakers who don’t listen to the communities that their policies impact, but SESTA/FOSTA is an especially terrible law that has been sharply condemned by anti-trafficking organizations, civil rights groups, and even the federal anti-trafficking prosecutors who would have to enforce it…SESTA/FOSTA has actually put sex workers in danger; some are already reporting that pimps are capitalizing on their new vulnerability now that websites like Backpage have shuttered…This bill is only the continuation of our country’s policies profiting off the mass incarceration of already vulnerable people…
And in Washington, DC, David Grosso has forced other politicians to actually talk about decrim:
…In October 2017, David Grosso, an at-large D.C. council member, drafted a decriminalization measure …[which] would make the District of Columbia the first municipality in the United States to decriminalize prostitution…discussion surrounding Grosso’s legislation has grown. Recently, candidates responded to a questionnaire from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA)…which included a question about the measure. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser…seeking re-election, refused to provide a definitive answer about her position…Bowser’s Democratic-primary opponents—James Butler and Earnest Johnson—were split…Butler opposes the legislation, while Johnson supports it…Martin Moulton, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for…mayor…not only supports decriminalization efforts but believes in expunging the records of non-violent sex workers and customers…Ed Lazare…a candidate for D.C. Council Chair, also responded in support of Grosso’s legislation…several other candidates, including…council member Anita Bonds…support…Grosso’s decriminalization effort…
Obviously, these are just a very few reasonable voices in a vast mob of witch-hunters, but the fact that there are any at all – and that the mainstream media is not mocking or ignoring them – marks a vast change from the political landscape of only three years ago. We still have a very long and tough road ahead, but at least now it’s tending generally downhill.
