Injustice in the end produces independence. – Voltaire
At long last, my prophecy from eight years past is beginning to come true. It has taken a bit longer than I predicted, roughly three or four extra years; the difference is due to the US, state and some foreign governments (not to mention sociopathic billionaires) dumping far more money and effort into maintaining the propaganda than I had imagined they would. But as it so often does, the hubris of those who yearn for power over others above all else undermined their own plans; in the spring of last year power-drunk US politicians tried to use the hysteria to achieve their long-desired goal of control over the internet, and the result of that power grab – the massive internet-censorship bill called FOSTA – badly backfired, galvanizing sex worker activism so powerfully that neither the media nor up-and-coming politicians could ignore it any longer. Populations of sex workers who once preferred to remain silent have become extremely vocal, and many media outlets who once ignored or opposed us are now reporting on our demands and publishing supportive articles, many of them centered around the damage done by FOSTA and its attendant pogroms. Academics in many fields are urging decriminalization for a broad front of reasons, and the broken-down Hollywood celebrities who champion police violence against women are increasingly finding themselves ignored or even publicly mocked for their cluelessness. “Feminist” anti-sex rhetoric is finally being recognized as the puritanical garbage it always has been, and the hysteria, as I predicted it would long ago, is rapidly approaching the point of implosion. Even politicians, those opportunistic crowd-followers who fantasize themselves “leaders”, have finally recognized support for sex workers as a possible path to power (especially those campaigning as reformist district attorneys). Soon the government will recognize that its manufactured hysteria has accomplished all it is likely to accomplish, and shift the money it has flushed down the “sex trafficking” toilet to some new civil-rights-destroying boondoggle; all that will be left then is to fight the myriad laws it spawned and attempt to salvage what remains of the internet once the FOSTA-enabled lawsuits are done. But widespread public recognition of sex worker rights as a valid cause is here to stay, and no matter how dark the days before victory is finally achieved, the prohibitionists can no more undo that than they can undo LGBT rights or the slow-motion collapse of the drug war.
