Today is Friday the Thirteenth, which as long-time readers know is the day I ask non-sex workers to stand up for our rights. It hasn’t been long since the last one; September and December are always in sync with one another, with the same days on the same dates. But as I pointed out in September, it hasn’t been long since the topic of sex worker rights became politically “safe” for the cowards who want to be called “leaders” to bring up in public, and the prohibitionists are sparing no expense, avoiding no ugly lie, and leaving no C- or D-list “celebrity” untapped in their fanatical effort to change that. So your help is now more important than it has been at any time since I started asking for it over nine years ago; while in the past the prohibitionists didn’t hesitate to accuse any woman who defends sex worker rights of being a whore herself, and any man who defends them of being a client, that simply won’t fly now that even the hang-to-the-rear political crowd is talking about it. We need y’all to help us keep this issue in the public eye rather than allow the fanatics to push it back into the shadows so they can keep claiming to speak for us. There are plenty of ideas on how you can help in previous columns for this occasion, and I strongly encourage you to look at those.
But as usual, the best way you can help, better than any other, is money. As I wrote a year and a half ago, “donate to SWOP-USA, to SWOP Behind Bars, to the EFF or Woodhull Foundation to support their anti-FOSTA lawsuit, to individual activists…or to sex workers who have been harmed by increasing censorship of our ads.” You might especially consider donating to some of the more marginalized sex workers who have emerged as activists since FOSTA; their voices are critical in shutting down the prohibitionist drivel that all activists are “privileged” and/or “pimps”, but they have less money to spend on going to conferences and meetings and the like. Your support for them is going to be critically important in the coming year, because election years are always bad for business, and on top of the advertising chaos caused by FOSTA and the wanton destruction of Backpage, and the climate of fear among clients engendered by constant and ever-intensifying pogroms, that could mean one of the worst years for sex workers in the 35 that I’ve been paying attention to it. As I wrote in “Straight Talk“,
I understand you may be nervous about the political situation; well, we are too. And if you profess to care about us, you need to step up and be generous. So, book a session with your ATF. Book one with a lady you know has kids. Book one with a lady you like, but haven’t seen in a while. Book with a male escort you’ve been wanting to see. Book with a domme or FBSM pro you’ve had your eye on. Book with me or any of the other sex workers you see me interact with online…If you don’t have time to book but still want to help, most sex workers have PayPal or Patreon or some such you can use to give them a monetary token of appreciation. Because there isn’t a single one of us who won’t be grateful for it right now.
As I’ve often pointed out, we are winning in the court of public opinion. But that is a long, slow process, and if our allies get lazy and think we no longer need their help because the politicians are finally giving us lip service, we’re going to lose the ground we’ve worked so hard to win. Furthermore, as I wrote last time, if the sex workers you care about and the activists you admire are going to make it through to the end, we’re going to need your help in every way you can give it; people who need to use every waking hour for working have neither the resources nor the energy to go to war against well-funded authoritarians on top of that.
