So today is Friday the 13th again; as longtime readers know, it’s the day I ask people who aren’t themselves sex workers to stand up for us. As I wrote back in January:
…I’ve given many suggestions for how to do that over the past seven years, but this year I’m going to be a little more specific about the help I’d like you to give, and it’s twofold. First, very simply, is to give sex workers money; we had an extremely rough autumn [2016] thanks to the quadrennial national madness, and every sex worker and organization is hurting right now. The second way, if you’re American, is to call your senator or representative (especially your senator) to say how displeased you are about the persecution of adult sex workers and clients. You won’t get to talk to the politician, but their office staffs are usually quite small so a few dozen phone calls in one day on the same subject will make an impression on the staff, and that may get through to the politician in a report…
Things have grown even worse since then; the pogroms are getting worse and more frequent, and the US Congress has come up with veritable deluge of horrible anti-whore laws, not the least of which is SESTA (which could, in addition to harming sex workers and clients, destroy the entire internet as we know it…and no, that isn’t hyperbole). Though the sex trafficking hysteria is dying, moral panics get worse as they collapse, and even after the panic is history the tyrannical laws it engendered will still be there for “authorities” to destroy lives with, just as the 20th-century criminalization laws lasted for decades after the demise of the “white slavery” hysteria which spawned them. If you have an internet platform or the freedom to speak on the subject, you might take a look at this list of suggestions for arguments you can make; you won’t get to say any of that out to a politician’s secretary, but swaying members of the general public is important, too. And I can’t possibly emphasize enough how important your donations are for me, for other activists, for sex worker organizations like SWOP, SWOP Behind Bars and ESPLERP, and even for individual sex workers you might choose to book an appointment with today (if you like, you can even tell ’em I inspired you to contact them). Please give generously, speak out, and otherwise use this occasion to let sex workers know that you’re on our side against the millions of thugs and fanatics lined up against us.
