In recognition of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17—today!—the online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken a hard look at the effects of the now 18-month old FOSTA/SESTA law—and finds that violence against sex workers appears to have increased.
Passed in April of 2018, the law is supposedly aimed at curbing online sex trafficking, in part by effectively banning sex work-related advertising online. But according to a recent research survey by the group Hacking//Hustling, and cited by EFF, 40 percent of sex workers have reported being subject to higher levels of violence since the law took effect.
Almost all sex workers who responded to the Hacking//Hustling survey—99 percent, in fact—said that the FOSTA/SESTA law has not made them feel safer.
By taking their business offline, sex workers lose the ability to screen clients and take other safety measures prior to an in-person encounter with a customer, according to California congressmember Ro Khanna, who has called for a federal study of the law’s effects.
As AVN.com has reported, the law may have accomplished little when it comes to its stated goal of curtailing sex trafficking. San Francisco police last year reported a staggering 170 percent spike in sex trafficking-related cases, even as overall crime in the city dropped sharply.
The law has led to wholesale online censorship of sexually related content, not only on advertising platforms, but on social media sites as well—because under FOSTA, sites are held legally responsible for any content posted by a third party that could be considered “sex trafficking.”
“The consequences of this censorship are most devastating for trans women of color, who are disproportionately affected by this violence,” EFF said in its report Tuesday. “On this International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, it's clear that the first step to actually ending such violence is to repeal SESTA/FOSTA, and to listen more closely to the communities affected by such laws.”
The Australian Northern Territory passed a sex work decriminalization law in late November, and domestically, New York state is now considering a decriminalization bill.
North of the border, on Monday the Canadian labor union MoveUp adopted a formal policy in favor of sex work decriminalization, an announcement timed to coincide with International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
Photo By OpenClips / Wikimedia Commons
