FUCK SESTA
[protesters] We will not stop fighting
until we create a world that is safe for sex workers.
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES
I am a sex worker.
SEX WORK IS WORK
I love what I do, and I don't think
that it is something that should just be taken away from me
because of political brownie points.
I have the luxury and the privilege to be out.
A lot of us are in the shadows.
[woman] What's going on? [protesters] Shut it down!
The whole damn system! Shut it down!
[all yell]]
WHORES DAY
We have covered the House, the Senate, the White House,
the Supreme Court, most of the agencies.
And over the last year, I've stopped covering politics
and I've been covering issues as well that involve marginalized people.
BY JOHN STANTON
And sex workers represent pretty much the most, like, forgotten about
and purposely forgotten about people, I think, in our society.
Since 1996, American websites have not been held legally accountable
for anything posted by their users.
But in 2018, the passage of FOSTA,
the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,
and SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act
made American websites liable for the promotion of sex trafficking.
Basically, if anyone posts something
that turns out to be a trafficking listing,
the person hosting the website or social media platform is held responsible,
looking at fines and/or up to 25 years in prison.
It was billed as a way to stop using the internet to facilitate the trafficking
of individuals, particularly children,
um, but anybody, for sex,
but it doesn't just affect traffickers, right, of people.
It affects any sex worker in the United States.
And it doesn't just cover sites like Backpage.
It covers Snapchat, and it covers anything that could be defined
as facilitating trafficking.
The problem is that it's nearly impossible to differentiate
web postings by sex traffickers
and people who are choosing to do sex work,
which can include legal professions such as pornography,
webcamming, and stripping,
as well as illegal prostitution.
SEX WORK
WASHINGTON, DC
With the passage of the law, websites are cracking down
on all postings relating to sex work
and today, sex workers are taking to the halls of Congress
to ask for a repeal.
I'm here to see what these sex workers are fighting for
and what the impact of this new legislation has been.
[D'Adamo] Today is Sex Worker Lobby Day.
We're here talking about issues impacting folks that trade sex.
This is legit seriously amazing.
There's never been a Sex Worker Lobby Day on the hill.
And we're here to talk about what's happened
since SESTA and FOSTA passed.
[Stanton] The sex workers and advocates
have scheduled meetings with Congressional staff
whose representatives voted for the bill in order to explain their position.
[Harris] So asking the three of you, do you see any positive elements
that came out of these two pieces of legislation passing?
[woman] No. Not at all? That's good to know.
[Lee] FOSTA/SESTA had a dramatic impact
on people's ability to access safety resources.
LORELEI LEE SEX WORKER
Sex workers are being pushed off of social media and other websites,
and that prevents sex workers from connecting with each other,
from sharing safety information.
We're already experiencing abuse
and have not been helped by this legislation.
[LeMoon] And I want to say, as somebody who actually is a sex trafficking survivor
and a sex worker,
we've seen some really troubling...
LAURA LEMOON SEX WORKER
um, changes since FOSTA/SESTA.
There's no more safe online venue for people to engage in sex work.
So now what do they have to do? Well, you have to go to the streets.
I mean, if you need money, you need money,
irregardless of the danger or anything else.
[Harris] No piece of legislation is perfect,
and it's important for us to be able to hear from people like you
so we understand the consequences
of every bill that leaves our chamber, right.
And if we don't have these stories,
it's gonna be hard for us to make decisions,
um, with all the knowledge that we need.
[Stanton] Hey Tina, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. How about yourself?
Oh, you know, I'm hot,
and I'm wearing a tie for the first time in a long time to work. [laughs]
[Susman] I'm sure you put them to shame.
[laughs] Aw, shucks. Um...
You know, I've covered Congress for 20 years,
and I've seen a lot of these kind of things.
And I...
Normally when you have a group that's trying to do this for the first time,
like, it's very, very, very disorganized.
They don't really know what they're doing.
But, you know, I think that these folks are really well organized.
Honestly, one of the most fascinating things was the staff kind of acknowledged
that they hadn't really figured out
what the impacts on people were gonna be.
[Susman] Yeah, well, I mean, nobody's gonna want to argue against something
that they think will prevent, you know, human trafficking.
If you have enough for a story already,
it would make sense... [Stanton] Mmhmm.
...to file it today, um,
but focus more on the sex workers than the law makers, let's put it that way.
All right, I'll do that. I'll talk to you tonight or tomorrow morning.
NEW YORK, NY
[Stanton] I posted my story about Sex Worker Lobby Day,
but there's a bigger story here I want to investigate.
The sex workers in DC made the claim that the internet helps their safety.
So I wonder what victims of trafficking think about that.
I'm 22 years old currently and...
um, I'm a survivor of domestic human trafficking here in New York City.
When I was 12, I went to the movie theaters
with my two girlfriends.
We ended up running into two boys.
They were a little older, like 16, 17. They had already graduated.
They invited us back to their place,
and I ended up getting really drunk and, like, passing out.
When I woke up, I was being raped by one of those boys.
When I was leaving the house,
that boy ended up coming back downstairs with an older man,
and that older man looked at me and was like, "You're not going anywhere."
Jesus. And where did they...
What happened with you then? I mean, did...
He had me held captive in a closet,
and my prostitution experience started there.
I was there for weeks, um, until the cops eventually came and found me, but...
um, I was in prostitution
much longer thereafter.
So, how did that I mean, how did you...
Did you, I guess, go out and do it on your own, or did you...
Yeah, like I would relapse a lot, which is pretty, um
pretty common in
for anybody that's gone through exploitation.
[Stanton] You have been involved in the push for FOSTA/SESTA.
[Thompson] Yes.
Could you talk a little bit about sort of about why you decided to do that and...
what the law means for you?
This law, in particular, is very personal to me
because backpage.com and some other sites alike
was the place where a lot of my, um, trafficking experience was held,
and it was one of the sites that made my pimp the most money.
[Stanton] One study found that 75% of sex trafficking victims
are sold online.
Backpage.com ads were pretty simple and pretty straightforward.
There's a title. Um...
There's a message box where you write basically the ad,
so you could say, you know,
I am whatever the the name was that you were given at the time.
I am this height, I am this bust, I am this waist, this color.
Sometimes my exploiter would make me write the ad
but would tell me what to put. Mmhmm.
Sometimes he wrote the ad as if he were me.
They were making you be an active participant.
Yeah, absolutely.
[Thompson] This law means somebody's actually listening.
The law is sort of hitting a lot of people that, um, it not really intended to hit.
The law did not target anybody. The law targeted a website... or websites.
What I find with a lot of prosex workers
is that they're angry at the fact that the sites are shut down.
And, to be honest,
we never said the sites needed to shut down.
All we asked for was for them to be held accountable
if they're knowingly facilitating prostitution and trafficking.
I want people to understand that this disproportionately affects
women and girls of color,
that this disproportionately affects
somebody who's been raped at least once in their lifetime.
These are all marginalized communities and all marginalized groups.
[Stanton] Melanie's story is harrowing,
but sex workers are often marginalized as well.
I need to talk to someone who is studying the impact of the web on worker safety.
[phone line rings]
Hi, Dr. Cunningham. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
And I am working on a story about sex workers and FOSTA and SESTA,
and I was hoping you might be able shed a little light on that for me.
Yeah. Traditionally, before the internet,
uh, sex work had a very high homicide rate.
It was usually from the client.
So, what we wanted to know was did Craigslist improve these women's safety?
[Stanton] Cunningham and his colleagues are looking at the history
of Craigslist erotic services
rolling out in hundreds of cities across America.
What we found was, uh, when Craigslist entered a city,
about ten months later,
its female homicide rate began to fall.
After it enters, there's about a 17% reduction in female homicide rates.
That's a that's a really significant number, 17%,
and that's for all women, not just for sex workers?
Yeah, that's for all women.
Obviously, you know, FOSTA/SESTA just went into effect,
but do you think you'll be able to replicate it for that?
There's no control group for FOSTA at the moment.
So, it's hard to figure out exactly.
Probably, in time, we might look for spikes,
uh, to see if there's noticeable increases in violence against women after FOSTA.
[Stanton] But, I mean, it sounds like you're pretty confident
the online sex market has had an effect on violence in women.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have no I honestly have no doubt that it has.
[Stanton] If the internet really has been a safe haven for sex workers,
I wonder how they were using it to protect themselves.
How long have you been doing sex work? [Lin] For four years.
Lots of, you know, different types of sex work.
I was dancing, I shot porn, I did camming, um...
escorting, prodommeing, modeling.
I landed on what I do now, which is mostly inperson work.
Sex work is real work. I think a lot of people treat it like, you know,
you show up, you get fucked, you
You know, you make money. It's so easy.
And there's a lot more that goes into it.
Maybe explain to me kind of what kind of steps you would take prior to the law.
I would, you know, have as a standard, you know, no compromises.
This is the bar. This is not being negotiated.
I need two provider references.
I need to see your LinkedIn.
I need a 10% deposit before I see you.
I will, you know, run someone's number through a database
to make sure they're not blacklisted,
to see if there are any other reviews that other providers have left them.
And right after FOSTA/SESTA passed,
an ad that I had put up on Eros.com,
which is a pretty large, um, escorting website
got taken down because I described myself as a slut.
They started screening through all of the ads that they had up on their site
and kicked me off of it.
It was a "We're closing your account, we're shutting your entire account down
and you can't recreate it."
Their whole thing is, you know, "Well, we're fighting sex trafficking,
we're, you know, fighting all of this illegal activity that's going on,"
and they don't really know the difference between sex trafficking and consensual...
um...
sex work.
Since Eros kicked me off
and since Backpage has been shut down, um,
those two websites were accounting for about 70% of my work, so...
Since I'm losing 70% of my work, I've had to take on more risky endeavors.
It's very, very hard to screen people on the spot
when you're picking people up in person.
I'll hope that they're not cops.
I'll hope that they're not going to cause me any physical danger,
and I will, you know,
walk to a client with pepper spray in my bag
and a knife in my bag and hope for the best.
It's terrifying.
I mean, every day I go to work
I experience a little bit of, uh...
"This could be the day that I get arrested,
this could be the day that I am assaulted,
this could be the day that I go to work and I don't come back."
[Stanton] Kaya Lin and her counterparts have their lives on the line,
and their anger with the bill has inspired them to take to the streets
for International Whore's Day
in cities across United States.
[protesters] FOSTA/SESTA have got to go!
Hey, hey! Ho, Ho!
FOSTA/SESTA have got to go!
Hey, hey! Ho, ho!
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK MANHATTAN, NY
FOSTA/SESTA have got to go!
I don't care if you're purple, yellow, green,
polkadotted, short, fat.
I don't give a fuck.
[cheering] We are going to stick together.
We are literally being dicked by SESTA and FOSTA.
I'm gonna survive.
Before I was doing this, I was a ho.
I will always be a ho.
The main thing is we need to understand the difference between a sex worker...
SABINA SEX WORKER
...and a trafficking victim.
A trafficking victim is not a sex worker.
They are being forced to do this.
They are a victim, they are prey.
A sex worker is someone
who does this consensually and out of their own volition,
and enjoys it.
It's our job.
The internet was a very safe place
for women, and trans people,
and people of color, and queer people to...
to work safely with their own autonomy...
and, um...
steer clear of danger.
Mmhmm.
SEX WORK IS WORK
[woman] We demand rights and protections in all forms of labor.
[protesters] We demand rights and protections in all forms of labor.
[Stanton] The fight over FOSTA highlights the inherent problem
with trying to pass sweeping legislation to protect one group of people
without considering who else could be impacted
and potentially put in danger.
Prostitution is a 14.6 billion dollar business in the United States,
and it's not going anywhere.
So while it's important to find ways to fight sex trafficking,
it's equally important to protect sex workers
who are often the most vulnerable among us.
[cheering]
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