“Anti-prostitution feminism is a place where men can participate in flinging slurs like "holes," "whores," "orifices," and "cum dumpsters" at sex workers– and call it feminist analysis. It's a place where men who consider themselves feminist-aligned can patronize and dismiss prostitute women, as men have done for centuries. It's a place where a police officer can rifle through the bathroom bin at a sex worker's flat, retrieve blood-soaked tampons, publish photographs of them in his memoir (with a touching dedication to sex workers he has met in his work: 'this is my attempt to describe your reality'), and still be treated like a feminist activist. As sex worker Charlotte Shane observes, anti-prostitution feminism makes it progressive for men to dwell incessantly on violent, coercive sex and abject bodies while at the same time enjoying praise and even Pulitzer Prizes.” SexWomenFeminismProstitutionSex WorkProstituteSex Worker Author:Juno Mac & Molly Smith
“Prostitution arrests are racist. They have always been racist. In 1866, San Francisco police arrested 137 women, 'virtually all Chinese'; the police boasted that they had 'expelled three hundred Chinese women.' In the 1970s, the American Civil Liberties Union found that black women were seven times more likely to be arrested for prostitution-related offenses than white women. This disparity is no relic of the past: between 2012 and 2015, 85 percent of people charged with 'loitering for the purpose of prostitution' in New York City were Black or Latinx- groups that only make up 54 percent of the city's population. Increases in prostitution enforcement mean increases in the arrests of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement mean increases in the arrest of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement targeting massage parlors. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant details, during this period the arrests of Asian people in New York charged either with 'unlicensed massage' or prostitution went up by 2,700 percent. Arrests on the street target Black and Latina women - who may not even be selling sex - simply for wearing 'tight jeans' or a crop top. The NYPD do not arrest white women in affluent areas of the city for wearing jeans.” ProstitutionSex WorkProstituteProstitutesSex Workers Author:Juno Mac & Molly Smith
“In one recent case, a Florida police department outed a sex worker who tried to trade sex work with an undercover officer for a fast-food meal. Her legal name and photographs were reproduced widely in the press, as if this were an amusing rather than horrifying abuse of a vulnerable person.” ProstitutionSex WorkProstituteSex Worker Author:Juno Mac & Molly Smith