DSW Newsletter #18 (September 2020) Archives

The Second Anniversary of Sex Worker Pride

Sex workers and allies celebrated the second anniversary of Sex Worker Pride. The holiday was launched last year by the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) to celebrate the achievements of our movement and allow sex workers the chance to share stories of self-determination and survival.

This event extends to all groups who are marginalized by criminalization, discrimination, and stigma. The sex worker rights movement celebrates the diversity within our community as a sign of its strength. In particular, the intersection between LGBTQIA pride and sex worker rights is recognized. Umbrella Lane, a Glasgow-based direct service and advocacy organization in the U.K., released a video to celebrate their pride event.

In 2019, organizations around the world hosted parades and celebrations. This year, social distancing limited the events that could be held, but the meaning is no less poignant. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on sex workers’ ability to survive. Many have pivoted to online work where possible, bolstered by mutual aid funds started by community organizations like SWOP Brooklyn, Red Canary Song, Trans and Gender Diverse Community Financial Assistance Programs in King County, WA, SWOP Behind Bars, and many more.

As we honor the rights and dignity of all workers and all identities, please consider donating to an organization that supports these values, whether that be DSW or another organization.

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De Blasio To Change NYC Sex Work Policy

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has changed his stance on sex work, moving away from full criminalization and toward support of the Entrapment Model, according to a statement he made in response to questions about the arrest and prosecution of Layleen Polanco. De Blasio announced he does not believe that sex workers should ever be arrested but that “the people who are organizing and profiting from that sex work should be.”

The Entrapment Model — often referred to as “End Demand” or the “Nordic Model” — is a form of policing in which the sale of commercial sex is not criminalized, but purchasing sex still is. While many claim that the Entrapment Model supports sex workers, where and when it has been implemented, violence against sex workers remains.

Polanco was a 27-year-old transgender woman sent to Rikers Island on prostitution and drug possession charges last year. She died from seizure complications while in solitary confinement. Polanco’s death brought attention to much of the violence and abuse faced by sex workers, particularly transgender sex workers of color, in NY State and across the country.

The mayor’s statement is a step in the right direction. Still, he fails to differentiate between criminals who exploit and abuse sex workers, and nonviolent clients and non-abusive third parties whom sex workers often work with or hire for protection. De Blasio ignores the reality that people often engage in sex work by choice.

Last year, the mayor came out staunchly against the decriminalization of sex work. Around the same time, Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez committed to reducing the amount of prostitution-related charges prosecuted, even as “policing of sex work continues.” NY sex worker advocates disagree with the district attorneys’ claims that they support partial decriminalization by offering community-based services to sex worker defendants. Charges are dismissed only if services mandated by the prosecution are completed.

“It is long past time that we dispel the myth that people arrested on prostitution charges, nearly all of whom are Black, Latinx, and Asian transgender and cisgender women are “rescued” by police officers and benefit from being arrested and prosecuted or placed into court-ordered diversion programs,” said Jillian Modzeleski in a statement on behalf of Brooklyn Defender Services around the mayor’s comments. “At the same time we must dispel other myths that NYPD focuses on traffickers, which is belied by arrest data, and that criminalization keeps people safe.” Modzeleski confirmed that the mayor appears to support the Nordic Model, which contributes to the stigmatization and criminalization of many parts of sex work, putting workers themselves at risk.

“I give the DA offices a lot of credit in trying to reduce the harm for prosecuting these offenses, but prosecuting these offenses is still prosecuting them. It is tying programs and services and a better disposition to a court process. That is not decriminalization,” Kate Mogulescu, an assistant professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law School and a fellow member of the New York Anti-Trafficking Network with DSW, told the NY Daily News.

De Blasio concluded his statement saying that the changes to the way NYC polices sex work “need to deepen.” DSW hopes that the mayor will follow through on his promise to stop the arrests of those who do sex work in earnest and commit to significant change.

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Hero(es) of the Month: Honoring the Dancers of the Lusty Lady

In 1996, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco became the first strip club in the country to successfully unionize, making history for the entire informal labor sector, including sex work. Despite the club’s closure in 2013, “Lusties,” as the dancers call themselves, remain a symbol of resilience and empowerment in an industry so often criticized for exploitation.

Siobhan Brooks, a dancer in the Lusty Lady peep show who went on to earn her Ph.D. in Sociology, played a pivotal role in unionization. Brooks observed that the club hired very few women of color and rarely allowed Black women to work in the private booth section, where dancers made larger tips. She raised her concerns with management and was told that "[B]lack women make the club lose money." In response, Brooks filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employees voted in favor of unionizing, and the club was organized by the Exotic Dancers Union, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The next year the Lusty Lady hired more Black women than it ever had before. Brooks later authored “Organizing From Behind the Glass,” an account of the successful unionizing effort, for the January 1997 issue of Z Magazine.

In 2001 Roger Forbes, a strip-club magnate and partner in Déjà Vu, a company that owns most of the adult theaters and clubs in San Francisco, bought the building and doubled the rent. The owners were facing incredible pressure to close. In response, dancers at the Lusty Lady pooled together $400,000 and purchased the club. For the next 10 years, the Lusty Lady functioned as a worker-run cooperative known for defying stereotypes of tanned, blonde strippers favored by traditional club management.

The Lusties are the inspiration for a growing number of “Stripper Strikes” across the country. In Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, and beyond, dancers began organizing to oppose racist hiring practices, wage theft by management, and a lack of labor and safety protection in clubs. We Are Dancers USA, a national harm-reduction and advocacy organization, was founded in 2018 to empower strippers across the country in response to a gap in resources tailored explicitly to dancers. The organization grew out of We Are Dancers NYC, a local organization founded by dancers and allies, including DSW’s Melissa Broudo.

The NYC Stripper Strike partnered with Broudo and DSW colleague Crystal DeBoise to raise awareness around discrimination and exploitation in city clubs, gaining support from the International Women’s Strike. In response to a report by the Minneapolis Health Department that raised concerns about many city clubs, SWOP Minneapolis partnered with Minnesota State University to successfully pass a city ordinance protecting strippers’ rights in 2019. In Portland, the Haymarket Pole Collective’s grassroots activism has spurred the city’s clubs to adopt mandatory anti-racism training, enforce fair labor practices, and maintain racial equity in hiring practices.

DSW is proud to be a part of the Lusty Lady’s legacy, building equity and empowerment for all workers.

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OnlyFans’ New Policy Endangers Sex Workers During COVID-19

OnlyFans, a subscription service that online sex workers use to post content, recently instituted sweeping policy changes that will cost creators thousands of dollars each month, at a time when they can least afford it. The website recently changed payouts from weekly to monthly and capped pay-per-view prices at $50 and tipping at $100, both of which used to be without a maximum. In-person sex workers who lost their primary source of income due to the pandemic have been left out of government aid plans. Many have pivoted to online platforms to survive. These regulations are catastrophic.

Many content creators suspect that these changes are a result of the actions of Bella Thorne, an actress and celebrity who joined the website in August and defrauded customers on OnlyFans. Thorne’s public image has been vocally pro-sex-work. She directed an adult film entitled “Her & Him” last year for which she received a Pornhub award. Thorne reportedly made $1 million in her first day on OnlyFans and $2 million by the end of the week. The actress, worth between $5-12 million, justified her presence on the site as research for a movie she claimed to be collaborating on with director Sean Baker. Baker later denied these claims. In an interview with LA Times reporter Amy Kaufman, Thorne said she wanted to dedicate her OnlyFans earnings to starting a production company and would be donating the rest to charity.

The actress also advertised a nude pay-per-view image for $200 a view to her 50,000 followers. The photos were not nudes but pictures of Thorne in lingerie, sparking a record number of refund requests issued to OnlyFans. The platform stated that the payout changes were not due to any individual user’s actions, and “transaction limits are set to help prevent overspending and allow our users to continue to use the site safely.” Still, creators link Thorne’s involvement and the subsequent changes.

Thorne issued an apology on Twitter for joining OnlyFans. She said that she had been trying to “remove the stigma behind sex, sex work, and the negativity that surrounds the word SEX itself by bringing a mainstream face to it,” and “help bring more faces to the site to create more revenue for content creators on the site.” She apologized for the harm she caused in the process and said she was meeting with OnlyFans to understand the changes.

Interviews with sex workers who use OnlyFans reveal that adult content creators stand to lose a large percentage of their income. Canadian-based sex worker Rebecca Madison told VICE that she’s worried creators will be forced to sell “content at prices lower than what they are comfortable with due to these new financial pressures,” depressing the market long-term.

While this might have been “research” or a statement for Thorne, OnlyFans is how many creators pay their rent and buy food. The presence of celebrities like Thorne increases competition on the website and threatens that income. TS Jane, a trans sex worker from California and president of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, says that price caps will force some into street-based work where their lives are endangered. On OnlyFans, “I’m empowered with what I do; I can set my own prices, create what I want; I’m my own boss,” Jane told VICE. But that empowerment is jeopardized if sex workers are forced to sell their content for less than it’s worth.

OnlyFans has done a lot for sex workers, but if we do not listen to those most impacted and prioritize their needs, it may fail the community it aims to support.

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DSW’s Melissa Broudo Featured in Film Series on Inspirational Women

DSW’s Melissa Broudo was featured in “As a Woman,” an interview-based film series diving into the lives of six inspirational, female-identifying New Yorkers. Written and produced by Majella Productions, the documentary explores how these individuals relate to their womanhood, and the ways this identity impacts their lived experience. The production is a beautiful examination of the multitude of meanings gender can inspire.

Broudo has dedicated her career to supporting the rights of individuals criminalized for their identity. She decided in college to pursue law with the particular intention of decriminalizing sex work and defending survivors of sexual exploitation. While working as a senior staff attorney at the Sex Workers Project, Broudo won the first-ever vacatur motion for a survivor of human trafficking. She has since provided technical expertise on these critical motions throughout the state and country.

In her interview, Broudo describes her particular brand of feminism and the nuanced way she understands the human experience. Rarely seeing things in black and white is what makes Broudo such an incredible lawyer and advocate. She integrates this understanding, and her tenure combating racial and gender injustice in the court system, into her work at DSW and the NYC-based SOAR Institute.

Sex work is an issue that so often divides feminists, as some see the work as inherently misogynistic and degrading. “I look at it [in] a completely different way,” says Broudo. “If women and women-identifying individuals have been sexualized, why not use that to your advantage … and that is not inherently disempowering. It varies from person to person.”

“As a Woman” was produced by Melbourne-based production house Majella with an extraordinary all-female crew. “We created a space for original thought and honest feeling,” said Gabrielle Pearson, director and producer of the series. “[We intended] to genuinely provoke the strength, fire, and ambition in our female communities. We hope that this series binds together our female power and provides an uplift to those who could draw from the wisdom of what these women have to say. We are all heard, and we are all important.”

You can watch the series on Sticks & Stones Agency’s website.

September 14, 2020

Ashodaya Mandya, an organization founded in India last year, hosted a Sex Worker Pride march in 2019. (Photo: NSWP)

(Photo: @jess_the_fairy/Instagram)

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September 2, 2020

Last year, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was “not comfortable with” the idea of decriminalizing sex work, although city prosecutors claimed it was already happening. (Photo: Barry Williams/NY Daily News)

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez says he “believes in decriminalization,” though his office’s actions do not fully reflect that position. (Photo: Brooklyn Eagle)

Layleen Polanco (left) pictured with her sister, Melania Brown, shortly before Polanco’s arrest in 2019. (Photo: Courtesy of Melania Brown/NBC News)

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September 1, 2020

The facade of the Lusty Lady in San Francisco shortly before the club closed in 2013. (Photo: Sarah Rice, Special to The Chronicle, 2013)

Siobhan Brooks, a former dancer at the Lusty Lady, is now an associate professor of African American studies at California State University, Fullerton, and continues to advocate for sex worker rights. (Photo: NY Times, 2019)

Gizelle Marie (left), founder of the NYC Strippers Strike, marches for stripper labor rights with DSW’s Melissa Broudo. (Photo: SOAR Institute, 2018)

Performers from the Lusty Lady represent the Exotic Dancers Union at the 2008 May Day March in San Francisco. (Photo: LA Times, 2008)

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August 27, 2020

Actress Bella Thorne is rumored to have instigated the policy changes by her conduct on the site. (Photo: Jeff Spicer/BFC/Getty Images)

Thorne issued an apology to sex workers and OnlyFans users for her actions via Twitter. (Photo: @bellathorne/Twitter)

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August 18, 2020

Melissa Broudo was one of six interviewees highlighted in the film series. (Photo: Majella Productions)

L to R: Frances Steele, Ceyenne Doroshow, Melissa Broudo, Crystal DeBoise, and Kaytlin Bailey pose for the film. (Photo: Majella Productions)

Broudo was featured in the New York Times for her groundbreaking work on vacatur for survivors of trafficking. (Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/NY Times)

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