Dear BootLicker, Esperanza Fonseca
On November 26, 2019, I protested against a closed meeting organized by Seth and Alexi Meyers at WeWork in Manhattan. A bunch of groups (mostly non profits) and people who had come together to fight back against sex worker led groups like DecrimNY, and Red Canary Song. They had an intensive marketing campaign around it, rebranding the “End Demand”/Nordic Model partial criminalization as the “Equality Model”, and calling it “decriminalization of sex workers” to co-opt the calls for decriminalization of sex work from sex worker led groups. To counter this, I made a website where I wrote my issues with their advocacy and policies around this issue. I mainly focused on how Seth Meyers was deeply invested in pushing to “end the sex industry” because his wife was a prosecutor for the Brooklyn DAs office and built her whole career on vice policing. She currently works at Sanctuary for Families who promoted “Human Trafficking Intervention Courts” which led to the death of Layleen Polcano, and the arrests and deportations of many others. Dorchen Leidholdt (an anti-porn feminist from the 70s) works at Sanctuary for Families and leads many these efforts. They have various groups of the same groups/individuals for the most part including: New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, The New Abolitionists, and their latest New Yorkers for the Equality Model.
As for her husband’s turn in the barrel, “celebrities are easy to villainize,” said Meyers, who served as a prosecutor for five years in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, specializing in human-trafficking and sex crimes. She couldn’t resist adding: “The one who created the website about me — look at her eyes in those videos of her getting anally raped [a reference to Morena’s moviemaking oeuvre collected on Pornhub.com]. She does not look empowered. She does not look happy. I’m not here to tell her anything about her life choices. I don’t ever want to engage with her.”
The same, however, cannot be said for Morena, who is more than happy to engage with Meyers (and, indeed, this past summer published an op-ed in the local journal City Limits, headlined “A Sex Worker Says Decriminalization Means a Safer Workplace,” responding to Meyers’ op-ed in the same publication, headlined “Legalizing Prostitution in NYS Would Ignore its True Costs”).
“In my defense, Alexi did accuse my co-worker of being a rapist — I was kind of like enraged,” Morena told The Daily Beast, half in jest but wholly in earnest about Meyers’ film review. “I’m assuming they both watched it,” she said, referring to Seth. “I think if she watched it alone, that would be kind of creepy. But she’s a prosecutor, and this suggests she’s saying this based on feelings not evidence. ‘You didn’t look happy enough or empowered enough, so I’m just going to dehumanize you.’ It is hurtful, obviously.”
Alexi Meyers [A Sex Work Abolitionist attempting to use my porn, my looks, and “rape” to disrcredit me to reporters]
As I was protesting outside, security was called on us and we were told to leave. Looking through the glass windows of WeWork surrounded by rich liberal celebrities and cameras, I saw Laura Ramirez from AF3IRM. Like most people at AF3IRM she insists that sex workers fighting for decriminalization on the streets are actually just a small minority of neoliberal privileged happy hookers who should be ignored, and demonized. The news reports of the event was mostly fear mongering over the city being overtaken by “sex slaves”, “crime”, “sex tourism”, “a giant brothel” because candidates like Tiffany Cabán want to decriminalize sex work. It should be noted Tiffany was at one point harassed by police while hanging out with friends. The officer assumed they were sex workers because they were queer women walking around in the evening hours. This is why Tiffany supported S02253/A00654 and S4981a/A6983a which would repeal “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” charges, and remove all criminal charges/records for trafficking survivors. This current SWERF movement by these groups is a backlash to sex worker’s organizing. I went to Albany on May 7, 2019 to advocate for these bills with fellow sex workers, transwomen, migrants, and sex trafficking survivors. A week later a group of SWERFs showed up in Albany fear mongering about these 2 bills including Laura Ramirez from AF3IRM. In February 2019 DecrimNY held a rally, so these groups then did a protest against us with anti-trans, anti- surrogacy activists on March 11th. Of course, all these groups and people will claim they stand behind these bills, and have supported them all along (LOL). They eventually realized these demonstrations against us and these bills actually made them look bad, so they changed course to save face. It was sex workers organizing that put these bills on the map, these groups fought with us every step of the way, until they were forced to give in and support it themselves.
I don’t need to tell you that these groups and individuals are favored by most politicians, police, and the feds, or the media do I? It should be very obvious. But they act like they’re being silenced, and victimized by us. Like we’re an unstoppable evil force determined to keep women enslaved.
As a writer for DSA’s resolution #53 (you can read my old draft by clicking the link), I feel that I have to respond to Esperanza Fonseca’s “A socialist, feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work” medium post. First of all, the people who were part of the push for Resolution #53 were sex workers. However, Esperanza is convinced that sex worker organizers are the enemy, even going so far as to point out that some advocacy groups that are pro decriminalizations are funded by….George Soros, you know the migrant caravan and immigrant rights groups guy? Anti-trafficking policy in general is anti-immigrant policy, and blaming Jewish people for it is as old as the 1900s campaigns against “trafficking”. As someone who loves researching who funds non-profits, and how these interests intersect, I see nothing wrong with pointing this out. However, if your criticisms of sex workers begins and ends with pointing out some organizations are partly funded by his organization then you’re playing into anti-semistic dog whistle politics. She does this, because it’s an easy way to avoid listening, researching, or reading any criticisms of the movements she supports.
Many carceral feminist survivors will do this thing, where they will go into graphic detail about their worst experiences, or describe really pornographic stuff to discredit sex workers and decriminalization (see the Alexi Meyer’s example above). Much like homophobic people will describe in graphic detail how gay people supposedly all have sex instead of actually taking any arguments from gay people seriously. Esperanza blog post, for me, was hard to read. It was clear to me that she felt that sex worker’s would be shocked or unfamiliar with many of the risks that come with sex work that she experienced. Esperanza describes being denied access to jobs, housing, and being alienated by family, and friends for being trans, being pushed into sex work by poverty. She talks about how sex work is often one of the few ways some transwomen can afford transition and basic needs in a society that rejects them. She describes being homeless, dealing with mental illness, having to pay for her mom’s medical bills, being raped, drugged, having her money stolen, her fears of getting HIV, having dreams of escaping, and dreaming of never having to work another day. She fails to explain how increasing policing, surveillance, and border controls against customers of sex workers, and third party people will somehow solve housing, healthcare, or any actual systemic issues. She also doens’t address how police will leave any female sex workers/victims of abuse they find untouched by the carceral system sent there to imprison everyone around her? She ends this with these two paragraphs making it clear that she considers sex workers who fight for decriminalization “pro prostitution advocates”. She claims we oppose “the right to exit”, and we are denying women the right to say no.
I need to tell my story in such graphic detail because it is essential for readers who are not intimately familiar with the industry to understand the reality of many women in prostitution. It is equally important to understand that when you oppose the right to exit, you are telling me that women who share my experience don’t deserve to have a right to leave. You are denying the most denied right of women, the right to say no.
Recognizing and moving through the flames of my trauma have not turned me into a victim, as pro-prostitution advocates claim, but into a revolutionary communist and a serious student of feminism and socialism. For me, abolition and revolution isn’t a “horizon;” it’s a necessity. I know that stories like mine, and of the many women I worked with, are not being told by the dominant, liberal, and unprincipled supporters of the sex trade who mask themselves as “pro sex worker.” To this day I maintain contact with women who do feel trapped, who don’t have the right to exit, and who dream of an emancipated future where they can pursue other careers but can’t because of how the sex trade traps them inside of it. For that reason, I am responding to your statement entitled “Rights, Not Rescue: A Response to AF3IRM in defense of DSA Resolution #53” which influenced the DSA’s mistaken decision to let it pass.
Esperanza Fonseca
She also claims that we call her “a victim”, when she identifies as a “survivor” of the sex trade. SWERFs often obsess with meaningless aesthetics like this. She claims we are “dominant”, “liberal”, and “unprincipled”. And that sex work inheritably prevents women from doing other jobs….appartently the stigma and criminalization current sex workers face isn’t at all what prevents us from getting other jobs.The fact that sex workers, transpeople, undocumented immigrants are often shut out of the traditional labor market goes undiscussed. It doesn’t occur to Esperanza that many sex workers & survivors of abuse have faced similar or worse and disagree with her policies.
I haven’t had the chance to read all of it yet, I’ll pick up more critiques tomorrow. But I did want to share two things before ending this post for today. There were two points in reading this that I actually broke out into laughter. I used to be SWERF, so I’m familiar with their talking points, but there were moments where I knew that this person was in really dddeeeeppppppp into the bullshit.
Workers can organize unions to fight their boss, slaves can only organize violent insurrections or escape their slave masters. There is a long history of documentation that pimps brand their women like slaves, utilize coercive and deceptive tactics to target children to traffick them, and enact the worst forms of violence to maintain control over the women, mostly women of color, that they prostitute. You cannot organize your pimp; you can only kill or escape him.
Esperanza believes that tattoos are evidence of criminal activity, gangs, and slavery. I’m gonna be blunt with you, SWERFs who believe this are bootlickers of the police, and the nonprofits that work with them. Esperanza also conflates domestic violence as trafficking/slavery. I’ve talked about my experience with police telling me I was a trafficking victim because my boyfriend was abusive and proceeding to do nothing after telling me about “Lover boys” and “Romeo Pimps” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nOkMUFfFeo&list=UUKjV3WHLy1pYdUByLU0ur_A&index=2&t=0s
She talks about how the only solutions are to “kill and escape” clients or any relationships. She uses Cyntoia Brown as an example, I did a video on how she became a “sex slave” (hint: an Christian anti-sex work/trafficking org spent 10 years convincing her she was a sex slave, and she started trending on the internet afterwards. She is still on 10 years of patrol and those charges are still on her record. SWERFs don’t pay attention to stuff like this.) It should be noted that she didn’t go to prison for sex work, she went to prison for murder and thift. Sex work abolitionists don’t want to address “violent crime”, they often only want to decriminalize selling sex only.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX2FYdocqD4&t=316s
Esperanza believes that all clients are rapists and therefore sex workers should be allowed to murder anyone who buys porn, or pays sex workers. Apparently she thinks the police and state (which she thinks will save us from slavery), will just allow sex workers do commit acts of violence against people…because we’re “slaves”. The US has never taken slavery seriously, so this entire anlysis is just bizarre. And this argument would never fly in court, unless you could prove self-defense.
Esperanza claims that we aren’t workers, we’re “slaves”. Apparently calling people “slaves” is super empowering. There’s a whole history of calling marginalized and non white people “coolies”/trafficked/slaves. The issue is that doing this isn’t class solidarity, it actually splits labor every single time. Much of our current immigration system and anti-vice policing was created to protect “free white labor” and “respectable labor” against sex slaves, and trafficked non white people. Look up the Page Act (later became the Chinese Exclusion Act), Mann Act, the FBI’s “white slave division” that would deport non white sex workers from the US, Magdalene asylums, The Social Purity Movement, The Social Hygiene Movement etc. The idea that criminals, and gangs are “trafficking in slaves” from the global south into wealthy predominately white “free” countries has been criticized as being racist and a way for neoliberal states to escape responsibility while pretending to liberate “slaves” through border enforcement and vice policing. Check out Kamala Kempadoo, Karen E. Bravo, Elizabeth Bernstein (who coined the phrase carceral feminism), Jessica Pliley’s work.
Examples:
In 2019, Filipinx people were banned from getting certain work visas…the justification? Well, the US was just soooooooo “concerned” for the trafficking victims, so they just denied them working rights, and deported them.
“DHS and DOS are concerned about the high volume of trafficking victims from the Philippines who were originally issued H-2B visas and the potential that continued H-2B visa issuance may encourage or serve as an avenue for future human trafficking from the Philippines. DHS and DOS also believe that these overstay and human trafficking concerns are severe enough to warrant removal from the H-2A visa program as well. “
The child separation policy against the Honduran Migrant Caravan? The justification? Well you see, all those kids were probably just being trafficked by their parents, families, friends, or people who were giving them food, water, and housing. For those who don’t know, Scott Warren from No More Deaths was being charged for “trafficking” for giving undocumented immigrant food, water, and shelter. To protect the migrant children, the government put them in cages and used their therapy notes to prosecute them. FYI, they do this to sex workers all the time, when SWERFs claim they’re going to give sex workers counseling/therapy with “end demand”/Nordic model style policing, this is actually what it looks like. I would know, I was put in jail by border patrol in 1999 when I was around 6 years old, I was a child migrant and I watched as everyone who saved my life and helped me cross were violently punished. But why should I care according to SWERFs? According to the state, these were evil “traffickers” and Border Patrol were heroes ending “slavery” and saving children from being trafficked?
When we talk about human trafficking — we’re usually talking about 2 groups — sex workers, and undocumented immigrants. The vast majority of us don’t identify with the label. Human Trafficking is defined by the UN Treaty against Transnational Organized Crime — it’s based on international criminal law that justifies borders, and policing. The first anti-trafficking treaty was the UN treaty for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is responsible for its protocols. The US State Department ranks every country on their “trafficking policy” in their yearly TIP (Trafficking in Persons) report. Trafficking policy is anti-immigrant, anti- sex work, and anti-drug policy. If you don’t comply with America’s standards, they’ll put sanctions against you. The US has actually refuses to give certain countries and organizations HIV prevention funding if they didn’t adhere to their anti-prostitution pledge.
Many of the numbers about human trafficking are made up or worthless. Kevin Bales made up the number that there are 27 million human trafficking victims, human trafficking is the third largest criminal enterprise, and that human trafficking is “modern day slavery”. Here’s a clip I posted of Kevin Bales talking about where the “human trafficking is the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st largest criminal enterprise in the world” comes from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAwKCq73sQA&t=15s I bring this up because Esperanza claims we’re rejecting the trafficking numbers from these institutions, and that’s bad somehow. She doesn’t seem to care about the wealthy people and governments funding this research at all for some reason. Below you will find the AF3IRM solution to sex work — policing.
https://napiesv.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Human-Trafficking-Militarism-CO.pdf
