How an oil heiress attacked sex workers and their clients -or- How to weaponize privilege to wage war on prostitution
5/3/2018
There has been a purposeful calculated effort to frame erotic service providers as victims of their work and to conflate erotic services as a profession with sex trafficking.
This conflation appears to have begun during the process to pass the modern anti trafficking law in 2000 and has progressed to a fever pitch- especially in the last five years, as the opposition to erotic services took hold of the media and legislative bodies as planned.
The opposition to the adult industry wants to abolish porn and all erotic services. The word abolish is the word they use. They also often refer to themselves as ‘modern day abolitionists’ and to all prostitution-all erotic services, as ‘modern day slavery’.
They’ve wanted a federal law that criminalizes prostitution for a long time, and in effect the recently passed FOSTA and SESTA does this.
Calls for this action towards online platforms reached a fever pitch during the backpage take down, though this action had been percolating for years.
Who has been behind all of these actions?
We could go through a long list of all sorts of ‘stakeholders’ from concerned citizens, ministers and churches, to government officials to NGO’s to law enforcement.
Some basics…
The anti trafficking movement is comprised of a nonprofit industrial complex consisting of many NGO’s (vastly ‘faith based’) located in every state.
Many states have a number of these nonprofits in addition to state wide task forces combining the efforts of law enforcement agencies and the faith based nonprofits.
This network of nonprofits and their allies are extremely well funded and well organized. They have been marching towards this for well over a decade.
This anti trafficking ‘movement’ is more honestly described as an anti porn and anti prostitution movement. Most amongst them believe that porn is exploitative and directly leads to sex trafficking. They have an interesting way of connecting dots.
It would be a different situation all together if they acknowledged the human rights of erotic service providers and clients. Instead they reject a distinction between erotic services as a profession and sex trafficking.
But how did we get here? How did the USA end up with so many anti prostitution nonprofits claiming an epidemic in sex trafficking even in states which had never had a single sex trafficking case?
One of the most influential nonprofits amongst this nonprofit industrial complex is Swanee Hunt’s ‘Demand Abolition’ and her Hunt Alternative Fund.
Swanee Hunt is heir to Hunt Oil (billions) and she has been waging a war on the adult industry for many years. She goes as far as to fund law enforcement agencies to do sting operations.
When a special interest group (Demand Abolition) gives money to government officials such as prosecutors, and those prosecutors use their position and prosecutorial discretion to act according to the desires of that special interest group and also misinforms the public, how is this happening?
How the media portrays Swanee Hunt:
“I am very much engaged in the stopping of the purchase of commercial sex…”
She doesn’t say she is trying to stop sex trafficking now does she? Big difference between focusing on trafficking and feeling entilted to police the sexuality of consenting adults.
The following video was published by ‘Feminist Whore’, it is about Swanee Hunt and her sister Helen and was posted on YouTube in 2011. Yes I believe Feminist Whore saw the writing on the wall back then too. She gets pretty upset and I can relate:
In 2010 a very important meeting took place which set the monster machine erotic service providers now know as the ‘rescue industry’ into full throttle strategic mode.
‘The national planning meeting to elimate demand for commercial sex’ took place.
The title alone says it all. This was a two day meeting involving key ‘stakeholders’ gathered together by Swanee Hunt’s Hunt Alternative Fund.
The following is the pamphlet from that meeting:
Hunt Alternative Fund hired ABT Associates Inc, a consultancy firm which is often contracted by the U.S Government whenever they are looking at ways to implement new policies and impact public opinion.
Clearly this was done in order to create an effective strategy to attack the adult industry.
Take a look at the client list on the ABT site’s ‘about us’ section:
ABT Associates Inc. has a solid history working for the U.S Government on various campaigns.
The fact that they were hired speaks volumes in itself and this was no doubt very expensive. Though when you’re an heiress of big oil it’s no sweat off your back.It also shows the thoroughness of their work on the matter of what they refer to as the ‘eradicating of the demand for commercial sex’.
ABT Associates Inc. is a firm which specifically develops strategies to engineer public consent to put it plainly.
In the above picture, you can see they admit they do not know the percentage of who is not a victim of forced sex labor.
This carries down to the picture below where Hunt associates states they have decided that eradicating sex work is the best way to combat ‘sex trafficking’.
These actions put everyone in the sex trade at risk and into vulnerable situations where they will be subject to exploitation. Isn’t this what they were trying to prevent? Not when you look closer.
When thinking of exploitation according to anti trafficking narratives, they constantly refer to exploitation committed by pimps or clients. However, under scrutiny, the majority of the exploitation is being perpetrated when erotic service providers and their clients are arrested then forced into treatment programs.
These programs rely on participants for funding, law enforcement agencies rely on arrests for funding, the adjunct social services agencies rely on participants in their programs for their funding.
The ‘treatment’ programs and Diversion programs are the sex work equivalent to gay conversion therapy.
TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OR BOTH.
Think about what is currently happening with SESTA and FOSTA as you read the above page. As the arrows point out, you can see the steps they set into motion in 2010; to eradicate sex work, even if people get hurt.
The above is significant because they state outright their plan to exploit victims, not to save them, but use them as a ‘cover’ to push their own agenda.
Julie Bindel is quoted: “We decided we wouldn’t make a distinction between women who are coerced and women who choose”
At this point in history the public is learning more about people who do sex work and many are starting to agree that sex workers should be treated equally. There have been public polls and conversations outside of the anti prostitution movement which indicate that the public has been becoming more and more sympathetic towards legalizing or decriminalizing. This attitude makes it harder for anti prostitutionists to push laws that abuse sex workers.
Therefore…
In the above notes they plainly state that they have to make a “quantum leap” to make you, the public, think the opposite.
Unfortunately for millions of sex workers this has been effective. The quantum leap was centered on conflating all prostitution with forced sex labor and to weaponize government officials, the media and laws to attack the sex trade.
Laws have since been passed and are being passed with the intent of further criminalizing consensual adults under the guise of preventing sex trafficking.
These laws are abusive and hurt people who are engaging in erotic services as well as victims, but the misguided public, journalists and the well groomed politicians who have rubber stamped the false narratives, enthusiastically support these laws.
Some argue that the negative consequences were ‘unintended’ but I no longer accept that theory. The negative consequences were and are intended consequences. They invested too much in their strategy not to have realized it. Anyone who is harmed is collateral damage they can live with.
Back in 2010 they knew they had a big task ahead to make what is true, untrue and what is untrue, true.
The woman in the above picture with the arrow is from the Cook County Sheriffs Department. Her name is Marian Hatcher and she has been overseeing the John School treatment program in Cook county.
This is the same Sheriffs Dept. Sheriff Tom Dart is the head of. As a choke hold tactic Tom Dart pressured credit card companies to stop taking payments for backpage ads.
Cook county is the department which took Craigslist and Backpage to court initially being the first time the Government tried to use sex trafficking to pass Internet censorship laws.
Swanee Hunt seems to have funded Hatcher to fly to various cities where legislation was in process to set up additional similar programs as the Cook County John School.
Hatcher testified at such a hearing in my city of Denver when a John School bill was in process and passed in 2011. I was there to oppose the bill.
I watched her testimony as she described being addicted to crack and how her husband forced her to engage in prostitution. I saw her cry as she testified in support of the bill. Does she re-live trauma every time she testifies to get a law passed? She did the John School circuit after all.
Marian Hatcher was definitely a domestic abuse victim. I don’t see her calling for the criminalization or banning of marriage.
We know ‘trauma porn’ is effective, it’s part of the anti prostitution script. The more tragic and horrifying the better, as was seen during FOSTA SESTA hearings and many others.
I don’t wish any form of abuse on anyone. I wish Marian Hatcher cared about the damage she is helping to facilitate.
Marian Hatcher seems to be on the Hunt payroll now, as are others in similar positions. Their efforts are damaging millions of sex workers and their families and driving victims underground.
Experiences and cases like Marian Hatcher’s are being used to broad stroke the entire adult services industry as being overwhelmed with cases of forced sex labor.
These cases are being used to conflate erotic services with sex trafficking and to justify the draconian laws being passed to attack the adult industry.
When anti prostitutionists do acknowledge that there are sex workers who want to engage in sex work, they attempt to minimize by claiming that the number of erotic service providers who want and choose to work in the adult industry is so small that it is an insignificant number.
All of these tactics translate into a horrific strategy which pits marginalized criminalized sex workers and victims against each other.
By doing so, anti prostitutionists place themselves in the position of arbiters of who is worthy of human rights and when these rights should be acknowledged.
Who is listening to the voices of sex workers regarding the trauma and violence being done to them by these people who claim to be ‘saving’ them?
As you read through the above and below pages, you will see ideas and concepts from this 2010 meeting which are being pushed enthusiastically by the media today. So much so- many people now believe there is an epidemic in forced sex labor in the United States.
Sure doesn’t hurt to have a billionaire funding the narratives!
This meeting basically amounted to a war room where the strategy was laid out to wage war on the commercial sex trade, sex workers and their clients.
A Summary of Developing an Action Plan was written up:
…in conjunction with a 377 page 10 Year Action Plan to wage war upon the adult industry:
The 10 year action plan is a comprehensive 377 page document compiled and developed by ABT Associates inc. where a national strategy down to every detail they could think of, was laid out.
The ‘action plan’, the antis plan of war, includes instructions on how to form nonprofits that will in turn push the rhetoric ‘raising awareness’ about sex trafficking (conflating erotic services with trafficking). Instructions around organizing in their local regions and how to lobby to get their weaponized laws passed.
There are resources listed and the promotion of networking all of the nonprofits and organizations as a united force. It goes into great detail regarding the narratives including what words to use and not use when they are raising awareness and lobbying.
There are instructions regarding fund raising and how to support and fund law enforcement raids. There’s much more. Hunt Alternative Fund got their monies worth that’s for sure.
The Ten Year Action plan is a blueprint for the infrastructure of what sex workers often refer to as the ‘rescue industry’; the nonprofit industrial complex which has been attacking the adult media and services industries, erotic service providers and their clients- all under the guise of ‘combating sex trafficking’.
Some of us have been watching the opposition all this time. We understand their motives and how they operate. We knew what was coming, the antis did not hide their intent or their plans which is why some sex worker activists prioritized ACTION to DECRIMINALIZE (ESPLERP V GASCON).
If you thoroughly read and consider the ten page flyer I have posted above and more importantly go through the 377 page 10 Year Action Plan, hopefully you will better understand the motives, intent and profound seriousness behind the people and efforts which are behind FOSTA-SESTA and every other alleged ‘anti trafficking’ efforts.
They want to abolish the adult industries, put millions of erotic service providers out of work while doing as much harm to the porn industry as they can. This is being accomplished under the guise of ‘combating trafficking’.
A recent bill being sponsored in Virginia to restrict people from accessing adult media online (viewers would be required to pay a sin tax and register to access porn) is titled ‘The prevention of trafficking act’
How blatantly opportunistic can they be? Is anyone besides sex workers noticing?
What can we do?
How do we counter this?
The key to emancipation from this tyranny, oppression and non stop war is and always has been: DECRIMINALIZATION and to establish sexual privacy rights.
Once sex workers are decriminalized they will have legal leverage that will open the floodgates.
There must be a legal distinction between erotic services as a profession and forced sex labor.
Heck maybe they’ll start caring about the majority of forced labor, forced labor which isn’t sex related and happens in other industries and sectors.
You’d think there would be task forces to address the other forms of forced labor, but oil dynasty Swanee Hunt and the massive rescue industry she helped establish with her billions, has primarily focused on the commercial sex trade and porn.
If you watch the videos I’ve cited, if you read the above cited documents, it will hopefully be clear that this has been a long term calculated attack, a war on erotic services as a profession. It will be clear that they have effectively conflated erotic service provider professions with forced sex labor to the public.
Decriminalization!
A group of current erotic service providers organized by Maxine Doogan Founder and President of the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) dedicated to the decriminalization of erotic services as a profession, has been attempting to decriminalize and on the principal of sexual privacy rights- filed ESPLERP V GASCON.
The briefs for this case can be read at: ESPLERP Legal Challenge
Oral arguments ESPLERP V GASCON:
Highlights from the ESPLERP V GASCON oral arguments:
Please seek out, get involved with, donate to and support orgs who are specifically prioritizing policy work. Orgs which are involved in direct actions to establish decriminalization, anti discrimination laws, and protections on behalf of the erotic services and adult entertainment industries.
ESPLERP is an excellent place to start:
ESPLERP’s fund:
ESPLERP policy agenda updated as of 2018:
CUSP (community united for safety and protection) an Alaskan based sex worker rights organization has been doing awesome policy work and research:
Deep gratitude to long time sex worker rights activist Norma Jean Almodovar whose work is found at:
Norma is ex LAPD turned sex worker who wrote the book ‘From Cop to Call Girl’.
Gratitude to my compatriots in sex worker rights who signal boost mine and other erotic service provider voices to ‘raise awareness’ of the war being waged on sexual freedom, and on sex worker bodies and lives as well as clients. Thank you, I appreciate your long suffering of the opposition and for understanding my desire for sex workers to have the fighting chance we all deserve.
❤️