Erasure from the law, it happens to everyone
I thought the law’s job was to protect me?
Activist and academic, Vanessa Carlisle, a writer in fiction and critical work with a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing program at USC discussed her work regarding sex work, and the problem with the government using specific language to erase the protections of these individuals, and this practice is called erasure of law.
The current definition erasure law is “the method of alteration of an instrument, it is a correction made by erasing. It means rubbing, scraping, or wiping out.” Dr. Carlisle is using this specific term, erasure law, because she wants the audience to understand that this is a common practice that is used with law makers, but she focused on how the law changes based on who it believes it should protect.
Laws have been written to protect the typical white American, as the United States is well known for its thriving hierarchal system imposed by the white settles that arrived in the 1700's. Therefore, the women and men that decide to go into the lifestyle of sex work are not protected by the law because a small minority of people reject their way of living and want to restrict it using the law. Usually, in this country, sex workers are criminalized for selling their bodies to a market of willing buyers.
When caught in the act, sex workers are given two choices. They can either plead guilty and accept the misdemeanor in their records, or they can report that they are victims of human trafficking, which leads to a rehabilitation course that really doesn’t provide for the proper human living needs.
When sex workers decide to avoid getting a misdemeanor, they misleadingly inflate the actual number of human trafficking cases.
Carlisle proposed that instead of penalizing or criminalizing the occupation of a sex worker, that the law should decriminalize sex workers because they witness human trafficking crimes first hand. They are the ones that can cooperate with the police if they were not so scared to be penalized for their own actions. They are the ones that can quickly identify if a fellow sex worker is in a bad situation or is being forced to act against their will.
It is a current debate that sex workers are facing because they want to help their fellow partners that are being trafficked or being abused within the system, but they cannot proceed without fearing for their own lives. The sex worker’s interaction with the police is shaped every day, as they can either become a prosecutor, a victim, or an allied.
For example, the case of Jasmine Abuslin, a sex worker, who went by the name Celeste Guap, is now 19 but found herself at the centre of the East Bay police sex scandal after sleeping with several police officers from the age of 17. She was outed about her sex working life by a letter that was left by a former police officer that committed suicide. With this narrative, we come to understand how the justice system interacts with the sex workers. She mentioned a total of 17 officers who fell into the temptation of seeking sex services for an exchange of private police information.
Sex work is an industry that is predominantly built by women, which is something that the United States, mostly rich white men, are not willing to give recognition to as they are not ready accept that women have built an industry that was created by the brutal abuse and assault of many white enslavers. As, this is an industry that has been around for centuries, but it has been criminalized to prevent sex workers to control their own body and use it as a business. It is ironic that the United States, a capitalist country is against women and men who are creating a business of their body as there is a large supply of buyers. It is a supply and demand ideology that is used from the sex workers, as they too are workers in a society trying to get by with what they can. They are people who want representation and not erasure. They want to be protected from the dangers and crimes that happen within their own industry. The only way about it is to decriminalize sex workers and include them within the society of the United States. A society that has fallen behind in modernizing sex workers, along with inclusion.
Let us look at Brazil, a country that started to organize and in 2002 a group led by Leite influenced the Brazilian government to issue “Ordinance 397” — which recognized sex work as an “official” occupation. Those registered as “Sex professionals” would be taxed as autonomous workers and entitled to regular employment benefits including maternity pay, a state pension fund and medical care. It was a crucial moment of increased social tolerance. Brazil has modernized its laws in order to legalize sex workers and include them within the working society. The sex worker activists that participated within the protest over several years were able to change the laws of their government. They refused to be erased and punished for a profession that keeps them alive. Along with the legalization of sex work came many flaws within the system. For example, the GlobalPost reveals that “Brazilian prostitutes can’t apply for pensions or retirement funds, nor can they receive other form of government regulations, like identification cards or regularly scheduled health checks…”
Even though the Brazilian government has accepted to legalize sex work and made progress within this issue, they remain in control of the laws that are being written. They have the power to decide who they chose to protect and have the power to erase anyone that does not meet their descriptions.
Dr. Carlisle would agree that what is needed in the world is decriminalizing instead of legalizing. As, when you legalize sex work there will always be erasure of law as many sex workers will not meet the requirements set by the government. This will only cause a criminalization on the individuals that continue to be sex workers outside the legal eye. Instead, decriminalization offers individuals the freedom to approach the police and report violence against them. This is the direction that the United States should take regarding sex workers here within the country. The country has a right to protect all of its citizens, and sex workers deserve representation within the government and move away from the approach of erasure law and criminalization.
