Are you a progressive, white, American woman? Do you find yourself simultaneously raging at the current state of our country and scared out of your fucking mind that you’ll wake up one morning to be locked out of your job and bank account? Are you heartbroken that your daughters and granddaughters have less body autonomy and access to healthcare than you did as a young woman?
Yeah, me too.
Do you also advocate for sex workers’s rights? Does the insidious violence against sex workers, (especially) by the police, piss you off because sex work is criminalized and stigmatized? Do you believe that everyone should be able to come home safe at the end of the night?
No?
Let me explain, in as few words as possible (haha, it’s gonna be a lot of words, sorry-not-sorry), how your ignorance of, and/or indifference to, sex worker’s rights (and the lack thereof) has led to a second Trump presidency.
The Christian right always had a MORAL agenda that they wanted to turn into legislative policy. They knew they needed at least some white women on their side in order to win, so they started talking about “saving the children”. There is a certain subset of white women who would sell their own uteruses, and yours, to save “just one child”.
Save them from what, you ask?
Everything from sex trafficking to being “murdered”.
Sounds reasonable, until you realize what you, yes YOU, have to give up to achieve these goals. Spoiler alert: it’s your civil liberties, body autonomy and right to basic healthcare. That’s just the start. It will probably get worse before it gets better.
Did you know that the majority of children who are sex trafficked are done so by a relative, not a stranger on the Internet? I’m not saying the latter doesn’t happen, because it does, but it’s not the epidemic it’s made out to be.
But Amy, even if I can save just one child, it’s worth it, right?
The truth is, making websites liable for sex crimes that may be initiated on their platforms causes said websites to restrict any and all references to sex. It pushes traffickers off platforms and underground where they are harder to track and catch. Meanwhile, anyone discussing consensual sex between two adults, even sex educators, are censored and de-platformed.
So Amy, if the laws don’t work, shouldn’t we get rid of them?
Oh, my dear Watson, they DO work. The goal of these laws was never about saving children; they were put in place to further criminalize and stigmatize anyone who likes sex, aka intercourse, aka fucking. Especially sluts, I mean, er, women.
How did this all lead to Trump?
Trump is the Conservative right’s puppet. They are behind Project 2025, you know, the blueprint for deporting immigrants and stripping women of their reproductive rights. Before they could take their dystopian civil rights stripping manifesto mainstream, they tested it on the most disenfranchised group of people: sex workers, some of whom are also trans (bonus points?).
You see where I’m going with this?
Not only were Conservative Republicans successful in getting their entire party to vote their way, they got Democrats on board too! Who do you think went after the online “ads wanted” website Backpage for unknowingly promoting a sex trafficker, you know, the case that opened the door for restrictive first amendment legislation?
Kamala Harris! Yeah, her, when she was the Attorney General of California. And how do you think state and federal law enforcement got access to all of our once private information on the Internet? The Patriot Act of 2001 (passed just 45 days after 9/11)!
It turns out that when people are scared by either real or carefully orchestrated perceptions of danger, they will vote not only against their own interests, but against their own values.
Many of the provisions in the Patriot Act were set to expire, but were extended by the ironically named Freedom Act of 2015. Well, it did give the government more freedom to our information, so maybe not so ironic?
Anyway, once the Conservative right secured their “proof of concept” by passing the bipartisan bills SESTA-FOSTA (owning those libs!), they moved on to the second most marginalized group, the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans people.
From there it was super easy to overturn Roe v Wade, taking away women’s rights and giving them to embryos and fetuses.
Just as a little aside, the Patriot Act made way for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE (you can read its entire whitewashed origin story HERE!). Who could have predicted the agency would one day turn its ire on American citizens and law abiding immigrants? Haha, just kidding! Although, I must admit I didn’t see the cosplaying moron who doesn’t know her habeas from her corpus being named director.
Second aside: If you wondered why an innocent until proven guilty Diddy was sitting in jail for months without bail pending his trial while a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist lives in the White House on our dime, it’s because the Patriot Act weakened protections against unlawful search and seizure, and strengthened government surveillance. This led to the prosecution of thousands of RICO cases (federal crimes targeting more Black and brown people with higher penalties) rather than cases against foreign terrorists, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, wink wink.
I really am so fucking tired of explaining the same thing over and over again. I’m exhausted by your “if it’s not happening to me it’s not happening” way of thinking. Step outside of your lived experience for five fucking minutes. In the end, your whiteness won’t save you, it never does.
Let me end by saying, when we fail to protect those with the least power among us, we fail to protect us all. Yes, I’m talking to you progressive, white, American women who don’t advocate for sex worker’s rights, or even understand the level of violence and marginalization they face every fucking day.
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