The Popular and Profitable "Sex Trafficking Rescue Missions" in Florida
"For the oppressors, 'human beings' refers only to themselves; other people are 'things.' For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over the right [...] of the oppressed to survival." - Paulo Freire
Immigrant/Asian sex work groups you can support :
"I believe in my heart of hearts that they know these women are trafficked. I think they are monsters." --Martin County Sheriff William Snyder on treating the Florida trafficking ring investigation as a rescue mission, arresting the Johns.
The past few days for me have been very draining with the various sex trafficking stories coming out. I had exchanges with people that saw nothing wrong with police persecuting sex workers, filming them, getting sexual services from them for months, stealing their assets, imprisoning them, and throwing their whole lives in danger. The Asian immigrant women from the Florida massage parlor anti-vice stings (where Robert Kraft was arrested) are currently still sitting in jail. They are at risk of imprisonment, having a criminal record, and deportations. Meanwhile the media had a field day with shaming sex workers (or as they wrote about them “sex trafficking victims”), posting their photos provided by law enforcement, and various people making sexual and “hooker jokes”, even taking laughing selfies at the massage parlors with “sex trafficking” was said to have happened. This is how our society treats sex work and possible sex trafficking victims. Our system is based on criminalization (currently states are using the Nordic model) and therefore punishment is viewed as a service. These women are now stuck in a really bad situation, they have to prove they were victims and if they can’t, they’ll be punished. If they don’t play along with what the police wants them to say, the police will refuse to help them and will persecute them. If they were trafficked and can prove it, they can win permanent status through the U visa or T visa. It takes years to obtain one, and the process of persecuting their abusers will be traumatizing and expensive. Many cases are rejected, and even though there’s a cap of 5000 visas for the T visa every year, that cap is never met.
Police receive training from sex trafficking organizations to:
· Learn how to market prostitution and john sting operations (vice policing) as sex trafficking operations
· Police learn that trafficking victims are lying about not being trafficked, and therefore they shouldn’t believe them and should instead “break them down”
· Police learn that shaming sex workers, and threatening them are effective at getting them to “snap out of it”, and “break the spell” of their traffickers.
· They are taught that no women would choose sex work, all women in the industry are slaves
· They are taught that women “allow themselves to be trafficked” because they have bad role models, bad parents, because they’re poor, and don’t know any better. In other words, they ask for it and they aren’t smart enough to get out themselves.
There’s a lot riding on this now for the women whose lives have been dragged through gossip, and gross reporting for the sake of good PR for police. Sex trafficking organizations like Polaris are advertising these stings (rescue missions) as “successful”, and asking for more money. And the police are expected to win 2-3 million in asset forfeitures from these sting operations. Sex trafficking organizations also “train” journalists and the media to talk about sex trafficking in a way that creates shame, and ridicule anyone involved in the sex industry. Usually the media doesn’t question what the police say, parades them like heros, and never follows up to find out what happened to the victims.
I found it disturbing that journalists were reporting on the massage parlors as if it was completely unheard of, and horrific beyond all imagination. I spent some time on Twitter explaining to people that nothing in the story about the massage parlors was out of the ordinary for massage parlors. Immigrants and sex workers sometimes work in groups, and sleep, eat, work in their space together. Brothels, strip clubs, and any place where sex workers work have break rooms. In fact every retail place I worked at had a small little break room. Sometimes you live where you work. While one of two articles said they weren’t allowed to leave, most of them made no mention of it. It seemed some journalists were assuming things and adding to the story. Different words that contradicted each other were used in the same articles like “human trafficking”, “prostitute”, “masseuse”, “slaves”, “escort”, etc. The massage parlor itself was licensed as massage place, but they were doing massages with handjobs, and offering additional sexual acts for an extra price. This is normal. Every worker was charging different rates for the additional services which the police reported in their 6 month “investigation”. This suggests that they were free agents, making their own pricing. This too is normal for a massage parlor. They also made it seem like seeing 8 clients a day is extreme but keep in mind they are mainly doing massages, and a handjob if they want, anything else is extra. The police that had services as part of their investigation didn’t even add more services (or so they claim). So this detail added in these stories to make them seem abused doesn’t make sense.
In the guides from Polaris about massage Parlors, they make it very clear that law enforcement should be racially profiling Asians for this. They also go over how these businesses work. Their guideline isn’t really about sex trafficking, it’s about targeting sex work from Asian immigrant communities.
They list out how most massage parlors operate because that’s what they’re really targeting – sex workers. People stated to me that they were clearly being trafficked/enslaved because…A) they were immigrants B) they couldn’t speak English. I found this reasoning the most xenophobic and racist. A lot of immigrants prefer working with people who speak their language, it makes them feel like they belong in a world where they are often hated and misunderstood. There was a time I worked for a very popular cookie company that many Americans love eating, everyone working at the factory was a Hispanic immigrant and spoke Spanish. I nearly fainted on my first day from the focusing on the conveyor belt and they caught and laughed, “you’ll get used to it”. Ultimately I quit, it was one of the most exploitative jobs I had worked and it didn’t pay enough to live. Funny that no one seems to care about labor exploitation when it doesn’t involve sex somehow. The idea that these women are immigrants and speak Chinese and therefore can’t possible have agency is xenophobic. These women managed to pass and get a massage business shop, the police couldn’t understand how they could have passed it. This investigation and its coverage isn’t so much about facts, it’s about projecting feelings onto women and demanding they play damsel in distress.
So far 25 men face charges for buying in the Florida stings, 11 women were arrested and remain in jail, one is also on ICE detainer. All these things are more important than ever before because SESTA/FOSTA has pushed more sex workers back into local escort agencies, massage parlors, brothels, and street walking instead of independent work and online advertising and screening. Trump also eliminated domestic violence as a way for women to get asylum, and defunded legal services for potential trafficking victims. This is important because forced sexual labor usually happens in domestic violence cases because abusers take control of the finances, and control their partner’s body as a means of control. It’s not at all interesting that Robert Kraft donated $100,000 to anti-trafficking group, supported criminalization of sex work, and voted for Trump, and still bought sexual services. Just like it isn’t surprising that Trump is eliminating rights for women, criminalizing sex work, and has a long history of buying sexual services, and sexually assaulting women. Patriarchy relies on the freedom of men to be sexual, but women to be persecuted for their sexuality.
"I think the term 'sex work' is a euphemism," Rebekah Charleston says. "When you introduce an influencer as powerful as money into the picture, consent is no longer there."
People like Rebekah Charleston are a classic example, she’s claiming to be a trafficking victim, but she’s a domestic violence survivor, and unlike these women she’s speaking for, she doesn’t have to prove she was trafficked. She can just claim she was and speak for others, she of course wants to end all forms of sex work. She speaks from a privileged place, as an outsider who will be unimpacted by any of the ideas and policies she’s promoting. She’s robbing other women of their agency, and assuming they have a inherently passive role in sex, life, and capitalism.
Imagine two different cases: a women having tons of sex with different men for free by choice, and another women held against her will and men raping her over and over for which she receives no money. Would we conclude that because no money was involved, she consented in both of these cases? These talking points was horrific because they make it clear that a women’s consent isn’t at all important. What matters is a bunch of rules around sexuality that very few people have.
For me watching it all unfold is sad, and numbing. But for what it’s worth I’m putting my words out there, and hoping that people will learn that pushing fear to get people’s votes, their money, to give up their freedom and power to state control will never solve societal issues.
*** Below are my favorite twitter threads on this