On Saturday, sex workers united together in recognition of International Whores’ Day to protest against the recent passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA-SESTA. Workers, activists, and allies gathered all over the country, in cities from Chicago to Las Vegas and New York, where attendees wore red and also called for the decriminalization of sex work.
The bill aims to fight websites that promote sex trafficking, Vox reports, but sex workers’ rights groups claim that the legislation puts the lives of sex workers in danger by hindering their ability to safely communicate with clients and each other online.
President Donald Trump signed the bill in April and it has led to the shutdown of several online platforms that sex workers formerly used to screen clients, safely advertise from their own homes, and communicate with each other. After the passage of the bill, many websites banned or censored their platforms.
Activists and opponents of the bill claim that while the bill does very little to actually target traffickers, it does encourage “violence against the most marginalized,” adult performer Lorelei Lee said in a recent Instagram post. Lee claims that the bill conflates sex trafficking with any kind of sex work, including legal adult performers.
In February, the Department of Justice stated that FOSTA-SESTA would make it more difficult to prosecute sex trafficking cases. In a letter to the Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, as well as ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd stated that while the bill was “well-intentioned”, there must be an established connection between “the criminal actions related to sex trafficking” and “the use of the internet to promote or facilitate prostitution” for a party to be found guilty under the assessment of the law. Boyd went on to claim that the law itself may be unconstitutional.