Thread by @WeAreDisabled

(Starting another thread here) So what do we do about stigma, shame, and violence as experienced by sex workers and disabled people and especially disabled sex workers? There's no easy answer but there's definitely one huge step we can take: decriminalization/decarceration

Criminalization and carceral systems are a function and a cause of violence.

CRIMINALIZATION AND CARCERAL SYSTEMS ARE A FUNCTION AND A CAUSE OF VIOLENCE.

And at least when it comes to sex work, *advocates for criminalization know this*

When I talk about sex work criminalization, I include partial criminalization, i.e. criminalizing the purchase of sex, sometimes called 'the Swedish Model' or the "Nordic model'

It's now mostly being called the 'End Demand' model, and I'm going to take a brief detour here to explain what that entails and why it's bad. So the main target are what they call 'sex buyers', but managers are also often criminalized. Who cares about pimps, right?

Now, look, I'm an anarchist. Down with bosses and hierarchical organizations and all that. But! Not everyone wants to or is capable of working for themselves in the sex industry or any other industry. This especially true for disabled workers who may not want to deal with admin.

Advertising, screening, accounting-- these are tedious and time consuming and if you're managing a chronic illness you may reasonably want to delegate that task to someone else for a percentage of your earnings. But third parties are criminalized under End Demand.

And 'third parties' are waaaay more than just actual managers. Your client asks you to bring in another sex worker, so you call your friend and ask her if she wants to get paid too? Congratulations, you're now a pimp.

You drive a friend to her appointment? Pimp. You share your incall space with another sex worker? You're pimping each other.

This isn't just theoretical either, women are actually arrested on these charges. Check out this story from Ireland: independent.co.uk/news/world/eur…

They are, of course, migrant sex workers. Partial criminalization is levied particularly hard against immigrants and undocumented immigrants and use as a reason for deporting them. Workers are also evicted (bc your landlord is your pimp!) and have their earnings confiscated.

And what does criminalizing clients do? Why, it gives them the upper hand in the negotiation process! Why should they have to submit to screening when they're the ones at criminal risk?

On the streets, sex workers have to move to more isolated areas to make clients feel safe. They have to speed through the initial negotiation because clients are nervous. These means less chance to get a license plate number and agree on condoms.

Research CONSISTENTLY demonstrates that even partial criminalization decreases health outcomes and increases violence for sex workers. And its advocates know this! They just don't care!

Here's a great example: during the process of re-criminalizing sex work in Canada under the End Demand model, Canadian Senator Don Plett actually said, “Of course we don’t want to make life safe for prostitutes, we want to do away with prostitution”

You cannot do away with prostitution through criminalization. It has never worked and it will never work. It is an economic issue. Again, *they don't care*. We have to make them care.

Sex work decriminalization is a social justice issue that intersects with every other social justice issue because sex workers are a part of every other social group. Sex work decrim is a disability justice issue.

It's a gender justice issue. It's a racial justice issue. It's a trans justice issue. It's a queer justice issue. It's an im/migrant justice issue. All of these groups are overrepresented among sex workers and overpoliced for it as well.

And decarceration for disabled people is likewise a sex worker justice issue. Disabled people are much more likely to be incarcerated, not just in prisons and jails but in psychiatric hospitals. Tomorrow I want to talk about incarceration as a disability justice issue.

I didn't become a police and prison abolitionist until after I started sex work in my early 20's, which was an experience that really radicalized me. But the seeds were planted for me in my teens as a youth incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals.

I wrote this deeply personal essay that connected my personal and familial experiences of psychiatric incarceration with the broader history of psychiatric incarceration in the Western world in 2017: maskmagazine.com/the-camp-issue…

If you can afford a subscription to Mask Mag, please pay for the article as they are extremely rad and do good work. If you can't, feel free to email me at EmilyDalloraWarfield at gmail and I will happily send you a copy for free.

This is what I'm gonna build off of in my thread tomorrow. Till then!