Af3irm continues to shame sex workers speaking out against the Human Trafficking Hotline for collaborating with ICE and yet they have never condemned the Human Trafficking Hotline for openly working with ICE agents. Remember that many af3irm members work with and under anti-trafficking NGOs like CATW, a World Without Exploitation, NCOSE, Rights4Girls, and that rely on statistics from the Human Trafficking Hotline to receive funding for their organizations.

SWERFs act like we’re part of the pimp lobby for wanting to decriminalize racist pimping laws.

Pimping laws are so vague to include anyone sex workers are doing business with, so of course sex workers are going to be against the criminalization of pimping. Sex workers have to exist in this capitalist world just like everybody else does, that means using the money we’ve earned from work to pay for housing, transportation, security, and other protections.

Anti-trafficking industries continue to produce narratives about saving women from exploitation, but the material reality shows that the solutions they offer to marginalized sex workers do nothing but make our exploitation even that much worse. Political lobbying groups started by cops, like A World Without Exploitation, design several different campaigns across the political spectrum to push the same carceral agenda.

This idea that sex trafficking victims need to be recovered by law enforcement in order to access services is just deeply wrong. Victim services like shelters, therapy, and cash assistance programs are all severely underfunded. They are also often overtly religious, transphobic, and racist.

The job placements they offer are usually minimum wage and not available to undocumented people.

Not a single anti-human trafficking NGO is raising awareness about the largest human trafficking ring that is right in front of our eyes. Every single minute of every day they are kidnapping people at gun point, off the street and out of their homes, tying them up, and placing them in cages.

Then they make their family pay their ransom or or they do forced labor where they make pennies per hour.

Af3irm claims that the BodiesBack law is going to decriminalize sex workers but if you read the law is going to increase the criminal penalties for loitering from a violation to a misdemeanor. Police will still have free reign to harass and arrest people they profile as sex workers, especially in the rapidly gentrified Waikiki area.

If prostitution survivor advocates cannot conceptualize policing as a source of harm and violence for sex workers, they haven’t done the work to center the most marginalized of us, despite what they claim. In fact, many prostitution survivor advocacy groups have been founded by and work hand in hand with law enforcement agencies.

We really have to start mapping how much anti-sex trafficking money has been used to fund to the most powerful and influential TERFs. Almost all all the top trans exclusive radical feminists have had very lucrative and politically influential careers in anti-trafficking organizations.

I see people keep getting confused about the claim that AF3IRM's leaders told people to call ICE to report sex workers. I hope this thread clears the confusion about this claim. Did AF3IRM tell people to call ICE directly to report sex trafficking and prostitution?
NO

Did AF3IRM's leaders run several campaigns encouraging community members to report sex trafficking and prostitution to the Polaris National Human Trafficking Hotline?
YES

Don't believe that National Human Trafficking Hotline is a surveillance line that reports to ICE?

Listen to an ICE agent explain it herself and how they get use tips from the hotline for their investigations. The ICE agent explains that they have to be there for victims of trafficking because "sometimes a victim doesn't know they are a victim."

If you don't know anything about the anti-trafficking industry and carceral feminism, it might be confusing why sex workers are so upset with af3irm. It's like af3irm keeps modifying their platforms as to confuse the criticism from sex workers, but they never actually change their policies.

Instead they continue to work with the same abusers who want sex workers and trans people deprived of any access to resources.

Can we talk about how you are you are imposing YOUR rhetorical logic to deny #sexworkers our own agency to name when we are being raped? Can we talk about how we DO NOT GIVE YOU CONSENT to describe OUR experiences for us?

@af3irmhawaii @AF3IRM @AF3IRMLA @jollenelevid It might make certain theoretical sense to claim ALL SEX WORK IS RAPE to people who largely see prostitution as a metaphor, but to sex workers who have actual lived experiences, this statement makes as much sense as saying ALL SEX IS RAPE.