It sucks to log onto social media and see everyone — including people you admire — celebrating someone or something you know directly or indirectly harms the people you love.
“Sucks” is probably not the best way to articulate it, but in situations like this, I don’t always feel like being articulate. More often, I feel like making myself small and staying quiet. It’s an immediate, bodily reaction. When it shows up in my Facebook feed that four of my friends “liked” the supposedly feminist movie, Rough Night — where the premise is that a stripper literally dies (ha ha?) — or when I’m on Twitter and I see someone’s retweeted something related to Rashida Jones’ Netflix documentary, Hot Girls: Turned On, in spite of the fact that several sex workers featured in the film came forward to say they felt exploited by the production (not to mention that one time Jones told fellow female actresses to “stop acting like whores”) — I keep my opinions to myself. It’s isolating and, in most circumstances, I don’t say anything so as not to risk exacerbating the feeling. From not-funny memes and annoying hashtags toproblematic Buzzfeed listicles, there are just too many daily examples of stigmatization to confront.
Like racism, homophobia, transphobia, and all the rest, casual whorephobia and anti-sex work sentiment and views — even among so-called progressives — is endemic. This can leave current and former sex workers feeling deeply alone and without support.
The latest and most vivid example of this is the growing popularity of superstar Democrat Kamala Harris. The first Indian American U.S. Senator ever, and California’s first Black U.S. Senator*, Harris has been called a “liberal hero” and a “rising star” in the party. An outspoken member of the resistance against the Trump administration, at the Senate Intelligence Hearings late last month, Harris delivered one headline-making performance after another: first, after grilling deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein when he refused to answer a yes or no question, and later, whenshe challenged Jeff Sessions. Both times, she was admonished and shushed by her older, white male colleagues, prompting waves of praise and encouragement from the Progressive left. In an op-ed for CNN, Roxanne Jones proclaimed Harris “every woman who stands up to speak.”
There are lots of good reasons to root for Kamala Harris, who is a probable presidential candidate in 2020. But the fact that Harris was an active force behind a campaign that endangered the lives of sex workers makes it understandably difficult for people with experiences in the sex trades to throw her our support.
As California Attorney general, Harris led a charge against the free classifieds website, Backpage, in spite of years of vocal resistance from sex workers. Just weeks before her election to senate, she filed charges against three Backpage staff members — a move the sex work activist group, the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education Research Project (ESPLERP), called a “political stunt.” Backpage’s adversaries believe that shuttering online advertising is a strike against sexual exploitation. But in practice, online advertising helps sex workers avoid dangers associated with meeting clients on the street by allowing them to screen clients and more safely negotiate encounters prior to meeting. Shutting these resources down does nothing to curb prostitution; instead, sex work ads simply migrate to other sites. The problem is that other sites generally cost more than Backpage, or are less heavily trafficked, thus disproportionately affecting low-income sex workers, who are oftentimes immigrants, transgender, and people of color.
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She is the odds on favorite to be Joe Biden’s running mate and at his age she could possibly be president before the next election in 2024.