6 minute read
Rough Trade
The LGBTQ Movement Should Fight for Sex Worker Rights
By Guillaume Bagal
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Sex work, broadly defined as the exchange of sexual services for money or goods between consenting adults, is often a means of survival for people living in poverty and their families. While sex workers in the United States make up a very diverse group, research has traditionally focused on female sex workers. Sexual and gender minorities, including those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities, endure systemic discrimination that creates access barriers to economic opportunities, education, food security, stable housing, social service supports, and healthcare. As a result, LGBTQ people, especially those who are black and transgender, disproportionately experience economic and social instability, making them more likely to engage in underground economies like sex work.
According to a National Center for Transgender Equality report, Meaningful Work: Transgender Experiences in the Sex Trade, the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), which examined the experiences of 27,715 transgender adults across the United States in 2015, confirmed that because transgender individuals are more vulnerable to discrimination, impoverishment, unemployment, and housing instability, they were more likely to trade sex for survival than cisgender people. This survey reported that one in five of respondents had engaged in sex work for money, food, a place to sleep, or other goods. The responses indicated that of all transgender women, black transgender women had the highest rate of sex trade participation at approximately 42 percent, while white transwomen showed the lowest rate of participation in sex work at 11 percent.
LGBTQ youth are often rejected by their family and peers, which forces them to become independent at a very young age. Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law reports that these traumatic experiences can trigger a lifetime of social isolation, housing instability, behavioral health issues, violence, and encounters with the criminal justice system. While LGBT youth are only about seven percent of the total youth population in the United States, they account for approximately 40 percent of all young people experiencing homelessness. Family rejection and homelessness are predictors that a young
person will engage in survival economies such as drug sales, sex work, and other illegal activities that enable disenfranchised individuals to survive.
A 2015 Urban Justice Center report on LGBTQ youth in New York who engaged in sex work found that almost all of them did so to make ends meet. While most respondents reported trading sex for money (96 percent) and shelter (31 percent), others received food (18 percent), drugs (15 percent), and clothing (11 percent) in exchange for sexual services.
Compared to other nations, the United States has some of the most expansive laws against sex work, resulting in nearly 50,000 arrests each year, according to the US Department of Justice. Laws criminalizing sex work and other sex-related laws have a disproportionately negative impact on groups already facing discrimination, including communities of color, gay and transgender people, immigrants, and people with criminal convictions. The enforcement of these laws occurs within a larger context of racial profiling and over-policing of low-income communities and communities of color, most severely impacting black and brown transgender women and LGBTQ youth, who are routinely profiled as being engaged in sex work, loitering, or other offenses.
Sexual and gender minorities have a history of being targeted by law enforcement with sex-related charges. Law enforcement regularly profiles transgender women – particularly those who are black and brown – for prostitution, and over-polices areas where men seek other men for sex. Twenty-five states have HIV-specific criminal laws, the enforcement of which disproportionately targets people of color and further criminalizes HIV-positive sex workers.
LGBTQ youth are more likely to be placed on sex offender registries than their non-LGBTQ peers. A 2014 study in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law found that participants were more open to sex offender registration for LGBT youth engaging in consensual sex than for non-LGBT youth. Another report, Hidden Injustice: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth in Juvenile Courts, documented that
LGBTQ youth are frequently charged and adjudicated for sex offenses, required to undergo sex offender treatment, and asked to submit to sex offender risk assessment, even in situations unrelated to sex offenses. For example, in one case, a prosecutor argued for a queer youth to be placed in a restrictive setting for high-risk individuals so that he would not become a pedophile. In another, a young trans person with no signs of aggression or sexual offense history was inexplicably grouped with youth likely to commit sexual offences against minors.
Research shows that the criminalization of sex work causes sex workers to experience high levels of stigma, systematic exclusion, violence, and discrimination. This leads to barriers to accessing necessary health services and information, facilitates the violation of sex workers’rights, and perpetuates sex workers’ distrust of the police. In addition to disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities, sex work criminalization is counterproductive to public health, according to recent studies. As many in the LGBTQ community often forego needed health, legal, and social services due to stigma and discrimination, LGBTQ people engaging in sex work arefurther marginalized and at higher risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases than their non-LGBTQ peers. When all or some aspects of sex work are criminalized, sex workers experience higher levels of HIV acquisition and transmission risks. An Urban Justice Center report found that in places that criminalize sex work, people trading sex have greater difficulty negotiating safer sex practices with clients, which is further complicated by documented practices like police confiscating condoms and using them as evidence of engaging in prostitution. The enforcement of these laws also makes it harder to find alternative employment due to criminal records, and the accompanying stigma and discrimination can lead to loss of occupation and housing.
As the role of the internet in sex work continues to grow, authorities are investing more resources in monitoring and shutting down online platforms that facilitate sex work. The 2015 raid of Rentboy.com, a gay male escorting website, and the criminal charges brought against its CEO and employees highlighted a national effort to criminalize sex work in a changing environment. The involvement of the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Attorney’s Office, and the New York City Police Department in a criminal case against Rentboy.com seemed like an overreaction to many, and threatened online platforms such as Craigslist and Backpage, which sex workers use for harm reduction. These platforms enable sex workers to negotiate rates and other terms with clients prior to meeting in person. They help sex workers screen for dangerous clients, and decrease the likelihood of being assaulted by predators. In fact, a 2017 study from West Virginia University and Baylor University found use of
Craigslist erotic services correlated with a 17.4 percent reduction in female homicide rate. Organizations that publicly criticized the Rentboy raid included the Human Rights Watch, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Global Forum on MSM & HIV. Some LGBTQ activists found this case to be reminiscent of bathhouse raids and gay bar roundups from decades ago, while others focused on the negative impact this would have on sex workers. In a press release following the raid of Rentboy’s offices, the Transgender Law Center stated, “The U.S. federal government is not only jeopardizing countless people’s lives and only source of livelihood, but sending a clear and troubling message that the country is less invested in addressing systemic issues of racial, economic, and anti- LGBT injustice than in further criminalizing the individuals most marginalized by those systems.” Unfortunately, lawmakers continue to introduce bills that conflate sex work and trafficking, and jeopardize the safety of sex workers by criminalizing them.
The LGBTQ rights movement must take a stronger stance on sex worker rights. We must prioritize and examine issues our communities face through an intersectional lens, and ensure that proposed interventions take into account people living with multiple minority identities. There is no room in our movement for respectability politics when so many in our LGBTQ family remain oppressed. A majority of states still do not have laws that offer clear discrimination protections to LGBTQ people, and even in states like Massachusetts, these laws are under attack, as demonstrated by the upcoming anti-transgender referendum. As we contemplate the disproportionate representation of LGBTQ and HIV-positive people in the criminal justice system or living in poverty, we must understand the discriminatory mechanisms in our society that create access barriers to employment, education, social and legal services, and basic healthcare. These barriers keep individuals and families in chronic financial stress, which is a primary predictor of participation in sex work or other underground economies.
Guillaume Bagal is Public Policy Associate at Whitman- Walker Health, a community-based health center serving the LGBTQ community, and persons affected by HIV, in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. He is President of the Gay & Lesbian Activist Alliance (GLAA), and consults for The Center for Global Health and Diplomacy. Guillaume has a bachelor’s degree in Biology and master’s degrees in Sociology from East Carolina University and Health Administration and Policy from George Mason University. He served on the NIH Community Advisory Board for two years, and is a member of the HIV Working Group at the DC Center for the LGBT Community.
