Will Sex Workers Find Dignity with Prop K?

[photo of the Red Umbrella demonstration from http://www.sexworkeurope.org/]

San Francisco, the town where I was born and raised, is yet again leading the country in progressive ballot initiatives. It has already made strides when it comes to legalizing medical marijuana and is now looking to overturn another vice law by decriminalizing prostitution.

Matt Kelley over at the Change.org Criminal Justice blog recently wrote about what is being proposed with Proposition K:

The move would make San Francisco the first major city to legalize prostitution in the U.S. (contrary to popular belief, it is illegal in Las Vegas, but legal in smaller Nevada counties). The proposed change has polarized the city - opponents say it make San Francisco a mecca for Johns and increase human trafficking problems and violence against prostitutes. The city's democratic party and the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild support the initiative, saying it would allow prostitutes to organize, and would support their health and safety by allowing them to more freely access support networks, health services and law enforcement protection. Proponents also say it would free up $11 million in the police budget to focus on more pressing matters.

While Matt does a great job of describing the two sides of the coin when it comes to Prop K, from a Third Wave Feminist perspective, he has yet to identify why the women's rights movement might be in favor of this law: it would be a first step in condoning sexual empowerment and the definition of sexuality beyond the confines of heteronormative puritanical values.

Andi Zeisler, who wrote Feminism and Pop Culture, summarizes some of the sentiments behind Third Wave feminist support of decriminalizing prostitution and how it is a distinct breach of contract from the Second Wave agenda:

Constructing a politics of pleasure has been key to third wave feminism. Thanks to their brave and often unsettling analyses of sexual power structures and the connections between pornography and a larger system of male dominance, feminists of the 1960s and '70s had gotten roundly tarred as being antisex, antiporn, antiheterosexual, and just generally prudish. In part to address this stereotype, the interest in feminist theories of sexuality and the development of a prosex politics became one of the strongest threads of feminism throughout the 1990s and the 2000s. Feminists have debated age-old virgin-whore dichotomies, have called for representations of alternative sexualities and of heterosexuality as experienced by people of all colors and abilities, and have offered controversial-but-compelling perspectives on the power dynamics of everything from butch/femme to S/M. That said, promoting pleasure for women has been as frustrating as it is crucial, thanks in large part to a media and pop culture that still depends on -- and overwhelmingly presents -- a limited view of female sexuality riddled with moralism, judgment, and classic double standards.

By decriminalizing prostitution, with laws such as Proposition K, those in the sex worker industry could earn the respect from society they have been waiting for; receive the true financial benefits of their work as independent contractors; seek industry health regulations; and report violence, abuse and other criminal activity without the fear of losing their livelihood.

When we think about decriminalizing prostitution we need to look beyond the various evils that are often correlated, but not causal with adult sexual solicitation such as human trafficking. Human trafficking and any type of sex slavery is illegal and always will be illegal as long as the 13^th Amendment is part of the constitution.

There is no arguing that.

The continual pursuit of justice for anyone who is raped, exploited by a human trafficking scheme, or a victim of pedophilia must be of utmost interest to legal authorities.

But the condemnation of the adult sex worker industry is condemning a labor industry with an economic demand from tax paying citizens. Without the means of regulating prostitution from the current horrors that dominate the business - there is no justice for the adult sex worker nor the illegal immigrant that is forced into sex slavery. Until those two issues become separate entities, there is little power to correct the injustices surrounding either of them.