Stigma kills. That’s an idea that, sadly, many communities
understand and experience, including sex workers and people involved in sex
trades. The pervasive social and governmental stigma and discrimination against
those who trade sex for money or other needs is something that organizations
fighting for the rights of sex workers are tackling head-on. Directly related
to such stigma are laws that criminalize large swaths of commercial sex. This
manifests through indifference and hostility from police, governmental
authorities, and society when people who have traded sex for money are killed,
attacked or raped—“they were asking for it” is the typical line. It also manifests in persistent stereotypes
of sex workers as “disease ridden” or “vectors of disease”, even as police the
world over take condoms from sex workers or use them as evidence of criminal
activity.
The Best Practices Policy Project works to end such stigma
and change laws through movement building and policy reform. An all-volunteer
group composed of sex workers and allies, BPPP works largely on the national
level in the U.S. to support other sex worker rights groups and to encourage
the federal and local governments to protect the rights of people engaged in
transactional sex in all its forms. Most recently we have been supporting the
campaign of Monica Jones and SWOP-Phoenix to stop racist and gender profiling
in Arizona and end a terrible program there that claims to give sex workers
alternatives to jail but actually increases arrests and incarceration. We documented
the work in Phoenix as an example of harmful policing practices in a report we
submitted to the United Nations—which we used to pressure the U.S. government
to address rights violations against sex workers.
One of the newer forms of stigma facing our communities is
spread by some groups claiming to fight human trafficking. But instead of
addressing this terrible phenomenon, these organizations claim that all
commercial sex is violence and that the only solution is to increase criminal
penalties and arrest people in order to save them. This approach not only does
tremendous harm to sex workers, it also distracts from efforts to help people
who actually experience coercion and exploitation, in the sex sector and the
many other sectors where trafficking occurs. What’s more, these groups are now
directly trying to undermine years of work to establish best practices for HIV
interventions with sex workers. Well-financed organizations are attacking UNAIDS,
for example, for its human rights approach to sex work, while also condemning
extremely effective HIV outreach and treatment programs working with sex
workers. Shockingly, groups promoting these “rescue” efforts view an increase
of stigma as a positive development in their efforts to “eradicate” commercial
sex.
From our perspective, criminalization and stigma go hand in
hand, and we must combat both at the same time. When people are criminalized
and stigmatized, they cannot claim their rights and are subject to serious
rights violations. When sex workers and other people involved in sex trade are not criminalized they can better
organize and demand protection of their human rights. Removing stigma helps
people to see that sex workers are not deviants or victims but simply people
trying to make a living just like others. When society and governments treat
sex workers as human beings deserving of all the rights that any human has, people
in the sex trades can be valued for their expertise. As sex workers all over
the world say—we are not the problem, we are part of the solution. ---
We would like to thank Darby for her guest post. If you would like to see more about what Darby or the Best Practices Policy Project does, check out her twitter feed.
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