Sex Work
Wording is important, as it has specific meanings in specific contexts.
NOTE Sex work is not trafficking, trafficking is against someones will or under duress and is and should always be illegal and criminal. Sex work here refers to people who want, sometimes enthusiastically so, to get paid for their emotional and physical labor just like most workers do.
When speaking about permitting sex work, to support those people who choose it as a profession, always talk about it in terms of "decriminalization" and never "legalization". These have specific legal connotations. (Weirdly when speaking of cannabis you must legally go the other way to support it, you want weed legalized and not only decriminalized. Decriminalize people, legalize things.)
Why? Legalizing something makes it legal in specific ways, at root it's still illegal/criminalized unless you do it under specific conditions. If you follow or listen to sex workers you will find out that often in cases of legalized sex work only a few people profit - much like primps, only legally. For example in Nevada the main financial winners are the brothels. Women have to work for someone else and can't be entrepreneurial.
Coded terms for "legalization" (bad) are "Nordic Model" (make buying illegal not selling) and is also sometimes known as the "Swedish model."
Great resources to read:
- https://medium.com/@aleknielsen/nordic-model-the-ongoing-criminalization-of-sex-workers-in-northern-europe-c1df02ba94ae
- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/cas-mudde/the-paternalistic-fallacy_b_9644972.html
- https://swopusa.org/about-us/ and https://swopusa.org/resources/
- https://twitter.com/mistressmatisse/status/983646529289203713
- https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/03/does-nordic-model-work-what-happened-when-ireland-criminalised-buying-sex
- https://www.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/sg_to_challenging_nordic_model_prf03.pdf
- https://www.thenation.com/article/amnesty-international-calls-for-an-end-to-the-nordic-model-of-criminalizing-sex-workers/
- https://www.vox.com/2015/8/18/9166669/why-legalize-prostitution
Great people to follow are: