Links and Learning: Sex Worker Rights and Youth Organizing

At the end of February, the International Women’s Health Coalition did an Advocacy in Practice training for fourteen youth sexual rights activists from around the world, in which we gave them tools and strategies to lobby at the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women (watch a video of three assessments of the experiences here. I was really impressed with this group, and also hit really hard by the powerful ideas expressed within the youth movement. First of all, it’s impressive that there is a youth movement, and there’s lots of language within it about empowerment and respect and giving youth the space to speak up for themselves and influence policy decisions that affect them.

On March 3rd I went to the International Sex Worker Rights Day potluck dinner in NYC, at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. Now that I’m working in the non-profit world, plus getting older and not involved with the sex industry in as intimate and difficult a way as before, I’m gaining a lot of perspective on the movement building aspect of sex worker rights. It is difficult to build a sex worker rights movement, to say the least. I frequently hear people make cracks about sex worker rights organizing being a lot like herding cats, and there’s a lot of truth to that. Sex workers are frequently independent-minded, competitive people who sometimes have a hard time playing well with others.

Between these two events, plus listening to youth speak up at Kink For All, I had this kind of eureka moment in which I saw the parallels between the sex worker rights and youth movements. And of course, the fact that sex workers are often youth underscores this even more: the sex worker rights movement essentially is a youth movement because sex workers are young and quickly cycle out of the biz, essentially aging out.

Although it certainly takes a large effort for youth to get their place on the world stage, especially when it comes to formation of policy, there is a language and support for this. And like I said above, it’s about empowerment and voice and choices – and when it comes to sexuality rights and education, there’s a good dose of talk about consent, information, and resistance to exploitation. Embedded in discussions of youth rights is the notion that youth are capable of being autonomous, free-thinking, and bad ass.

But when the sex industry is discussed in activist, policy, and feminist circles, this same language seems to not apply. What gives? Both youth and sex workers are disenfranchised groups – their rights and legal status (especially when it comes to issues like consent to sex) are constantly called into question. But the youth movement is years ahead of the sex worker rights movement in convincing policy makers that support is needed and valid, and that that support must enable youth to step up and state their needs. The language of victimhood built around people in the sex industry is frustrating at best, damaging and oppressive at worst.

At core, I think that this boils down to patronizing ideas about “women and children” – this of course assumes that all people in the sex industry are women (or at least, that the sexual exploitation of women is “worse” than exploitation of men or trans folks). The youth movement has done a lot to send a jolt through the systems of assumption about what it means to be young (and “dumb” and possibly also “full of cum”). The sex worker rights movement can do the same, and I think we’re on our way to doing so, but we need to put pressure on people who write about the sex industry to shift away from victimhood language. Even when people are exploited in the sex industry and are coerced into doing work that they don’t want to do, their autonomy and ability to speak for themselves and own experiences should be respected and encouraged.