Jan is #HumanTrafficking awareness month. I am a violence prevention professional, have been a crisis advocate for decades, am a sexual health educator, & also happen to be a former sex worker. Some of my SW was consensual, some out of circumstance, some coerced/trafficked.

I don’t publicly “share my story,” as I find that whole concept to be othering, exploitative, sensationalizing, & inherently/recklessly keeping people stuck in their trauma. I do provide professional feedback & guidance that blends my professional expertise & lived experience.

So I don’t share details of my experience in a linear narrative publicly for other people’s education, edification, or mobilization, bc I think that’s a gross thing to ask a survivor of exploitation to do. I do sometimes weave bits of my experience into my public work as relevant

But because I feel like so much of the HT movement gets prevention horribly wrong & weaponizes survivor voices against each other for an anti-sex work anti-porn agenda, I hope to share some of what made me vulnerable, so I can also share what would have helped.

Like many survivors, I have a high ACE score and grew up with a lot of trauma from abuse. Specifically, I got into SW consensually after going off to college and seeing what it felt like to not be abused, as a way to afford not going back home to abuse over the summer.

Things that would have helped reduce the abuse in my home:
- less stigma around #mentalhealth struggles & treatment
- free access to MH treatment
- living wages, & built-in social safety nets like Germany’s kindergeld to reduce caregiver stress
- universal healthcare (debt)

- trauma treatment for those who’ve experienced harm
- food assistance that doesn’t require you to be starving to be seen as “deserving” of help

These are real trafficking prevention.

As a child, I was sexually abused & was too scared to tell anyone. As a college student, I was drugged & raped. Reported to police & was not believed. As a young adult, I was sexually harassed and groped.

Sexual violence was normalized in my life...

...such that when I experienced it as a sex worker, it just seemed normal. I had no idea how to set boundaries, no expectation that any boundaries I set would be respected. This normalization of sexual violence made me more vulnerable to trafficking.

Things that would have helped me recognize sexual violence when I experienced it:
- child sexual abuse prevention
- a culture that believes survivors of all ages & makes it safe for them to come forward.
- a culture that holds harm doers accountable & does not tolerate abuse

- a culture that does not dismiss adolescent-perpetrated harm as “kids just being kids,” because we now know that a lot of CSA is perpetrated by youth, and that youth who get help for problematic sexual behavior are less likely to abuse again

- LE who believe survivors even when they’ve been drinking or been drugged.
- ending rape culture
- making it clear to kids that younger kids are not partners for sexual exploration
- making it clear to everyone of all ages/genders not to touch others without their consent

- increased funding for sexual violence prevention
- increased services for sexual violence services

These are real trafficking prevention.

More coming soon. I have some collards and hoppin’ john to eat.

Dang. That was good. Alright, let’s dive back in. Obviously there’s a CW for this thread for violence, sexual abuse, and rape.

It’s worth mentioning that at the time I was raped and reported to LE, I was already a stripper, which was part of why I was dismissed by the officer and not taken seriously.

Things that would have helped me feel like I deserved safety:
- reduced stigma against SWs

- belief that SWs do not deserve violence or assault on or off the job just because they sell sexuality

These are real trafficking prevention.

Between the time I was 17 & the time I was 24, I was in a handful of relationships of varying degrees of intensity/length with people 15+ years older than me. They were not all abusive, but they all had an inherent power differential that left me at a disadvantage.

The normalization of intense power differentials in relationships between adolescents & older adults (age, maturity, income, stability) made me more vulnerable to trafficking.

Things that would have protected me from normalization of power differentials:

- promoting a culture that doesn’t fetishize youth & thinness
- calling out those relationships as imbalanced
- building families & communities where young people feel beautiful, cherished, & valued for their gifts without being exploited.

This is real trafficking prevention

While in college I experienced discrimination due to being a SW. I was also struggling with navigating independence after a lifetime of complete control from an abusive home. I struggled in school and experienced a deep depression.

I went to campus wellness and was told “Don’t bother me with your problems, honey, I’m just the pill pusher.” I tried a mental health clinic & was discriminated against & judged for being a SW. After trying different treatments, meds, & therapies to no avail, I gave up.

I ended up self-medicating heavily for a few years.

Stigma against SWers & lack of access to nonjudgmental, holistic trauma treatment made me vulnerable to trafficking.

Things that would have helped:
- #harmreduction
- access to competent, holistic mental health support

- trauma-informed mental health treatment
- SW-friendly mental health treatment
- better campus mental health services

These are real trafficking prevention.

At some point my dad, who I love dearly, found out I was stripping. He found out I was dating a much older man. He decided to pull the small amount of monthly financial support he’d been offering to help me with college, & he told me this two weeks before tuition was due.

I needed to make the $ fast, and moved into other riskier forms of sex work to make tuition so I wouldn’t have to leave school. Fears over paying college tuition when my family pulled support over moral objections to SW made me more vulnerable to trafficking.

Things that would have helped:

- free or affordable college (they do it in lots of European countries, y’all)
- reduced stigma against SW
- parents who do not judge, fear, or look down on their children for sex work

This is real trafficking prevention.

At some point during this time, I experienced homelessness. I was thankfully never unsheltered. That is in part because other SW took me in. It’s also in part due to a former client I was also dating (older guy; it’s complicated) putting me up in a hotel where I lived for a time.

While homeless, I was scared and made riskier choices around my SW because I was desperate to regain some sense of financial/housing security. This made me more vulnerable to trafficking.

What would have helped:
- affordable, low barrier housing
- making sure young adults are aware of the shelter options available to them
- having better, more accessible shelter options for young adults

- having shelter/housing options available for YAs who fit broad homelessness definitions but are sheltered because they are couch-surfing or, I dunno, BEING PUT UP IN A HOTEL BY A SW CLIENT TWICE THEIR AGE

These are real trafficking prevention.

While stripping and coordinating my own SW dates (pre-backpage, no real screening available), during the times when the above-mentioned riskier choices were the only options I felt I had available, I ended up in frightening, sometimes violent situations.

Because what I was doing was criminalized, because of not being taken seriously any prior times I’d reported harm, because of all the stigma I’d been receiving regarding sex work, I did not feel safe reporting harm to LE. I didn’t think it would help. I was afraid of arrest.

Criminalization, fear, & poor community sanctions against sexual violence (especially against sex workers) made me more vulnerable to trafficking. When a 3rd party offered safety, to schedule dates for me, to cover bail if I got arrested, to have someone protect me, it seemed...

...honestly like a better deal, better protection than any LE, community agency, social service had offered me.

What would have helped:
- decriminalization of selling sex so I wouldn’t fear reporting harm or be easily manipulated by fears of arrest.
- decriminalization of buying sex so I wouldn’t take riskier clients & constantly be reassuring them that I wasn’t a cop/sting

- safe, legal screening options
- safe, legal selling venues
- reduced stigma against sex workers
- did I mention full decrim?

These are real trafficking prevention.

Strike at the roots. The roots are not #sexwork, demand, identification, or “awareness.” The roots are poverty, trauma, housing insecurity, food insecurity, lack of a social safety net, & the incessant criminalization of and stigma against #sexworkers,...

And WE CAN fight trafficking in ways that strike at these roots, reduce exploitation, & without doing additional harm to sex workers that makes them more vulnerable. We just first have to decide if we believe sex workers deserve safety & dignity. I happen to believe they do.