Say Goodbye To Backpage

[Drukpa Kunley]

The U.S. Congress just passed new laws that conflate sex work and sex trafficking.

How 'sex trafficking' just opened the censorship floodgates.

Throwing sex workers under the bus is actually the oldest profession.


FOSTA-SESTA incorrectly defines sex work and sex trafficking as one thing.


It's all about policing content. Just not racist or extremist content. Only the content Morality in Media (now known as National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a key proponent of FOSTA-SESTA) doesn't like.

Now, you'd think that in a time when YouTube is plastered with extremist videos and Instagram gives murderers room to express themselves, some legislation would come along to encourage website owners to tackle those problems. But you'd be wrong. Instead, conservative groups have rushed in to force changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA).

The changes to Section 230 are specifically designed to sweep nasty, awful sex people off the internet -- along with the very sex trafficking victims they claim to be helping.

FOSTA-SESTA (two bills Frankenstein-stitched together) is the worst thing to happen to the internet since the death of net neutrality.

In the trenches of sex trafficking and its unwilling cellmate, sex work, there's no doubt this is going to make everything much worse.

Doing something that so plainly drives the problem they're trying to solve underground -- further out of reach -- is a logic so convoluted it's nauseating.

That's because its backers and proponents waged an effective disinformation campaign.

They said it will help sex trafficking victims when it plainly won't.

They have literally combined sex work and sex trafficking under a single, catch-all umbrella.

And that includes all the at-risk populations represented by sex workers across the divides of race, gender, orientation, and social class.

At the heart of this kind of thinking, of course, is the sexist, classist belief that "prostitution is bad" (even though it's not universally illegal in the U.S.). And an underlying fundamental belief that women are unable to make their own decisions about their bodies and their sexualities. All genders and orientations do sex work. This boils down to telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies. Again.

The bill's proponents used scare tactics, like pushing histrionic child-rape anecdotes such as, "It's a sad and tragic fact: Ordering a child for sex online can be as easy as ordering a pizza."

Its pushers also harnessed the influence of Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, conservative politicians, gullible celebrities and a few greedy internet corporations.

FOSTA-SESTA was hastened along by a government that is in such a hurry to combine church and state -- their church, their state. Its proponents include Ted Cruz, John McCain, Cindy McCain, Marco Rubio, Ivanka Trump, the Faith & Freedom Coalition, the aforementioned Morality in Media/National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and politically conservative anti-sex-work groups.

It caved to the interests of that big internet money. Namely, companies like Facebook and Google who stand to gain from what the legislation will do to financially cripple smaller internet companies.

It's a lot easier to foster propaganda bubbles, strip privacy, and sell users to advertisers when you systematically remove art, culture, worldviews about gender, human sexuality, sexual health and bodily autonomy under the rubric of anti-sex algorithms "keeping communities safe."

Since the advent of the popular internet, corporations and lawmakers have tried to shove all manner of disastrous laws down our throats by hiding their true motives behind "child pornography" or "sex trafficking."

Once again, it's sex workers are who are the most abused, ignored and left behind.



Violet Blue


https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/02/...ip-floodgates/



FOSTA-SESTA, which claims to protect trafficking victims, only places sex workers in more dangerous situations.