The Sex Work Decrim team focused on the importance of sex work decriminalization to highlight the ways in which criminalization and stigma contributes to the HIV/AIDS public health crisis in Massachusetts. This team produced a 25-minute educational film to contribute to the conversation around sex work decriminalization. The team then debuted the film at an organized symposium, complete with a panel of experts in the field to answer audience questions and create awareness about sex work decrim legislation.
The decriminalization of sex work is essential for public health initiatives, and this short documentary explores why from the perspectives of advocates, academics, and legislators. Produced in support of Massachusetts H. 1867, An Act to Promote the Health and Safety of People in the Sex Trade, GTZ MA Activist Academy’s 2021 Sex Work Decrim team aims for it to be a call to action for the Commonwealth and beyond.
Thank you to all who joined us for the DECRIMPACT symposium! Our goal for this event was to spark conversation and inform viewers about the fight to decriminalize sex work in Massachusetts. This event included panels with speakers addressing topics like public health and policy connected to sex work decrim and the lived experiences of current/former sex workers. We hope the community can check out our recorded Tea Time panel discussion, check out clips of audio from the Public Health and Public Policy panels, and view our documentary film exploring what decriminalization would mean from the perspective of academics, legislators, and former sex workers.
This panel discussed how the criminalization of sex work compounds barriers to access health, wellness, and healing. We wanted to center the term “health” in a comprehensive and holistic way that can encompass the totality of a sex worker’s experiences. Given the risk and vulnerabilities compounded by criminalization, sex workers benefit from receiving mental health care; however, we know that a constellation of individual, organizational, and systemic barriers limit care utilization.
Chauncey McGlathery speaks about how stigma creates communication barriers between marginalized communities and their health care providers.
“Stigma creates barriers, new barriers, additional barriers on both sides of the equation, right? So now, not only do you have a person who expects to be marginalized, who expects to be ignored, who expects her pain to be thought of as something we can tolerate — I mean, we have generations of physicians who believe Black people don’t experience pain at the same level. This is documented. There’s research that says this. We have generations of people with this experience. So you’re adding, anything that you add that creates more trust issues — whether it is perceived bigotry or discrimination, whether it’s based on race or gender or socioeconomic class or education, any of those barriers, it only extends the distance between the patient and the healthcare provider.
Shawn Vee identifies how the concept and legal protections around bodily autonomy in the US were never meant to apply to anyone besides cis, hetero white men, and continues to discuss to how the criminalization of sex work and the criminalization of marginalized communities feeds the prison system.
“You are an autonomous human being, you have the right to do whatever you would like with your autonomous body. But, that was never intended for certain segments of the population. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’. That didn’t mean me, as a Black nonbinary femme. That didn’t mean my cousin, as a Black trans woman. That meant cis, hetero, white males. You give everyone full autonomy and decriminalize sex work, you decriminalize sex work, what do you have to decriminalize next? When you criminalize everything that could possibly make a marginalized community better, their lives better, you give, you feed the prison system. They have bodies that they can enslave now, because ‘oh, we’re not gonna hold people in chattel bondage anymore, we’re gonna let them go’ but they never did. So all these things are connected, but we never think about them that way, because then we have to start looking at ourselves and examining our privilege”.
This panel discussed the legal nuances of voluntary sex work and explores how decriminalization impacts experiences of survival sex work, as well as human trafficking. Panelists uplifted how these decrim policies improve the safety and the overall lived experiences of sex workers. It is important to include discussion around the differences between sex work-related bills recently sent to study and what it means regarding decriminalization in MA. Through this panel, we wanted the audience to better understand the steps to create a bill and what everyday citizens can do to help support the full decrim bill in MA when it is refiled.
Representative Linsday Sabadosa speaking on how we’re at the beginning of a movement centering sex work decrim in Massachusetts.
“I think that we are at the beginning of what I consider a movement in Massachusetts. This is one the first sessions, at least in my recollection, where Sex Work has really been a topic that has been on a lot of legislatiors minds. And, in fact, we saw that with the filing of multiple pieces of legislation. So, the bill that I filed, which would be the full decriminalization piece. As well as legislation that would eliminate common nightwalking, as well as legislation that moved towards the “legalization”, “equality”, “nordic” – whatever terms you want to use – model. So we had multiple pieces in the State House, and I think that this was truly the first session that I’ve seen where legislators started to ask questions about what these different models were and what they meant, and why people were on different sides of the issue”.
Attorney Ben Klein explores reasons why LGBTQ+ organizations should care about the efforts for sex work decriminalization and the impact it will have.
“You know one of the things I think is really important to keep in mind is that questions of bodily autonomy, sexual expression, sexual liberation and how that interacts with policing, and law enforcement, and incarceration, have been issues that have been at the root of our movement for decades. It’s not, these are not new issues. We even can think back to sodomy laws, to people being arrested just for going to a bar. And more recently, we have a lot of experience in grappling with issues where there has been a combination of moral condemnation and stigmatization. And we see that in the HIV work with criminalization of HIV transmission. We’ve seen that a lot in the multi decade effort here in Massachusetts to provide access to clean needles to people who inject drugs, and the kinds of defenses that were raised to oppose that legislation, even though all the scientific education about how that would promote public health was so clear.”
In this panel, participants heard from sex workers about their experiences, learned about the impacts of criminalized sex work, and what a world with sex work decrim can look like. Panelists offered an honest account on the lived experiences of sex workers today, and what their needs are at this time as it relates to policy and community change.