Hatanaka, Ayami 2018 Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Thesis

Title: Carceral Feminism at Home in the United States: Sex Work, Legislative Influence, and Anti-Trafficking Discourse Advisor: Gregory Mitchell Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Anne Valk Released: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No

Carceral Feminism at Home in the United States Sex Work, Legislative Influence, and Anti-Trafficking Discourse

Ayami Hatanaka Advisors: Professor Gregory Mitchell and Professor Anne Valk

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts May 12, 2018

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….… 3

Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………...… 5

Chapter One – “Introduction: Listening to the World Between Carceral Feminism, Legislation,

Anti-Trafficking Activists, and Sex Workers” …………………………………………… 7

Chapter Two – “Understanding Carceral Feminism in the Anti-Trafficking Context” ……..… 38

Chapter Three – “Grounding Carceral Feminist Theory: Sex Working in Real Life” ……...… 60

Chapter Four – “Epilogue: Carceral Feminism Today with FOSTA-SESTA Signed Into

Law” …………………………………………………………………………………… 73

Appendices …………………………………………………………………………………...… 86

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………… 93 3

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thank you to Carol Leigh and BAYSWAN for their partnership, mentorship, and encouragement. Without their trust and belief in me, this thesis would not have been possible.

Each oral history interviewee entrusted me with their stories, experiences, and words, and

I will never be able to fully express my appreciation and thanks. Edith, Mariko, Cinnamon,

Victoria, Kristen, Shawnie, and Carol, thank you for your time, your space, your care, and your passion.

I cannot say thank you enough to my patient, kind, and understanding advisors, Professor

Annie Valk and Professor Gregory Mitchell, for guiding me through this process, reading draft after draft, and offering me wisdom.

I deeply appreciate the time and energy of those whom I spoke with about my ideas, including Alix Lutnick and Cris Sardina.

I extend a huge, heartful thank you to Emery Shriver and Rebecca Ohm, both of whom were invaluable in this process and walked me through countless resources and searches.

It is uncertain to me whether I would have written a thesis and become interested in research if it was not for the Allison Davis Research Fellowship. Thank you to Molly Magavern,

Bob Blay, Professor Sara Dubow, and my entire cohort who were instrumental in making my experience within the fellowship a positive one, supported me through various moments, and introduced me to a whole new world of knowledge.

My oral history interviews would have never happened without the generous support of the Collin and Lili Roche 1993 Student Research Program, and the wonderful people who make such opportunities available to students. Thank you very much for the belief in my project! 4

Thank you to my many friends who supported me endlessly and tirelessly through the process of research and writing. I am forever grateful for your open hearts, thoughtul minds, and affirming words. There are many people I could name here, but I would certainly miss someone.

Please know that if I consider you a friend, you are among the most wonderful people whom I thank here.

Claudia and Rachel, you made my senior year one I could never forget – thank you for showing me that friendships can be full of sparkling empathy and magic.

My caring and loving family, despite never fully understanding exactly what I was doing, have loved me and cheered me on from afar. Thank you very much for your love and care.

Thank you to Justinas, for the endless support, bouncing of ideas, late night teas and coffees, use of earplugs, fixing of diagrams, difficult conversations, and warm, enveloping love.

Lastly, thank you to my brilliant, amazing mother, who has sacrificed so much for me to be where I am today. She has only ever loved, cared for, and protected me. I will never be able to thank her enough.

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Preface

I am deeply proud of the work I have done for this thesis, and I strongly and firmly believe that the topic of carceral feminism within anti-trafficking discourse and sex work is one of the most challenging topics I could have chosen to tackle for this year. However, this thesis is incomplete without my acknowledging that my thesis project would look entirely different if I had the opportunity to engage in Asian American Studies during my time at Williams, either as a concentration or a major. In fact, an Asian American Studies lens through which to study carceral feminism and anti-trafficking discourse would have been a significant, important, and much needed contribution, given the ways in which Asian/American bodies are utilized by the ideology of carceral feminism and perverse humanitarianism within anti-trafficking discourse.

At one point, I had hoped to write an excavation of the experiences of queer women in

Japanese-American internment during World War II, but the lack of classes on Asian American subjects and an Asian American Studies program led me to believe that the topic was not one the academy would find important or engaging. Although the topic itself possibly may not have been feasible (which I do not know because those resources within Asian American Studies have not been available to me), I also did not have a pathway to understand how I might change or adapt the topic. I now understand that this thought process was a result of the way in which I myself have been told, explicitly and implicitly, that my histories are not worth studying.

The lack of Asian American Studies at Williams College has resulted in my lacking resources to feel seen, heard, and understood within the community. It has also taken me far too long to recognize the anti-blackness within Asian/American communities, dialogues, and narratives, as well as the fact that the model minority myth is rooted in anti-blackness. I wonder about the many other aspects and critiques of Asian/America in which I have not yet engaged. 6

The condition of students of color at Williams is one of constant erasure, demand for unacknowledged labor, and delegitimized pain. Not only would growing close to or even just having access to several Asian Americanist professors mean I would be able to see individuals like myself doing work I admire and contemplate pursuing, but it would also have been a chance to delve deeper into questions that have been brewing within me and have become articulated more clearly over the past four years.

I do hope that Asian American Sudies will be established at Williams in the coming years, perhaps even within five or ten years. I am optimistic about this possibility, and I sincerely do hope that students following me at Williams will explore some of the personally intellectual questions I continue to ask every day. This is not to devalue the work in the following thesis project, but rather to muse on the possibilities of what could have been. Thank you for reading.

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Chapter One Introduction: Listening to the World Between Carceral Feminism, Legislation, Anti-Trafficking Activists, and Sex Workers

[…T]rafficking and a lot of this discourse is really, really nerdy. I mean it's really heady. It's really hard. You really do need some kind of a degree to get through a lot of it. I actually consider myself pretty educated, but it was too hard for me. Honestly. Like it was over my head so, I remember going to a conference with Carol [Leigh] and going, 'Oh my god, this is so heady. I'm totally lost in this discussion.' […] It's really academic. It's really hard to understand. And, um. The people who are at this conference, […] Um, they were like the major players in all of the global trafficking discourse. People, blah blah blah, right? And I just felt lost, you know? Like I just felt overwhelmed and lost. And just like I was just not qualified to be there. Or something.1

When Mariko, my last interviewee, stated that she thought she “was just not qualified” to fully understand, participate in, and contribute to critiques and analyses of anti-trafficking discourse, I felt partially responsible for the jargon-heavy inaccessibility of academia. Of course, the notion that I am responsible for academia’s inaccessibility to most sex workers is preposterous, as this thesis is the first academic piece of writing of mine regarding anti-trafficking discourse that will be read by individuals who are not just my advisors.2 However, it is true that academic research and writing on the topic of conflating trafficking and sex work has largely excluded sex workers.

Such studies are much more removed in nature and exclude the thoughts and words of the sex workers who are often conflated as trafficking victims or traffickers and thereby further criminalized. When beginning to formulate the idea for this thesis project, I recalled mentors who encouraged me to find what was missing in the existing literature – what were the gaps that existed, and could I fill them? But as I wrestled with the question, I instead found myself asking who was missing in the existing scholarly works. The obvious answer was sex workers themselves.

1 Mariko Passion, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Skype, February 12, 2018. 2 I do think it is important to note, however, that through my own writing I am complicit in this inaccessibility, and this is something I hold as I continue my work as a part of the elite institution that is Williams College. 8

Hearing Mariko discuss how she felt unable to comprehend the hyper-intellectualized works critiquing anti-trafficking discourse (despite her Bachelor’s Degree from UC Berkeley and her Master’s Degree in Education from UCLA) reminded me of the original goals of my thesis project. By putting sex workers’ own voices and words in conversation with the academic analysis of anti-trafficking discourse, especially in conversation with my own critique of how anti-trafficking has become a part of and affects legal discourse concerning sex work, I aim to critique anti-trafficking discourse within interactions between the legal sphere and individuals living under US laws. This project is significant because it puts sex workers’ voices, which some have described as “just not qualified to be there,” in conversation with the intellectual conversation happening in academia, indicating it is not that academia is too difficult for some, but rather there are barriers to entry. Lastly, this thesis aims to trace the ways US legal and domestic governing spheres are guided by anti-sex work assumptions in anti-trafficking discourse and incorporate anti-trafficking discourse that imposes the logics of carceral feminism on marginalized populations.

The academic stakes of this thesis project are clear, as it directly responds to and builds on sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein’s work on carceral feminism. Bernstein defines her concept, in a broad sense, as “a vision of social justice as criminal justice, and of punitive systems of control as the best motivational deterrents for men’s bad behavior, serv[ing] as a crucial point of connection with state actors, evangelicals, and others who have embraced the antitrafficking cause.”3 My work presents a particular intervention around Bernstein’s work on carceral feminism through the oral history interviews with sex workers themselves: the interviews, in

3 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” in Signs 36, no. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 58. 9 conversation with other texts regarding the topic, indicate that carceral feminism is not only “a crucial point of connection,” for those “who have embraced the anti-trafficking cause,” but that carceral feminism as an ideology has become imbued in the anti-trafficking legislation and laws in the United States, further criminalizing sex workers and becoming a mask for other forms of state control that hide behind it.4

Literature Review

I ended every single of my seven oral history interviews with the exact same question: “If there was one thing you would like people to know about sex work, what would it be?” One of the interviewees, Kristen D’Angelo, who has not only been a sex worker for over forty years, but also spent part of that time being trafficked into forced sexual labor, replied immediately to this question without hesitation, “That sex work is work. That we’re just like everybody else. There’s no difference from us than anybody else, we’re just in a profession that maybe you don’t understand, or maybe you won’t ever understand, but that’s okay. I might not understand yours.”5 In 1979, Carol Leigh – one of the interviewees for this thesis project – attended a conference in San Francisco organized by Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media, intending to be a sort of ambassador, educating other feminists about prostitution. When discovering the title of the workshop on prostitution included the words “Sex Use Industry,”

Carol questioned, “How could I sit amid other women as a political equal when I was being objectified like that, described only as something used, obscuring my role as an actor and agent in this transaction?”6 She then proposed that the title of the workshop should be changed to “Sex

4 Through this thesis, I will discuss two such cases: immigration policy and censorship. 5 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, January 20, 2018. Because DiAngelo identifies with the term trafficking and as a trafficking survivor, I will be utilizing that term when discussing her particular experience. 6 Carol Leigh, “Inventing Sex Work,” in Whores and Other Feminists, ed. Jill Nagle (New York: Routledge, 1997), 230. 10

Work Industry,” and Leigh went on to explain “how crucial it was to create a discourse about the sex trades that could be inclusive of women working in the trades.”7 The personal nature of how this term became coined is significant to understanding this framing of prostitution as sex work.

Leigh writes: “This invention was motivated by my desire to reconcile my feminist goals with the reality of my life and the lives of the women I knew. I wanted to create an atmosphere of tolerance within and outside the women’s movement for women working in the sex industry.”8 I quote Leigh heavily here because there is no one better to explain the invention of the term “sex work” than the person who invented it herself. Yet, what is perhaps most important about this social, political, and intellectual intervention is its framing of prostitution as labor.9

When I proposed my thesis, my central research question was, “How does the Trafficking

Victims Protection Act utilize carceral feminist and perverse humanitarian ideas in the domestic sphere to criminalize sex workers?”10 However, this question assumes a direct link or line of power and influence between the written law and the experiences of sex workers. 11 If power is

7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 225. 9 For more on this notion of sex work as labor and its conceptualization as different types of labor, see: Melinda Chateauvert, Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013). Gregory Mitchell, Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual Economy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). For work from a researcher who is positioned between scholars like Mitchell and carceral feminists, consider: Deborah R. Brock, Making Work, Making Trouble: Prostitution as a Social Problem, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 10 “Perverse humanitarianism refers to NGO’s mobilization of empathy for female victims and disgust for male consumers of sex to justify the feminist repression of other poorer or more disadvantaged women in the process of ‘rescue,’” writes sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang, while introducing the concept through the case of Vietnamese sex workers. “NGOs [that target sex trafficking ] use carceral feminism tactics and notions to carry through their operation as dislocated arms of the state that, under the guise of promoting freedom, engage in exercises of rescue that mirror practices of incarceration.” My own understanding and intervention of perverse humanitarianism is explicitly placing it in the international sphere. While trying to understand perverse humanitarianism in relation to carceral feminism in the US domestic sense, as Hoang understands it in relation to carceral feminism in the international stage, I came to explicitly understand that perverse humanitarianism as a framework that works when “Americans” go overseas to “save” others. Kimberly Kay Hoang, “Perverse Humanitarianism and the Business of Rescue: What’s Wrong with NGOs and What’s Right with the Johns?,” Political Power and Social Theory 30, no. 1 a special issue titled Perverse Politics (2016): 23. 11 Although it will be defined more fully in the coming pages, carceral feminism, crudely and simply put, is a reliance on the carceral structures (such as the criminal justice system, policing, incarceration) to solve issues of 11 discursive in the Foucauldian sense, then the power/knowledge that produces carceral feminism is not a directly traceable line with immediate and obvious traces of how anti-trafficking discourse and legislation criminalizes sex work, but rather one that influences the discourse around anti-trafficking to produce the sense of a dichotomized existence for sex workers: either victim or criminal.12 Thus a more informed, aware, and critical question would be, “How do notions from carceral feminism, through anti-trafficking discourse, manifest in legislation and legislation to influence the criminalization of sex workers in the US domestic sphere?” This question is not only better suited to the realities of what the project is examining, but it is also better suited to the methods I will be using.

Trafficking and Language

Language is of the most critical importance to this thesis project. In July of 1971, Angela

Davis wrote from the Marin County Jail, “Often we tend to ignore the immense power of language over our ability to perceive what is happening around us. We should all be aware that there exists an official language whose sole function is to deceive — to distort rather than reflect reality.”13 Davis was writing about the Vietnam War and police violence as a manifestation of racist state violence and the ways language obfuscates this reality. Her words continue to ring true for a variety of issues, including that of anti-trafficking discourse. Davis writes that “People are trained to relate to the words of that language, rather than the realities hidden behind them.

Daily we are bombarded through the media with terms like ‘Vietnam,’ ‘criminals’ and ‘violence,’ all designed to call forth automatic, unthinking responses.”14 One of the critical,

gendered and sexual violence. The use of carceral feminism logic to conflating sex work and forced sexual labor implies an assumption that all sex work inherently cannot be consensual. 12 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction (London: Vintage, 1990), 21. 13 Angela Davis, “Rhetoric Vs. Reality,” Ebony 26, no. 9 (July 1971): 115 - 20, accessed March 5, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=5tsDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=. 14 Angela Davis, “Rhetoric Vs. Reality,” Ebony 26, no. 9 (July 1971): 115 - 20, accessed March 5, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=5tsDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=. 12 key ideas of this thesis project is the ways in which anti-trafficking discourse manipulates language to portray and manipulate a particular image: that of the “enslaved” white woman who is trafficked by the evil “other.” Just as Davis writes that words like “Vietnam” were (and continue to be) utilized to evoke a particular response, words used by anti-trafficking NGOs, non-profits, and government organizations, such as “sex slavery,” “rescue missions,” and

“modern-day slavery,” are shaped through media to evoke a particular image and feeling.

The language used by anti-trafficking organizations, such as the Polaris Project and the

International Justice Mission, employ a moral framework connected to carceral feminism, as opposed to a sustained critique of global labor systems and structures. For example, Polaris

Project opens their page on sex trafficking by stating, “Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery that exists throughout the United States and globally.”15 Because slavery is so often understood to be a moral issue in the United States (and is coded as inherently morally wrong), the Polaris Project frames sex trafficking as this same immoral action without having to explain the term.

This particular, morality-driven perspective results in a potent and peculiar partnership

(that is later explored) between those I will call “those who engage in and implement the logics of carceral feminism” (sometimes I may call them “carceral feminists,” but this is likely not a term they would use for themselves or with which they would identify), “Evangelical Christians who seek social control,” and NGOs/non-profit organizations and foundations. This partnership weaponizes and expertly wields this “official language whose sole function is to deceive,” (as

Davis writes) against sex workers. This language is especially powerful in influencing those in the public who reside in the political middle, not quite radical in either direction. One must speak

15 Polaris Project, “Sex Trafficking,” Polaris Project: Freedom Happens Now, last updated 2018, accessed May 2, 2018, https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/sex-trafficking. 13 the language of the state to convince the politically middle third of the population of an argument, and anti-trafficking discourse is very successful in convincing the US public that the problem is not the violent structure of global capitalism that often forces individuals to do work they do not want to do, nor is it the suffocating moralist arguments against sex work. Anti- trafficking discourse frame the mysterious, evil traffickers (often understood to be men of color) who prey on young, (usually white, sometimes Asian) women.

Such an argument is accomplished through the conflation of sex work and labor trafficking, which is foundational to the criminalization of sex work through anti-trafficking legislation. The thought behind this argument can be traced to various, older strains of thought, including early twentieth century anti-vice activism movements and the “white slavery” panic.

“White slavery” referred to forced prostitution, but its colloquial name indicates how the notion was racialized and classed, through “stories of sexual danger [that] fascinated white Americans during the Progressive Era (1900-1920), and they consumed increasing numbers of white slavery narratives in the form of plays, books, pamphlets, and magazine articles.”16 These alliances that look so strange now have long existed.

Debates about the morality of sex work resurfaced as an urgent issue during the second wave of feminism in the United States, and again later during the anti-pornography movement, as the two issues of prostitution and pornography became heavily conflated and over-simplified.

For example, one scholar, Rebecca Whisnant, who conflates the two forms, writes,

“Pornography is the documentation of prostitution. It is a technologized form of prostitution –

16 Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism 1887 - 1917, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 1. 14 prostitution at one remove.”17 By utilizing language to frame pornography as the new technological site of prostitution, Whisnant and anti-prostitution feminists had a new issue on which to focus those same debates and engage the same players. One of the most well-known anti-pornography feminist activists of the late 1970’s and 1980’s was Andrea Dworkin. Dworkin wrote several influential essays and gave many speeches regarding the issue. In one of her most well-known works, “Prostitution and Male Supremacy,” she states, “many of us are saying that prostitution is intrinsically abusive. Let me be clear. I am talking to you about prostitution per se, without more violence, without extra violence, without a woman being hit, without a woman being pushed. Prostitution in and of itself is an abuse of a woman’s body.”18 It is through this genealogy of anti-vice, anti-prostitution, and anti-pornography feminists who deeply believe that any form of sex work is abuse – and inherently rape – of a woman (or individual person) that the conflation of sex work and sex trafficking occurs.

By reviving the conflation of sex work with (sex) trafficking, those who subscribe to the ideas of carceral feminism set up a narrative of women as always exploited if they participate in the sex industry, with no accounting for the women’s own agency. Furthermore, this set up allows for carceral feminists to deny that sex work is work. Language can be further manipulated to deny the labor of sex work in anti-trafficking discourse. Many involved in anti-trafficking efforts will purposely delineate between “labor trafficking” (often referred to as just

“trafficking,”) and “sex trafficking.”19 This effort purposely refuses to acknowledge that those

17 Rebecca Whisnant, “Confronting Pornography: Some Conceptual Basics,” in Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, ed., Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark, (North Geelong: Spinifex Press, 2004), 19. 18 Andrea Dworkin, “Prostitution and Male Supremacy,” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1, no. 1 (1993): 1- 12, accessed March 3, 2018, https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1191 &context=mjgl. 19 It is helpful and important to note that there is a difference between carceral feminism-influenced anti-trafficking activists/scholars/NGOs and rights-based anti-trafficking activists/scholars/NGOs. While the latter is a midpoint on 15 who are experiencing forced labor in the sex industry forced are having their labor exploited, just the same as those forced to work on a fishing boat or in an agricultural field. All are instances of violence, manipulation, and exploitation, but only non-sex work is recognized as a labor issue.20

The word “trafficking” itself is a large part of the problem. “Trafficking” as a word is vague and nebulous – easily malleable. While some organizations define or equate it to “modern- day slavery,” others conflate it with only forced labor in the sex sector or with sex work altogether. As Zimmerman has stated, “condemnation of commercial sex is easier than having a sustained critique of the global labor system.”21 As a result, I found myself struggling with the word “trafficking.” Of course, I use it to describe the law and legal text addressing trafficking.

However, many sex worker activists prefer the term not to be used at all, preferring the term

“forced labor” or “forced sexual labor” to encompass both the exploitation occurring in other industries while simultaneously acknowledging the labor of sex work.22 Carol Leigh, in personal correspondence with me, has noted the difficulty this language causes activists. Some organizations despise the use of the word “trafficking,” while others are appalled if one does not acknowledge that trafficking does occur across the globe. Even governmental organizations that would like to work with activists like Carol identify themselves as an “Anti-Trafficking Task

Force.” I certainly do not intend to come across as not acknowledging the occurrence of forced labor, but I recognize that the use of the word “trafficking” does imply a phenomenon happening

the spectrum of conflating sex work and sex trafficking, rights-based anti-trafficking activists/scholars/NGOs do acknowledge and support the need for decriminalizing sex work and sex workers’ rights. 20 Carol Leigh notes that the San Francisco Sex Work and Trafficking Task Force is working on trying to introduce a labor framework to understand sex work as labor, but that the task force is met with legal barriers. For more information, see: Minouche Kandel, Sarah Chen Small, and Rachael Chambers, “3rd Human Trafficking in San Francisco Report: Data from 2016,” issued April 2018. http://sfgov.org/dosw/sites/default/files/3rd%20Human%20Trafficking%20Report.pdf 21 Yvonne Zimmerman, "Speaker Series Yvonne Zimmerman," (YouTube, 2016). 22 Carol Leigh, personal correspondence, July 2017. 16 on a grand, global scale by numbers of millions (which researchers have debunked) and evokes images of “sex trafficking” or “modern day slavery.”23 As of now, I have decided to use “forced sex/ual labor” and “forced labor” as much as possible, and use “trafficking,” “labor trafficking,” and “sex trafficking” when applicable as I discuss anti-trafficking legislation or when someone identifies themselves as a trafficking victim.

Carceral Feminism

The theoretical framework which guides my understanding of those who perpetuate and imbue certain ideas into anti-trafficking discourse and legislation domestically in the United

States is “carceral feminism,” a term coined by sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein in 2010.24 I understand carceral feminism to be a corrupted strain of feminist ideology which understands incarceration, criminality, the prison system, policing, and state violence as a means to achieve social control. For example, a certain line of feminist thinking (recalling Dworkin) understands all sex work to be abusive and exploitative – thus in order to expunge all sex work, an individual subscribing to notions of carceral feminism might argue for criminalizing sex work and any behavior related to it. Another individual who utilizes notions of carceral feminism might argue for the “Nordic model” (also known as the “end-demand” approach) of regulating sex work, in which selling sex is decriminalized but purchasing sex is criminalized. To mention just one reason why this approach is not favored by sex worker activists, the Nordic model results in driving the sex industry underground, putting sex workers in dangerous situations.25 In past scholarship, especially in the 1990s and early 2000’s, feminists who subscribed to the logics of

23 Gregory Mitchell, "Evangelical Ecstasy Meets Feminist Fury: Sex Trafficking, Moral Panics, and Homonationalism during Global Sporting Events," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22, no. 3 (2016): 325. 24 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” Signs 36, no. 1 (2010): 47. 25 Ronald Weitzer and Melissa Ditmore, “Sex Trafficking: Facts and Fiction,” Sex for Sale:Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry ed., Ronald Weitzer (New York: Routledge, 2010), 322. 17 carceral feminism were called “radical feminists.”26 However, this name is rather confusing, given the variety of radical feminisms that exist. As a result of this consideration, I will be referring to contemporary anti-vice, anti-pornography, anti-prostitution, and radical feminists – those feminists who seek social control through carceral means – as carceral feminists and as

“those who subscribe to the logics of carceral feminism,” since many of these individuals would likely not identify with the term. I understand carceral feminists to be the updated, millennial version of their predecessors, continuing to build the convolution and co-optation of language, working for NGOs and non-profit foundations, and partnering with politicians, wealthy philanthropists, politicians, and Evangelical Christians who seek social control as well.27 Carceral feminism manifests through the discourse of anti-trafficking in law to criminalize sex workers today.

Legislation as a framework for study This project utilizes sex work and anti-trafficking discourse as a means through which carceral feminism can be analyzed, as well as understanding anti-trafficking legislation to be a means through which ideas from carceral feminism can be implemented in law. While those involved in sex worker rights activism and research would not agree “when the trafficking issue began,” 1988 was a turning point. That year, Women Against Pornography, an anti-prostitution radical (carceral) feminist organization most famous for its involvement in the “sex wars” of the

1970s, and one of its founders, Laura Lederer, helped fund and organize a conference that would define trafficking as “globalized prostitution” and turned carceral feminists’ focus away from

26 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” Signs 36, no. 1 (2010). 27 In personal correspondence, Carol Leigh has noted, “I think it's interesting that even the well meaning anti- traffickers who are vaguely sensitive to sex worker issues still don't mind focusing 100% on black pimps exploiting young women. I am thinking of my San Francisco experience.” Carol Leigh, personal correspondence via Google Docs edits, April 19, 2018.

18 domestic pornography and toward international sex trafficking.28 By turning their attention to a seemingly humanitarian effort, carceral feminists sought to gain more credibility and collaborators. As carceral feminists further developed the rhetoric around trafficking, other groups like Evangelical Christians who seek social control over the bodies and lives of others also began to take up the issue as well. Here, I specify “Evangelical Christians who seek social control over the bodies and lives of others” to indicate that not all who identify and/or live as

Evangelical Christians are involved in anti-trafficking work. By the early 1990s, President Bill

Clinton formed the Interagency Council on Women (PICW) and named Madeline Albright and

Hilary Clinton as co-chairs. This council was essentially centralized into a “woman’s office,” and spearheaded the administration’s anti-trafficking efforts, creating space and location for governmental action.29

In the meantime, Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute and a “moral entrepreneur,” had successfully spearheaded the effort to pass the International Religious

Freedom Act in 1998. He viewed a bill on trafficking to be a “natural follow up” to this older bill.30 Horowitz pulled together Republican politicians, carceral feminist organizations, and

Evangelical Christian organizations to form a new coalition that would fight sex trafficking, which he understood while reading newspapers.31 This coalition would prove not only powerful, but zealous. Professor of Christian Ethics Yvonne Zimmerman explains this trio’s fascination:

Sex trafficking is something that Americans love to hate. By condemning sex trafficking,

28 Crystal A. Jackson, Jennifer J. Reed, and Barbara G. Brents, “Strange Confluences: Radical Deminism and Evangelical Christianity as Drivers of US Neo-Abolitionism,” in Feminism, Prostitution, and the State: The Politics of Neo-Abolitionism, ed. Eilís Ward and Gillian Wylie, Routledge Series in Gender and Global Politics (Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 70. 29 Jackson, Reed, and Brents, 71. 30 Ibid., 72. The International Religious Freedom Act created a left wing – right wing coalition of human rights and religious NGOs, granting US agencies the power to sanction countries and to protect individuals who were defined as being persecuted on account of their religion. 31 Courtney D. Campbell, “Don’t Shout Too Loud,” (Portland: Changing Directions Films, 2013). 19

we feel principled. There is something about standing firm with moral clarity against sex trafficking that is deeply, morally gratifying and personally satisfying. And I think that it’s important to connect this sense of moral gratification with Christians’ long standing and illustrious history of sexual obsession. Sex is so easily framed as a moral issue.32

This focus on sex trafficking allows policy-makers – elected representatives – to not pass other legislation regarding immigration, or even worse, pass immigration policies that are harmful or even racist.33 A prime example of a distraction might be Bill Clinton’s naming Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright as co-chairs of the Inter-Agency Council on Women (PICW).34 By naming the First Lady and Secretary of State – both women – to head this council, Bill Clinton created a distracting spectacle and reinforced their role as women within public service as always already connected to “women’s issues” regardless of their expertise. As I discuss later, many government officials who worked for PICW and subscribed to aspects of carceral feminism would later testify in support of the TVPA.35

However, it would be fallacious to believe this coalition is a new one. As scholar Brian

Donovan notes, a similar coalition existed nearly a century earlier as well: “The White slavery issue created strange alliances among socialists, anarchists, wealthy philanthropists, evangelists, suffragists, and anti-suffragists.”36 The desire for social control over the bodies and lives of sex workers has long existed and has always been racialized, gendered, and classed.37

The strange partnership between carceral feminists, Evangelical Christians who seek

32 Yvonne Zimmerman, "Speaker Series Yvonne Zimmerman," (YouTube, 2016). 33 Crystal A. Jackson, Jennifer J. Reed, and Barbara G. Brents, “Strange Confluences: Radical Feminism and Evangelical Christianity as Drivers of US Neo-Abolitionism,” in Feminism, Prostitution, and the State: The Politics of Neo-Abolitionism, ed. Eilís Ward and Gillian Wylie, (Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 70. 34 Ibid. 35 This will be further discussed in Chapter 2. 36 Donovan, White Slave Crusade, 2. 37 The beginning of the latest iteration of desire for social control over the bodies and lives of sex workers – anti- trafficking discourse – coincides with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the incorporation of Eastern European countries into the European Union. The European fervor of anti-trafficking discourse is connected to the migration of (racialized) bodies within and into the EU. 20 social control over sex workers, knowledge producers (such as academics and journalists who subscribe to the ideology of carceral feminism or the ideology of Evangelical Christians who seek social control), and non-profit foundation leaders initially can be very confusing. However, elucidating the stakeholders in anti-trafficking discourse helps to clarify what ideologies and aims are involved in shaping language, law, and how sex workers are represented. Visualizing how these groups come together can show how they intertwine and work together. In a few pages, Figure 1 will illustrate how these different types of people come together to contribute and utilize anti-trafficking discourse. Of course, some individuals and organizations involved in anti- trafficking discourse may fit into two categories. For example, Christopher Smith – the

Republican lawmaker who introduced the pre-cursor to the TVPA – would fit in both the

Evangelical section as well as the non-profit/NGO/Governmental Organization section (the section which best represents his position as a politician and as serving the public). Another example of a non-profit would include organizations such as the Polaris Project, a non-profit and non-governmental organization which markets itself as “a leader in the global fight to eradicate modern slavery,” that “disrupts the human trafficking networks that rob human beings of their lives and their freedom,” and whose motto is “freedom happens now.”38 The Polaris Project proudly states on its website that it is named “after the North Star that guided slaves to freedom in the U.S,” a point I will discuss more later39

One aspect to note is that those who engage in the logic of Carceral Feminism and

Evangelical Christians who seek social control will never overlap in the diagram. This lack of overlap is due to these two groups rarely leaving public traces of their working together, as it would damage their support base. Their support bases would likely disapprove of – or at least be

38 “About Us,” Polaris Project, last modified 2018, accessed February 26, 2018, https://polarisproject.org/about. 39 Ibid. 21 suspicious of – them working together. However, simple research into the engagement of government task forces or non-profit groups excavates their partnership and collaboration.

To understand the following diagram, note that the arrows represent action. To the left of the arrow is an example of an agent or actor who carries out the action. To the right of the arrow is an example of an action to materialize the ideology, policy, or discourse. See the next page for an example of what these arrows will look like.

22

Action to materialize

Agents/Actors

or

SEE NEXT PAGE FOR FIGURE 1. Indicates those who engage 23 in carceral feminism as a thought process (likely wouldn’t call themselves a carceral feminist).Feminism” This bubble might say, “Promoters of Carceral

Producers” include “Knowledge Academics and Journalists

Producing imagery of

producing commentary S exclude to want not do But

elling products, books, ± Producing

literature

slavery

†

data

‡

¶

Global Centurion Global

modern and Melissa Farley Melissa

$

Exodus Cry Exodus Have not come across

º

Influence Anita Botti ‰ through testifying ‹

Conflation of TVPA ¹ sex work and sex trafficking ²

See next page for footnotes on this diagram. 24

FIGURE 140

† Other examples include International Justice Mission

‡ Other examples include selling products made by those the organization identifies as trafficking victims.

± Other examples include the Polaris Project.

$ Other examples include releasing statements on raids and new policies, establishing themselves as a think tank.

Other examples include Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and Rebecca Whisnant, as well as scholars like Sheila Jeffreys in the UK.

¶ Other examples include “live tweeting raids,” creating documentaries, and writing books.

º Although I personally have not come across this intersection in my research, I did not want to exclude their existance, as it is very likely I simply just have not come across their work.

‰ Other examples include Laura Lederer and Theresa Loar.

‹ Other examples include writing about the benefits of anti-trafficking legislation, or speaking publicly about the need to “crack down” on anti-trafficking.”

¹ Other examples include FOSTA-SESTA, TVP(R)A’s, and the Palermo Protocols.

² Other examples include holding the owner of a website criminally responsible for others posting sex work ads on the site, define trafficking as including ways to ensure the safety of someone engaged in consensual sex work, criminalizing sex work, not decriminalizing sex work.

40 Thank you to Arjun Kakkar ’18 and Justinas Banys ‘19 for their help in making my handwritten diagram and notes a computer-friendly visualization. 25

Here, I detail the history of one particular anti-trafficking legislation, and later law, the

Trafficking Victims Protection Act, to help give context as to how these different factions might come together, as well as underscore how these efforts are usually bi-partisan and gain significant political support. Republican House Representative Chris Smith introduced The

Freedom from Sexual Trafficking Act of 1999, as a result of the efforts between the evangelical

Christians seeking social control and carceral feminists. This bill, in particular, “focused entirely on sexual trafficking and prostitution, defined voluntary prostitution as trafficking, provided for new and increased criminal penalties for sex trafficking, and ignored labor trafficking and male victims of any kind of trafficking.”41 As a response, Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone introduced S 600, The International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act.

The language of “women and children” was consistently used on both sides of the aisle in trafficking discourse at this time, and this terminology inherently skewed the conversation toward sex trafficking and excluded the potentiality of male survivors. However, as opposed to

Smith’s bill, Wellstone’s defined trafficking as “forced or coerced labor in the sex, garment, food service, domestic service and agricultural industries, and focused on preserving the autonomy of workers.”42

A number of conservatives and faith-based organizations, grew concerned that

Wellstone’s bill would limit the definition of trafficking to ‘forced fraud, coercion, and deception’ sensing a political weak spot due to the scandals mounting in the Clinton administration, they accused the Inter-Agency Council on Women (PICW) of supporting changes to trafficking definitions at the UN. They claimed this alternative would legitimize prostitution and hardcore pornography. The spin on Wellstone’s group as “anti-women” spread,

41 Jackson, Reed, and Brents, 73. 42 Ibid. 26 and groups from across the political spectrum, such as NOW, Planned Parenthood, Campus

Crusade for Christ, and the Heritage Foundation, protested Wellstone’s bill with letters and op- eds, arguing that it would weaken protection for women and girls.43 Due to the political campaigning around these two bills, the TVPA was passed as a compromise. The Trafficking

Victims Protection Act of 2000 was a blending of the two bills.44 The language from both bills, but especially from Smith’s version, can be traced in the TVPA, and left crumbs for the incoming presidential administration to follow. The TVPA of 2000 was hailed as evidence that there were some issues on which both Republicans and Democrats could agree. The Christian

Science Monitor praised the efforts, noting that “Bipartisan coalitions have not been a feature of the fiercely partisan 106th Congress. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle came together last week with nearly unanimous votes to curb the global scourge of trafficking in persons.”45

Although the TVPA was passed under Bill Clinton, it was signed on October 28th, 2000, just days before a presidential election.46 The bill ultimately was implemented by George W.

Bush’s incoming administration, which appointed several anti-prostitution leaders and conservatives to key roles in the newly formed TVPA offices. In 2001, Laura Lederer of WAP was hired as Senior Director for Global Projects on Trafficking in Persons for the Department of

State and from 2002 – 2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons in the State

Department. Conservative John Miller was appointed head of the State Department’s Office to

Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in 2002, despite little experience working with

43 Jackson, Reed, and Brents, 73. 44 Ibid. 45 Gail Russell Chaddock,"Congress Takes Aim at Modern-Day Slavery Traffickers in Human Cargo for Sex Trade Or Sweatshops Will Face Tougher Penalties," The Christian Science Monitor: 2, Oct 18 2000. ProQuest, acessed March 2, 2018 . 46 Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, “Summarly of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and reauthorixations FY 2017,” https://endslaveryandtrafficking.org/summary-trafficking-victims-protection-act-tvpa- reauthorications-fy-2017-2/. 27 survivors of forced labor.47 Numerous social workers, attorneys, and activists working with survivors of forced labor for many years across the country, but few, if any, were asked to come on board.48 Furthermore, I cannot find instances in which survivors of forced labor were consulted in formulating or implementing the bills, or offered positions at the offices. TVPA money, however, has helped the rise of groups like Polaris Project and Demand Abolition. As of this year, forty-seven states in the US have “demand reduction” programs related to prostitution, driving sex workers underground to find clients and thus putting them in more dangerous situations.49

The re-authorization of the TVPA is currently under consideration in Congress, and both liberal and conservative media sites have lauded the work and encouraged its passing.50 One of the sponsors of the 2017 TVPA is none other than Representative Chris Smith, who has coined it the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2017. Some of the changes include taking out large sections of the current law, replacing “legal guardians” with “parents,” putting

Homeland Security in charge of certain investigations, changing requirements on data collection, removing language on reports of assessment, and considering those who are “patronizing or

47Jackson, Reed, and Brents, 74. 48 Brennan, Life Interrupted, 69. 49 Ibid., 70. “Demand reduction” is similar to the End-Demand or Nordic model approach to regulating sex work, in which the clients of sex workers are often criminalized, shifting the criminalization to the client. 50 This includes websites like “The Hill,” “USA Today,” “True New Jersey,” and “Missouri Net.” Judith Kelly, “US law to combat human trafficking earns an A+, so why doesn’t everyone support it?.” The Hill. July 23, 2017, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/343298-us-law-to-combat-human-trafficking- earns-an-a-so-why-doesnt. Emma Kinery, “House passes sweeping overhaul of law to combat human trafficking.” USA Today. July 12, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/07/12/house-passes-sweeping- overhaul-law-combat-human-trafficking/473550001/. Jonathan D. Slant, “Trump backs N.J. lawmaker’s fight to end human trafficking.” NJ.com. July 13, 2017, http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/07/nj_lawmaker_in_spotlight_as_house_fights _human_tra.html. Alisa Nelson, “U.S. House passes Missouri Congresswoman’s sex trafficking bill.” Missourinet. July 13, 2017, https://www.missourinet.com/2017/07/13/u-s-house-passes-missouri-congresswomans-sex-trafficking-bill/.

28 soliciting as an adult” as trafficked but also subject to arrest.51 The changes in the proposed bill suggest that the influences of the original TVPA, and its precursors, are strengthened under a

Trump administration and the dangers of such narrative production and conflation are potent.

Targeting sex workers under the guise of solving the “trafficking issues,” is low-hanging bi- partisan fruit for a government that desperately needs it.

The 2000 version of the TVPA outlines its purposes as “[…] to combat trafficking in persons, a contemporary manifestation of slavery whose victims are predominantly women and children, to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.”52

While this initial phrasing appears harmless enough, the focus on women and children is notable.

But as the text continues, it becomes more alarming.

Many of these persons are trafficked into the international sex trade, often by force, fraud, or coercion. The sex industry has rapidly expanded over the past several decades. It involves sexual exploitation of persons, predominantly women and girls, involving activities related to prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and other commercial sexual services. The low status of women in many parts of the world has contributed to a burgeoning of the trafficking industry.53

This phrasing of the bill begs the question of how one will possibly be able to differentiate between an individual who has been trafficked (or is experiencing forced sexual labor) and one who has worked in prostitution because they have chosen to do so.54 The problem with such a bill is its roots in the rescue industry itself. The notion that a higher authority must be able to delineate the two to restore justice and order stems from patriarchal notions of (women’s lack of)

51 Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2017. S.1312. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate- bill/1312/text

52 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Pub. L. No. 106-386. 114 Stat. 1465, (2000). 53 Ibid., 4. 54 In order to mediate the weight put on this term, “choice,” it is important to note that there are individuals whose first-choice of work is not sex work, but choose sex work due to limited resources and access to other types of labor and pay. 29 agency. Thus a more aware and helpful question would be one asking what forces and situations lead to asking such a question; why there is stigma attached to sexual labor, why and how individuals are forced into labor, and a plethora of other, critical questions. The language of this section clearly highlights the sex sector in a manner that purposefully conflates consensual sex work with forced labor in the sex industry. This bill conjures images of sexual violence by stating, “Victims are often forced through physical violence to engage in sex acts or perform slavery-like labor. Such force includes rape and other forms of sexual abuse, torture, starvation, imprisonment, threats, psychological abuse, and coercion.”55 Even through just the introduction, the language of the TVPA clearly defines trafficking solely as sex trafficking, erasing the experience and need of those exploited in other sectors, such as the agricultural fields of the

United States or on fishing boats in the Pacific. I am not alone in this analysis: although different in their understanding of legal approaches to trafficking, legal scholar Gonzalo Martinez de

Vedia notes that:

In line with the concurrently drafted United Nations Palermo Protocol to Present, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, the TVPA encompassed all forms of trafficking. However, in a telling introductory clause, its authors memorialized their expectations that when it came to ‘this contemporary manifestation of slavery,’ the victims would be ‘predominantly women and children,’ a demographic disproportionately affected by sex trafficking. […] In a country where 92% of constituents believe human trafficking victims ‘are almost always female,’ the political coalitions necessary to sustain the now four-time authorization of this anti-trafficking law would have to respond first and foremost to that public perception, real or imagined. Accordingly, the last of these TVPA iterations passed Congress as an amendment to the 2013 Violence Against Women Act.56

In short, the TVPA has institutionalized the ideology of anti-prostitution, carceral feminists and

55 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Pub. L. No. 106-386. 114 Stat. 1465, (2000), 4. 56 Gonzalo Martinez de Vedia, “Labor Trafficking: The Garcia Case and Beyond,” in Human Trafficking: Emerging Legal Issues and Applications, ed. Nora M. Cronin and Kimberly A. Ellis (Tucson: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company, Inc., 2017), 5-6.

30

Evangelical Christians, while providing monetary support and political power to push such narrative and ideology abroad in a neoimperial manner, driving the United States to a star role in anti-sex trafficking circles.

Methods

Cinnamon Maxxine: I feel most at home with other sex workers. Or at least my friends who used to be sex workers. But I often feel like because I'm not educated, because I don't have formal education... No, actually. I don't feel like it's ever really with other sex workers. I feel like it's with people who come into... Like voyeurs and things like that. People at – it's the people at the conferences, it's the people at the sex worker film and art fest that are not sex workers, that are like doing something for their, like, doing some research on us for a project, like –

Ayami Hatanaka: So, me! [laughs]

Maxxine: [laughs] Yeah! Well not like one you're doing, but also, I also feel the major difference between those people, they're not actually trying to reach out and talk to people individually. They're just there in those spaces. And that's the major difference. I appreciate you came and talked to me. Like you came to my house. You're reaching out to talk to us on an individual level, rather than just going to a thing where you can, where you just see the generalization of what, of what our community looks like. That's one major difference right there. And it's so simple to email somebody, or give somebody your card and let them come to you, or say 'Hi, I'm here, I didn't know where else to meet sex workers. I'm not going to stay for this workshop, I just want to leave a pile of my cards right here. Reach out if you want. Goodbye.' and make yourself known.57

One of the most technically difficult aspects of this project has been making sure my work was as ethical and confidential as I could make it. Talking with Cinnamon about how they have seen academics and non-profit organizations try to come into spaces intended for sex workers and obtain information in intrusive forms, I finally realized just how important it was for me to take every step in this project carefully and with deliberation.

Archival Work

57 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. The interviewee has lightly edited this transcript for clarity. Editing is not for content, but rather to take out extraneous filler words such as (but not limited to) “like,” “um,” and “you know.” 31

The first research methodology for this project was a search for archival government documents. I wanted to understand how the hearings and the process of legislation worked for anti-trafficking discourse like the TVPA. I later do a close reading of an exchange between an expert witness and a congressman to illustrate how carceral feminist logic becomes a base and reasoning for anti-trafficking discourse. Additionally, I pulled from primary sources such as newspaper articles from the late 1990s and early 2000s. This moment is when anti-trafficking discourse moved from a rhetorical tool of the anti-prostitution wing and became codified into governing definitions, law, and public discourse.

Oral History

I chose to conduct oral history interviews as a significant source for my thesis because I noticed that the perspective and voices missing from the academic conversation was that of sex workers themselves. Of course, there are several notable sex worker-scholars, but the visible sex worker-scholars are far and few between, becoming tokenized by the academy.58 Furthermore, I wanted part of my work to demonstrate that sex workers do not need academics to articulate their thoughts and arguments, and that in fact it has long been sex workers who have given academic researchers their ideas. Although I was still present as the interviewer, oral history interviews provided a method and a means through which the sex workers’ voices were centered. I also thought it would be important to record and archive the voices of the moment, from those who might not have written much or might not have left much behind. I strongly believe that every single being has an important life story to tell, and I wanted to record several as a part of this research project.

58 It is important to note that many sex worker scholars do not reveal their sex work experience, as it may impact their trajectory within the academy. Carol Leigh, personal correspondence via Google Docs edits, May 1, 2018 32

A big disappointment on the part of this thesis is my inability to archive the interviews. A large part of the Fall Semester was dedicated to this endeavor, as archiving and making sure the interviews are accessible for sex workers, other researchers, and my own accountability were my goal in finding such an institution. While Williams would have accepted the interviews, I wanted to be sure the information in the interviews would be safe during whatever political moment and easily accessible to the wider sex worker communities. I had begun to reach an agreement with the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, when I was informed that the university would not take interviews that were anonymous or had an alias attached to it. This compromised my entire plan, and I decided it was in the project’s best interest if I postponed finding the right the archival site for these interviews. It is possible such a place does not quite exist yet.

Ethics

Doing academic research with sex workers is not a task to take on lightly. There is a long history of academic researchers taking advantage of and exploiting sex workers for their stories, experiences and knowledge, without compensation or acknowledgement.59 I decided to be, and continue to be, staunchly working against becoming a member of that group of academics.

Rather, much of my thesis work was spent making sure every interviewee fully understood my plan and was comfortable with every step of the process. One such step was establishing commitment to transparency with the interviewees. This also included going through the IRB approval process, which was not required for Oral History, but felt right to complete. Consent forms, informational sheets, and archival consent forms all needed to be typed up and approved.

59 Susan Dewey and Tiantian Zheng, Ethical Research with Sex Workers: Anthropological Approaches (New York: Springer, 2013), 5. 33

Offering to go over any form or informational sheet, to answer any question asked, and to offer the option of anonymity were critical to this commitment to ethics as well. For example, I didn’t think it was right for someone to not be able to participate and share their story without the option to remain anonymous. Being an anonymous oral history interviewee does not make anyone more or less valuable, but rather it provides kernels of information as to the individual’s circumstances. However, the University of Kentucky’s Oral History Center and I disagreed on this point, and I was no longer comfortable archiving these interviews there.

Additionally, I followed up with the interviewees in two ways. First, I sent them the audio file and transcript of the interviews, and second, I sent them the pages in which they are quoted and/or cited to look over and make sure I was not misinterpreting their words. However, this final step has been complicated by the passing of FOSTA-SESTA.60 I emailed all the interviewees to make sure it is okay for me to email them all of this information, and there are several individuals who requested that I send their materials in another format. In fact, given the current climate created by FOSTA-SESTA, one of the interviewees requested I no longer contact them as they trusted me holding their words and trusted me to interpret their quotations correctly, but did not want to have extraneous traces of contact tying them to my thesis. I share this to underscore just how tense and dangerous merely discussing the issue of sex work can become due to the passing of anti-trafficking legislation imbued with the logics of carceral feminism.

Not compensating the interviewees for their time and efforts seemed wrong to me, so I consulted with Carol Leigh of BAYSWAN. BAYSWAN generously offered to establish a funding project so each interviewee could be provided with a fifty-dollar Visa gift card at the end of each interview. I am deeply grateful to BAYSWAN’s kindness and generosity, which allowed

60 FOSTA-SESTA will be discussed further in the epilogue. 34 me to conduct my research in a way that would help me work better with the interviewees.

Although in other disciplines or topics this might be unethical to do, I found that my willingness to compensate the interviewees led to a better understanding of how they work, as well as a deeper trust bond because they understood I did not take their knowledge, time, and experience for granted.

Lastly, I made a concerted effort in interviews to ask questions without imposing my own interpretations or critiques of an issue. This was perhaps one of the harder aspects to handle because I was unable to practice realistically beforehand, and questions are often made up on the spot. However, because the data of the oral history interview not only depends on the interviewee, but also the interviewer, it is critical to this project that I did my best in asking questions without leading or imposing.

Field Work Site

A significant part of the project was the oral history interviews I conducted during Winter

Study in the California Bay Area. I chose the Bay Area for two main reasons. The first is connections. Through Professor Mitchell, I was able to establish a connection with Carol Leigh.

Arguably one of the most well-known sex worker activists, Leigh is credited with coining the term “sex work.” As oral history (and other interview-based methodologies) dictates, before conducting interviews, it is of vital importance to make connections, explain the project, and be within a community to gain experience as well as the community’s trust. Two weeks of my summer was spent in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, meeting people for meals and

(surprisingly) in a comedy club introducing myself, explaining my project, and asking for people’s honest thoughts and critiques. A second reason is the “liberal” reputation the area has.

One of the intriguing parts of the archival side of research has been the liberal whole-hearted 35 jump to embrace carceral feminism, despite many people’s insistence that liberalism truly has marginalized people’s interests at heart. If my interviews reveal the violence and carceral state that exists in a liberal area like the Bay, then one can only imagine the impact in more conservative parts of the country.

Interview Process

The interview process was relatively straightforward for this project. I first was in contact with Carol Leigh, who was then able to connect me to various sex workers around the Bay Area.

As the executive director of BAYSWAN, she is highly connected in that regard. However, I specifically requested that Carol connect me with as diverse a group of sex workers as possible, so that I may have as wide a range of interviews as possible and a group that might give the project a better understanding of varying experiences of sex work in the Bay. Diverse representation has been central to Carol’s current work as an arts curator (for example, in her curating the Sex Worker Film Festival), and she was invested in this project since she felt that this project was needed by her sex worker community. I contacted each person and made some connections on my own when I attended the Sex Trafficking Conference in Hawai‘i during

Winter Study. I contacted a total of eleven sex workers, of whom seven agreed to be interviewed.

The interviewee and I arranged the details of the interview beforehand – where and when was up to the interviewee, and I recommended we do the interview wherever they felt most comfortable. Although this encouragement ran the risk of lower-quality recordings, I decided it was ethically required to accommodate the interviewee as much as possible. For this reason all of the interviews were done in homes. For two of the interviews, the interviewees insisted on inviting me to participate in the Sacramento Women’s March on January 20th and participating in the march together helped to solidify our relationship and build more trust between me, the 36 interviewer, and them, the interviewees. In one interview, the heavy breathing of a French bulldog can be heard throughout the recording, and, in another interview, roommates enter and exit the room several times. However, I noticed that the more comfortable the interviewee was, the more they opened up to me.

Positionality

Before I begin the rest of this thesis, I find it academically, intellectually, personally, and ethically important to establish my positionality within this project. I should make it clear that I have never been a sex worker thus far, and this positions me as an “outsider” to the community, as Sociologist Nancy Naples has established in the “insider/outsider” debate.61 Although there are notable disadvantages to being an “outsider” to the Bay Area sex workers community, I worked hard over the summer and during Winter Study to establish long-lasting connections and trust with both the individuals and the community. I take my invitation to a City and County Sex

Work and Trafficking Task Force meeting to be one example of the unseen and intangible work I put in to be trusted. However, I intellectually and personally believe that the trust also came from the vulnerable honesty and truthful respect with which I interacted with all the interviewees and made abundantly clear how I understood myself to be engaging with the material in this process.

It is also crucial to acknowledge that I was entering the interviewees’ spaces as a student writing a senior thesis at Williams College, one of the most elite institutions of higher learning in the

United States – this is a dynamic that I held and acknowledged as I conducted interviews, and it is one that should be held when reading this thesis.62 Furthermore, the markers of identity on my body, being an able-bodied, cis-gender Asian American woman, plays a role in each of the

61 Nancy Naples, Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research (New York: Routledge, 2003), 49. 62 It is also important to acknowledge that I write this thesis at Williams College on stolen Mohawk and Mahican land, and that I have significantly benefitted from being a student at Williams College. 37 interviews I conducted. The gendered, racialized, classed, and embodied aspects of the interviews should be actively held, acknowledged, and incorporated.

I understand my role in this project to be that of a facilitator and analyst, to make observations about how carceral feminism violently affects so many individuals within a marginalized population. Rather than be the central voice or figure within this academic conversation, I aim to be just one of many that I bring together for the sake of clarity and understanding of context, clues, and information. My goal is to write a thesis that is not only informative and interesting, but also one in which I demonstrate how oral history can be collaborative, innovative, and a unique tool to deconstruct oppressive and violent frameworks.

38

Chapter Two Understanding Carceral Feminism in the Anti-Trafficking Context

I used to do a lot of sensual massage out of the hot tubs, like Berkeley Hot Tubs and San Francisco Hot Tubs, and then the cops started just hanging out at the hot tubs. They were like surveying, sitting right outside, hanging out in the lounge, like, so I had to stop. […] I’m coming here all the time with different guys, obviously, so. And I like, I don’t remember what I did after that. I think that’s when I started working at the brothel, actually. And I was only doing sensual massage then, and then I went and worked at a brothel and was doing full service and stuff, so it was funny like the [laughs] irony of the cops forcing me to do more intense sex work, but… [laughs].63

Edith’s words, weaving together part of the story of her moving in and out of full service work as a sex worker, perfectly illustrate why carceral feminism will never be the answer to achieving safer working conditions for sex workers. Carceral feminist ideas have led to politics that bring together the police state, private institutions (like non-profit foundations), and the prison industrial complex, and this system only pushed Edith into more sex work. This project utilizes sex work as a case study through which to understand carceral feminism, and it is important to discuss and critique carceral feminism on a larger scale not only because of the impact it has on sex workers, but also because of the ways in which it contributes to criminalization within a larger and growing neoliberal society. For example, the criminalization (as opposed to rehabilitation) of individuals who sell and/or use illicit drugs results from carceral logic and the carceral state.64 By examining how the theoretical framework of carceral feminism is at work in anti-trafficking discourse within the United States, I offer a point from which past, present, and future criminalization of individuals can be understood.

Edith’s example at the beginning of this chapter is just one of many: a sex worker may find that legislation has made it illegal for websites like Backpage.com or Craigslist.com to host

63 Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 64 Beth E. Richie, “Arrested Justice: Black Feminist Reflections on Carceral Feminism and Prison Abolition,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei4mJV9k4Wc. 39 advertisements for sex services by holding the owner of the site responsible for “criminal activity.” This legislation results in sex workers having to search for other ways to find clients and screen them for safety.65 Often, the sex worker may lose the ability of running their business independently and may even have no choice but to work on the streets with no way of screening clients for safety,. In this case, the law passed (intending to protect people through carceral feminist logic) leads to more people put in danger and likely hurt. The system carceral feminism helps to construct in the U.S. also leads to an endless cycle in which sex workers might find themselves trapped:

[FIGURE 2 on the next page]

65 Alana Massey, “If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities,” Allure, March 7, 2018, https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-celebrity-psa. This example comes from the FOSTA-SESTA package bill (“Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” and “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) which passed through the US Senate as a part of the on March 21st, 2018. The 45th President of the United States signed this bill on Wednesday, April 11th, 2018. 40

FIGURE 266

66 Thank you to Justinas Banys ’19 for making my handwritten drawing, notes, and ideas into a digital diagram. 41

The earliest instance of “carceral feminism” used in academic writing I could find is from sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein of Barnard College. In a 2010 article, Bernstein defined carceral feminism as, “a vision of social justice as criminal justice, and of punitive systems of control as the best motivational deterrents for men’s bad behavior, serv[ing] as a crucial point of connection with state actors, evangelicals, and others who have embraced the antitrafficking cause.”67 It is important to note that for carceral feminists, men, rather than larger systemic issues or global structures of violence, are the source of the problem, – this inherently genders “sex trafficking”: in many carceral feminists’ conceptions, commercial sex can only be heterosexual, women and girls are the victims. Perhaps one of the most well-known carceral feminist activist- academics, Melissa Farley (trained as a psychologist), wrote in a recent journal article,

Some of the basic lessons they [self-defense for women] teach us are not to walk alone at night on dark deserted streets, not to get into cars with strange men, not to pick up guys in a bar, not to even let a delivery man into your home when you’re by yourself. Yet this is what the “job” of prostitution requires; that women put themselves in jeopardy every time they turn a trick. And then we ask, ‘How do you prevent it from leading to danger?’ The answer is, you can’t. Count the bodies.68

Here, Farley constructed the woman prostitute as always already raped and dead. For her, there is no other possible existence for a sex worker. If carceral feminism is working under this assumption, then of course the police would not be imprisoning sex workers because in carceral feminist logic, the sex worker is visibly and easily recognizably a victim – for those who utilize the ideas of carceral feminism, if a sex worker does not look like how they envision a victim, then they must be a perpetrator. Exploitation of queer folks, trans and gender non-conforming folks, men, and boys is largely ignored because their possible experience of forced labor

67 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Se, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” Signs 36, no. 1 (2010): 58. 68 Melissa Farley, "Risks of Prostitution: When the Person Is the Product." Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 3, no. 1 (2018): 97.

42 complicates carceral feminists’ argument for more control by the police state over the lives of others. Carceral feminist logic argues that prostitution, no matter how consensual, is inherently the rape and violation of women and girls because it is based on patriarchal structures. Because carceral feminist logic is based on the radical feminist ideology of gender essentialism, trans individuals and cisgender men cannot fit into this framework.

Bernstein later carefully noted who largely constitutes this category of “carceral feminist,” and whose lives carceral feminists seek to control. Recalling Gayatri Spivak’s

“famous formulation regarding gendered logics of postcolonial politics” in “Can the Subaltern

Speak?” Bernstein wrote, “in contemporary anti-trafficking campaigns, it is white women who have joined forces with key sites of institutional power in order to save brown women from brown men.”69 Bernstein clarified that these white women are largely of the professional and middle classes. This class difference between those who advocate carceral feminist ideas and those who engage in sex work for survival and for work, combined with the privileges of being white in the United States makes the motives of carceral feminism inch into focus. 70 Those who advocate carceral feminist ideals benefit from and protect their own societal status through this rhetoric. As Bernstein argues:

As members of the class fraction that is most likely to reap strong material and symbolic rewards from marriage, anti-trafficking activists are heavily invested in the maintenance and reproduction of this status and are ready to enlist the state apparatus on behalf of the

69 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Carceral Politics as Gender Justice?: The ‘Traffic in Women’ and Neoliberal Circuits of Crime, Sex, and Rights,” in The War on Sex, ed., David M. Halperin and Trevor Hoppe, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 302. 70 It is necessary to acknowledge that there are middle to upper class women who also participate in the sex industry but are largely not subject to the consequences of criminalization in the same way other individuals are, as Edith mentioned in her interview with me. Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. “Edith: Oh, I’m not even worried about the law when I’m doing sex work. I’m so privileged. I’m not on the front line. Hatanaka: In what ways are you privileged? Edith: Well, I’m white, and I’m cis, and I’m older, and I only work – I mean, at this point I don’t even advertise anymore. But I was only -- Hatanaka: Just all regulars? Edith: Yeah, but I was only, I was only advertising online. I mean, I never worked the street.” 43

gendered and sexual interests that are most pertinent to themselves: a version of ‘feminist’ family values that is premised upon liberal understandings of formal equality between women and men, and the safe containment of sexuality within the pair- bonded couple.71

The different analytics happening within carceral feminism can be confusing and the theory far removed from the lived realities of sex workers. However, it is important to know the mechanisms beyond who carceral feminists are. If Bernstein’s writing on white women’s motivations for adopting carceral feminism is unclear, context will help. Because carceral feminism is a way of thinking and a mode of operating that can easily be mistaken for aiming towards justice and equality, it can mask the ways it is a tool for the neoliberal apparatus of the

United States.

This larger system of neoliberalism, of which carceral feminism is a part, aims to economize individuals and place institutions in positions of power. Professor Wendy Brown of

UC Berkeley, has noted that “[…] the point is that neoliberal rationality disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities — even where money is not at issue — and configures human beings exhaustively as market actors, always, only, and everywhere as homo

[o]economicus.”72 For carceral feminism, anti-trafficking discourse, and sex work, this neoliberal ideology is at work in several ways, particularly through this notion of homo economicus.

Bernstein has explained that for carceral feminists, protecting the family unit as “premised upon liberal understandings of formal equality between women and men, and the safe containment of sexuality within the pair-bonded couple,” boosts the value of their own (or future) pair-bonded

71 Bernstein., “Carceral Politics as Gender Justice?: The ‘Traffic in Women’ and Neoliberal Circuits of Crime, Sex, and Rights,” 305-6. 72 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, (Cambridge: MIT Press, Zone Books, 2015), 31. N.B. Brown stylizes this term as “homo oeconomicus,” explicitly including the “o” at the beginning of the second word. For the purposes of clarity in this thesis, I will be referring to the same term as “homo economicus.” 44 coupling. By becoming a part of a (usually heterosexual) middle-to-upper class couple, individuals can increase their own value – whether through social capital, a specific form of stability and care within their life to focus on career aspirations, combined income and tax breaks, or a combination of many possibilities. Thus protecting this model of relation under a neoliberal state apparatus makes sense for those who utilize carceral feminism ideology, albeit violent due to the harm it inflicts on others. Notions of sex trafficking are a tool through which this model can be maintained. Individuals who subscribe to notions of carceral feminism deny that there might be something wrong with global systems of labor when the neoliberal apparatus works so well with a hyper-capitalistic market – thus sex trafficking can only be a result of “bad men,” who must be stopped. Of course, this notion of “bad men” is usually racialized. However these formulations erase any possibility of consenting, adult sex workers. Sex workers push against, or even deconstruct, the earlier-cited notion of the “safe containment of sexuality within the pair-bonded couple” in multiple ways. The sex worker in a stable partnership is not containing their sexuality within the pair-bonded couple, and if they have a client who is also within a pair-bonded couple, that interaction also violates the value structure. Sex work proves to be a problem within a neoliberal society and therefore carceral feminists must attempt to abolish it. Because in a neoliberal society one must economize the self to the highest possible value, the abolishment must come through the narrative and optics of “saving” other(ed) women. In her oral history interview, Carol Leigh notes that “Sex work was a problematic term for them

[carceral feminists/anti-prostitution organizations]. It meant something could be – there was some possible choice. Even if you call it work, it’s – sex work is supposed to be rape according them, there’s no work. It’s just various forms of rape.”73

73 Carol Leigh, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 19, 2018. 45

Of course, carceral feminist logic, while identified within the work of politicians; lawmakers; and policymakers, largely stems from the work of scholars, activists, and organizations who initially cultivate and introduce the ideology. Such individuals and scholars include Laura Lederer, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin (cited in the previous chapter), and organizations such as International Justice Mission, the Polaris Project, and the Coalition Against

Trafficking Women (CATW). The movement of carceral feminist logic to law and policymakers from those who articulate it is an important one to track: (as Figure 1 showed) it elucidates the partnership between politicians and carceral feminists, while also highlighting how the theoretical framework is made tangible in law.

It is precisely through anti-trafficking discourse that carceral feminist ideology makes its way into lawmakers’ rhetoric. By framing sex workers as either helpless victims in need of state protection or manipulative villains in need of retribution through the criminal justice and prison systems, carceral feminists can utilize carceral structures to wield social control. I would argue that one of the most instrumental carceral feminist scholars and activists in constructing the links between (sex) trafficking and sex work during the late 1990s and early 2000s was Laura Lederer, who was then the Research Director of The Protection Project at Harvard University’s John F.

Kennedy School of Government. Lederer testified in at least two congressional hearings regarding aspects of the TVPA, once in June of 1999 and again in September 1999.74 In

The interviewee has lightly edited this transcript for clarity. Editing is not for content, but rather to take out extraneous filler words such as (but not limited to) “like,” “um,” and “you know.” 74 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 1. Committee on International Relations House of Representatives, Trafficking of Women and Children in the International Sex Trade: Hearing Before the Subommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, 106th Cong., 1st sess., September 14, 1999, 3. Based on the records of hearings I could find. It is possible that Lederer appeared at other hearings regarding the TVPA as well. 46 beginning her June 1999 testimony, Lederer stated, “The purpose of the Protection Project is to build a comprehensive database of laws and related materials on the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children.”75 After listing a number of endeavors the project undertakes to meet their purpose, Lederer offered a glimpse into the relationship between lawmakers and carceral feminist work: “And, finally, we’re examining the range of penalties, defenses to the charges, sentencing patterns, extraterritoriality and extradition treaties and agreements, and law enforcement capability, victim assistance programs where they exist, and other related matters.”76 Here, Lederer linked together the ideas of carceral feminism with those of law and policymakers by showing the policymakers that looking at “penalties,” “sentencing,” and “charges,” are means through which trafficking can be effectively combatted. Furthermore, by being under the name Harvard University, the work of the Protection Project gains significant legitimacy. It is curious that the hearing is for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in

Europe. Such hearings indicate the validity of and support my claim that carceral feminism as an ideology can be utilized to mask underlying work (or lack thereof)` on other issues of state control, such as immigration policy and national security.

The language and argumentative framework of carceral feminism thus becomes adopted by the very same politicians who listen to those who subscribe to the ideas of carceral feminism speak, read their information sheets, and partner with them to create such legislation. In a later hearing, Representative Christopher Smith, who introduced and sponsored the TVPA, opens=ed the proceedings with, “Trafficking in human beings is a form of modern-day slavery. When a woman or child is trafficked or sexually exploited by force, fraud, or coercion for commercial

75 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 20-1. 76 Ibid., 21. 47 gain, she is denied the most basic human rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of

Human rights […].”77 Frustratingly, Smith utilized the criminalization of sex work in the US and most European countries by citing what his bill would inevitably replicate: “Ironically, it is the women who are trafficked who end up being arrested in brothel raids, locked up, and then deported as illegal immigrants […].”78 A Wall Street Journal article from May of 2000 cited

Kansas GOP Senator Sam Brownback as it claimed:

The new global economy, with its open boarders, migrating populations and visions of new riches, is spawning a boom in international sex trafficking. In this dark netherworld, girls are duped by traffickers into leaving their poverty-ridden homes with promises of money abroad, moved across borders, then trapped in a life of prostitution without the money or legal help to escape. This sex trafficking constitutes ‘the new slavery,’ Sen. Brownback says.79

Brownback not only utilized the very same language that Smith does, but he mirrored Lederer and organizations like International Justice Mission (IJM) and Coalition Against Trafficking

Women (CATW) in framing the issue as “modern day slavery.” What is even more fascinating about these hearings is not a single individual who identifies as a sex worker testified and neither did anyone from an organization who works with sex workers.

Carceral feminist logic is not particularly invested in the issues of other forced labor, or what those in anti-trafficking discourse might call “labor trafficking” or sometimes “human trafficking,” because those types of labor (which includes but is not exclusive to agricultural, factory, and domestic labor) are not socially unacceptable to them and are harder to frame as a moral violation in the US without overtures of sexual violation. For example, in her assessment

77 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 1. 78 Ibid. 79 Gerald F. Seib, "Sex Trafficking: The Dark Side of New World,” Wall Street Journal (1923 - Current file): 1, May 17 2000, ProQuest, accessed March 2, 2018. 48 of the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report (a product of the TVPA), Laura Lederer writes,

“Governments around the world must institute and enforce laws with strong penalties for end users, while protecting those women and children trapped in the sex trade.”80 Although she earlier notes that examining “the demand side of human trafficking” is important to her organization, “whether labor trafficking, sex trafficking, or organ trafficking,” she never once mentions those other forms of exploitation except as “forced labor and sex slavery.”81

Furthermore, “carceral feminism,” in some ways, can be understood as a new name for a way of thinking about women’s rights and feminism that is attractive to those in positions of privilege, but is inherently violent and lends itself to racism and xenophobia. In order to examine the ways in which this lends itself to xenophobia, I offer a close reading of an exchange during the June 1999 committee hearing between James C. Greenwood, the then Republican representative of Pennsylvania’s Eighth District and Anita Botti, who was then the Deputy

Director for International Women’s Initiatives, President’s Interagency Council on Women

(PICW), which, it can be deduced through the following hearing text, contributed significant data towards the anti-trafficking discourse within politics. I have reproduced their exchange, with brief interruptions for my annotations, as I find an important ethical practice to be that of including context of a quotation as much as possible, so the words of the speaker or writer are not misinterpreted or diluted. Perhaps more significantly, it is important to the analysis of this project to see not only what is said but also what is not said.

Mr. Greenwood: Thank you Mr. Chairman. In your testimony, Ms. Botti, you’ve made reference in numbers that over one million women and children are trafficked around the world each year and over 50,000 of these women and children are trafficked into the U.S.A. annually, primarily from Latin America, the former Soviet Union and South East

80 Laura J. Lederer, “2014 Trafficking in Persons Report – Statement by Laura J. Lederer,” Global Centurion: Fighting Modern Slavery by Focusing on Demand, July 14, 2014, https://www.globalcenturion.org/2014-trafficking- in-persons-report-statement-by-laura-j-lederer/. 81 Ibid. 49

Asia. And I think you said — you do say in the paragraph — these are conservative estimates. Could you help me understand how these numbers are derived? It’s always difficult to quantify something that’s illegal and that you’re trying to stop because an obvious question arises: if you know that there are 50,000 people coming in, how come you can’t stop it? So how and by whom are these numbers generated?

Ms. Botti: “Yes sir. First of all, they’re derived very carefully. And by whom? By our intelligence community, both domestically and internationally. I think it’s safe to say that when we started this endeavor about a year and a half ago, sir, we did not have estimates ourselves. We had estimates from NGOs working on this issue. What I think is of concern — and as someone who is a statistician I’m always, as you, concerned — where are you getting the numbers? So we sat together through the task force with the intelligence community to establish first what our scope was, because I think we had to decide that. And as you can see as I described the definition, it does transcend sexual exploitation.

So once we arrived at the scope, I think the intelligence community was able to at least give us — carefully looking at this from traffic patterns, working with our international colleagues in intelligence — they were able to give us these estimates.

The reason I suggested they’re conservative is that we wanted, because of the seriousness of this phenomena, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t being, that we were being sufficiently accurate and we weren’t being over dramatic. I think that these are safe estimates, and I usually use them, but I’m quite confident that they are under reporting.

Mr. Greenwood: “You made reference to the intelligence community. Can you be more specific? Is it the Central Intelligence Agency that derives these figures?

Ms. Botti: “It’s a subcommittee that works together on pulling this together, yes sir. The FBI, the CIA.

Mr. Greenwood: Okay, so it’s interagency?

Ms. Botti: Yes. Yes.

Mr. Greenwood: And it’s an established task force that meets periodically to do this.82

Here, Greenwood and Botti’s exchange illuminate several ways in which the work of carceral feminists becomes a part of or at least supports politician’s rhetoric regarding trafficking.

82 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 9-10. 50

Greenwood’s question to Botti is an excellent one – his intent in clarifying methods of quantification is helpful in establishing the legitimacy of Botti’s claims. In The Sedudctions of

Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking, anthropologist

Sally Engle Merry highlights the significance of clarifying and understanding methods of quantification, while simultaneously warning of the way in which over-relying on numbers can actually be harmful, especially in regards to the issue of trafficking.

Merry acknowledges why numerical quantification is so important and closely held in research and in policy, noting that “Indeed, it is the capacity of numbers to provide knowledge of a complex and murky world that renders quantification so seductive. Numerical assessments such as indicators appeal to the desire for simple, accessible knowledge and to a basic human tendency to see the world in terms of hierarchies of reputation and status.”83 However, the work in Merry’s book can be summarized through her careful caveat that ““Yet the process of translating the buzzing confusion of social life into neat categories that can be tabulated risks distorting the complexity of social phenomena. Counting things requires making them comparable, which means that they are inevitably stripped of their context, history, and meaning.”84 It is thus crucial that Congress, through Greenwood, pressed Ms. Botti to explain the methodology of the research, not just who conducted the study and produced numbers. However, all too often, words such as “institute,” “NGO,” or “study,” are coded to indicate legitimacy and authority without a second look or consideration of methodology, which may often use extrapolation and estimation.85

83 Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 1. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 113. 51

According to sociologist Ronald Weitzer, claims of numbers made by NGOs, agencies, and non-profits are largely falsified; the numbers put out by anti-trafficking activists are then reproduced by the media and subsequently picked up by the State Department.86 In 2002, the official US estimate of total trafficked individuals, internationally, was said to be four million. In

2003, the number went down to between eight-hundred-thousand and nine-hundred-thousand, and again in 2004 to between six-hundred-thousand and eight-hundred-thousand.87 Such wildly different numbers, varying even by the millions in a year, the scope and size of human trafficking is largely unknown, but most likely of smaller scope than it is often purported and then utilized as a rhetorical tool to gain support for policy with carceral logic.

This exchange between Botti and Greenwood is just one form of unseen violence the rationale of government secrecy can impose on people both within and without its borders. By naming the CIA and the FBI, Botti signaled to Greenwood and his colleagues two reasons that it was better to not push further on the question of how she obtained the numbers her office used: first, that the CIA and FBI are governmental agencies and that questioning their methods would mean questioning the US government’s authority, and second, that the CIA and FBI are sources of secure and accurate information, and questioning their methods is unnecessary, much like the

NGOs and non-profits Weitzer’s work critiques. In this manner, Botti and Greenwood replicated in the legal and political sphere the same discourse that carceral feminists espouse in the public, academic, and activist spheres – that discourse is largely based on questionable numbers and quantifications. Their exchange from the June 1999 hearing continues, without any redactions from the original transcription, below:

86 Don’t Shout Too Loud, directed by Courtney D. Campbell, (2013; Portland, OR: Changing Directions Films, 2013), GLOW. Interview with Professor Ronald Weitzer of George Washington University. 87 Don’t Shout Too Loud, directed by Courtney D. Campbell, (2013; Portland, OR: Changing Directions Films, 2013), GLOW. 52

[… Mr. Greenwood:] Mr. Smith outlined his very positive actions he’ll be taking next month overseas. I won’t be able to attend that event. I’m wondering if you could be specific at all in terms of congressional action that you recommended. I note that the Chairman has a bill. Mrs. Slaughter has a bill. Are you in a position to recommend very specific congressional action that you think we could take here in Washington that would make a difference?

Ms. Botti: Today I’m not. We, as you know, are reviewing the legislation, and I think we will be happy to come back to you formally from the department.

Mr. Greenwood: okay. Well, would you consider this a formal request that you formally do respond in that fashion?

Ms. Botti: Yes sir.

Mr. Greenwood: Because we really do need to know that that’s where we have the greatest leverage, obviously.88

Here, Greenwood referenced the fact that the issue of human/sex trafficking is a bipartisan issue.

Louise Slaughter was a Democrat who served as a representative for New York from 1987 to her death in 2018.89 The bipartisan nature of anti-trafficking (it is hard for any politician to not support a position that is heavily moralistic and has the image of forced sexual labor of children at the forefront) is partly what makes it so hard for sex worker activists to fight against such legislation and to be heard. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris from California, whose name has been mentioned as one of the most known and visible political fighters against the Trump administration and in considerations of running for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020, has long been seen as having anti-sex work views and relying on carceral feminist logic.90 Harris, as California’s attorney general, “led a charge against the free classifieds ad website, Backpage,

88 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 10. 89 “Rep. Louise Slaughter: Former Representative for New York’s 25th District,” Members of Congress, accessed March 26, 2018, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/louise_slaughter/400378. 90 Melissa Petro, “Kamala Harris’ Whorephobia Is Sadly No Surprise,” The Establishment, July 26, 2017, https://theestablishment.co/kamala-harris-whorephobia-is-sadly-no-surprise-250e52ceb3bd. 53 in spite of years of vocal resistance from sex workers.”91 Harris came up in my interview with

Carol Leigh, and the conversation about her was brief and to the point:

Hatanaka: Kamala Harris is a Democrat. Do you want to talk about her?

Leigh: No... It's not even a good story. It's just a sad story. Because, yeah she came out on the streets in front of a massage parlor against a law that we were trying to pass to decriminalize, but then that's pretty ugly of her to do it that way. But then she rescued us, with the state law, she helped us, and she was on our side with Prop 35, against Prop 35, and she -- and the California trafficking laws is probably one of the least offensive. So, I'm -- I still, I would still think she's probably completely anti-prostitution, she was trained by the anti-prostitution group when she was a DA, so.92

Leigh’s comments show that even though Harris is considered one of the newest “heroes” of the

Democratic party and has been (unfairly, but unsurprisingly due to the oppressive expectations of

Black women’s labor held by US society) tasked with protecting many folks from the violence of the Trump Administration, the issue of anti-trafficking discourse and legislation remains a complex point in her resume.

Greenwood and Botti’s exchange from the June 1999 hearing continues, without any redactions from the original transcription, below:

[… Mr. Greenwood:] Finally, there’s reference — I want to ask some questions about the mail-order-bride business, and to what extent you believe that, in terms of the United States specifically, that is a problem. And if you have any thoughts about what ought to be done about it.

Ms. Botti: This area was actually looked at very carefully in the beginning of our work, and there are pros and cons around this issue. I do believe that if they fall within the construct of our definition, regardless of whether they are or are not a mail-order-bride, they may be considered trafficked. I think it’s important here to realize that this does go on and has gone on but has not in our review raised to the level of magnitude that we’re seeing for trafficking. You know, it may indeed be going on but mail-order-brides have

91 Ibid. Note: FOSTA/SESTA and Backpage will be further discussed in the epilogue. 92 Carol Leigh, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 19, 2018. Note that when Leigh says “she rescued us,” she is using a sarcastic tone. 54 continued to be an endeavor, and when we looked at it as far as trafficking it was not meeting the level.

That is not to say that there isn’t —

Sorry?

Mr. Greenwood: You don’t think it’s the biggest source —

Ms. Botti: No sir. And I’m suggesting that if it — you know, it’s not to say that if there’s a mail-order-bride, he or she, well it’s the bride, may be trafficked. But when we looked at this, we did not find that this represented a significant amount of trafficking for us to include it.

Mr. Greenwood: Well, for these 50,000 women and children who, according to your testimony, are brought into the United States, can you talk a little bit about what you know about how they arrive, to the extent that they are illegally brought across the border? Is that the predominance of it, or do they come in through Customs and Immigration using legitimate student visas or whatnot to come through?

Ms. Botti: My understanding is that the majority do come in illegally. That is not to say, and certainly we know of cases that have come in legally and then have been picked up into trafficked rings, into rings of trafficking. This has happened both here in this country, I believe, and certainly as we see them presenting themselves overseas.

Mr. Greenwood: So it —

Ms. Botti: But the predominance —

Mr. Greenwood: To interrupt, and I apologize for doing that, but I know there are other witnesses and the Chairman would probably like me to move along here. This is new to me so I’m just trying to understand it. What we’re talking about, I assume, is women conveyed in trucks or however across the border, believing that they are smuggling themselves in with the help of someone to the United States for some purpose and then find that, in fact, when they get here they are indentured in some way or trafficked.

What is your assumption bout what the women and children think is happening to them?

Ms. Botti: Okay. Okay. Thank you. And I would like to qualify that most often they’re not — they themselves are not seen as being smuggled. I think most of these women and children, or at least in cases of women coming in, believe they’re coming in for bona fide jobs.

We see this as slightly different. Well, not slightly but as being different than someone who pays someone to smuggle them into the country knowingly.

55

Mr. Greenwood: And I wouldn’t feel any less compassionate —

Ms. Botti: No, I understand. But I do believe that the predominant of cases that come into this country and around the world are cases of women who see themselves, you know, fulfilling a job opening for dancers, waitresses, nannies, teachers, and find themselves once they’re in —

Mr. Greenwood: So they may get in a vehicle, they may cross the border, or they may walk across the border in a group or whatnot, and they’re not international constitutional scholars, so they don’t know what the laws are with regard to immigration. They come across and the next thing they now they find themselves exploited. Is that what you’re saying?

Ms. Botti: That certainly may be one of the ways they come in. There are other ways where travel agents and career employment agencies have recruited them, and so they think that they are coming in quite legitimately. This includes people who are clearly, in some cases, quite educated. So because of the high unemployment, they are looking to find jobs.

Mr. Greenwood: Well, it sounds to me, and I’ll close with this, that probably the most direct thing that the United States Congress could do would be in line with everything else that we do to try to protect the movement of illegal immigrants across the border, because that would prevent people from coming into this country to be exploited illegally as well as for a variety of other purposes.

Certainly, anything we can do to understand the problem and check the credentials and be aware of and close the pores in our border is certainly going to help these women and children who are being exploited once they come here.93

In this final, and longest, segment of Greenwood’s questioning of Botti, Greenwood focused in on the specific issue of mail-order brides to the US. However, Botti skillfully used the moment to wield carceral feminist logic. Greenwood’s initial question clearly only asked about mail-order brides, and whether the issue is one of concern in the US. Botti’s response has a circular logic, beginning with the vague intellectual “jump” to include mail-order brides as a part of her specific agency’s definition of trafficking. When Botti said, “This area was actually looked at very

93 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Sex Trade: Trafficking of Women and Children in Europe and the United States: Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 106th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1999, 10 -1. 56 carefully in the beginning of our work, and there are pros and cons around this issue,” she indicated that there is an actual debate as to whether to include mail-order brides within the definition and category of sex trafficking based on whether its inclusion is useful for their cause.

Within these few lines, it is clear that for carceral feminists, the lives of individuals are no more than mere tools for their efforts.94

Ironically, at this point in the questioning, Botti decided that understanding the differences in numbers is important. She noted that “we did not find that this represented a significant amount of trafficking for us to include it.” However, carceral feminists often respond to critiques of skewed quantitative data by saying something along the lines that even just one person experiencing trafficking is enough to validate their methods of work.95 Perhaps what is most concerning is Greenwood’s interpretation of Botti’s explanation. He noted, “So they may get in a vehicle, they may cross the border, or they may walk across the border in a group or whatnot, and they’re not international constitutional scholars, so they don’t know what the laws are with regard to immigration. They come across and the next thing they now they find themselves exploited.” And Botti responded affirmatively. Rather than understanding that labor conditions within the United States are the source of exploitative environments, Greenwood

94 “Mail-order-brides” are not a new phenomenon that has come with the age of the internet. One notable moment in history with women coming overseas to marry is in Hawai‘i and the West Coast of the continental US during the early 20th century, particularly in Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean communities. These women were also known as “picture brides.” The issue of trying to fit this old phenom into the relatively new conceptions of trafficking presents a hole in the construction of trafficking as a framework. The following sources may be helpful in beginning a look into mail-order/picture brides during that period: Densho Encyclopedia, “Picture brides,” accessed April 10, 2018, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Picture_brides/. Ethnic Studies Oral History Project, Women Workers in Hawaii's Pineapple Industry Volume II (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, Mānoa, 1979). Mengel, Laurie M. "Issei Women and Divorce in Hawai'i, 1885-1908." Social Process in Hawai'i38 (1997): 19-39. Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984). At Sawyer Library at Williams College: Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2011). 95 Don’t Shout Too Loud, directed by Courtney D. Campbell, (2013; Portland, OR: Changing Directions Films, 2013), GLOW. 57 interpreted this data as a legitimation for addressing the issue of forced labor and exploitation through restrictive immigration policy when he argued that “[…] the most direct thing that the

United States Congress could do would be in line with everything else that we do to try to protect the movement of illegal immigrants across the border, because that would prevent people from coming into this country to be exploited illegally as well as for a variety of other purposes.” The intellectual pivot to immigration is not new and is certainly not of the past. By conflating the problem of human/sex trafficking entirely with immigration (as opposed to carefully understanding the nuanced relations), politicians and carceral feminists enable the attack on brown and black migrant bodies through legislation under the guise of helping trafficking survivors. This two-page long exchange between Greenwood and Botti exemplifies several different ways carceral feminist logic and ideology becomes enmeshed in legislation.

Notably, many of the individuals present at the hearing are still involved in anti- trafficking discourse today and are continuing to empower “the strange coalition.” Anita Botti served as Chief of Staff in the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues from 2009-

2014 (this would be during Hillary Clinton’s tenure) and is now on the board of directors of the

Women’s Foreign Policy Group, as well as the managing director of the Exodus Institute. The

Exodus Institute’s mission is “to advance 21st Century global policies and solutions, which address the catastrophe of millions of internally displaced people, refugees and those categorized as stateless…” and “will accomplish its mission by connecting academics, philanthropists, state persons, faith based leaders, representatives of institutions, and governments, all of whom share our desire to make a difference in the global tragedy of forced migration and refugee crisis.”96

96 “About: Executive Team,” The Exodus Institute, accessed April 13, 2018. https://www.theexodusinstitute.org/about/executive-team. “About: Mission,” The Exodus Institute, accessed April 13, 2018. https://www.theexodusinstitute.org/about/mission 58

Christopher Smith continues to represent New Jersey’s 4th District in Congress. He has been in office since 1981.97 After holding various government anti-trafficking positions, including

Executive Director of the Senior Policy Operating Group on Trafficking in Persons from 2001-

2009, Laura Lederer founded the Global Centurion, “a non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating modern slavery by focusing on the demand side of the problem – the perpetrators, exploiters, buyers, and end-users of human beings, seeking to prevent modern slavery at its source.”98

Carceral feminism’s cooptation of abolition language is perhaps one of the most confusing, but deeply significant, aspects of the ideology to understand. One would imagine that carceral feminism and current-day abolition movements, such as prison abolition, would be at odds with each other, and they are. Yet, carceral feminism adopts abolitionist language to become legible through the lens of “modern day slavery.” When Exodus Cry, an anti-trafficking non-profit organization, states that they are “an international non-profit organization committed to abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry, while assisting and empowering its victims,” they co-opt the narratives, language, and history regarding the enslavement of black folks in the United States and other parts of the West. 99 When Laura Lederer is quoted in a circa

2000 article about the TVPA as saying, “’Over the last 10 years, the numbers of women and children that have been trafficked have multiplied so that they are now on par with estimates of the numbers of Africans who were enslaved in the 16th and 17th centuries,’” they co-opt the narratives, language, and history regarding the enslavement of black folks in the United States

97 “U.S. Congressman Chris Smith: Representing New Jersey’s 4th District,” U.S. Congressman Chris Smith, accessed April 13, 2018. https://chrissmith.house.gov/ 98 “Leadership: 2017 Board of Directors,” Global Centurion: Fighting Modern Slavery by Focusing on Demand, accessed April 13, 2018, https://www.globalcenturion.org/about/board-of-directors/. 99 “About,” Exodus Cry, accessed April 13, 2018, https://exoduscry.com/about/. 59 and other parts of the West. 100 However, if trafficking were truly “modern day slavery,” then it would require a critique of the structures which make it possible, rather than a full reliance on the erasure of the institution of slavery.

The horrible irony and violence of legal discourse like the TVPA and those who write and support their criminalization of largely brown and black bodies as those who enslave others, without denouncing those who had owned slaves in the past – including the Founding Father of the United States – is often lost in this conversation. I would posit that another reason for the extreme focus on sex trafficking in the US, as opposed to labor trafficking, is to, at the very least, shift attention away from the US’s past with the institution of slavery. Of course, sexual violence was, and continues to be, rampant in this institution of slavery, but because the wider, general population focuses intently on the unpaid and forced labor aspect of slavery and refuses to acknowledge sexual labor and sexual violence, the construct works.

100 Williams J. Bennet and Charles W. Colson, “The Clintons Shrug at Sex Trafficking,” Wall Street Journal (1923 – Current file): Jan. 10, 2000, ProQuest, accessed March 3, 2018. https://search.proquest.com/docview/398692140?accountid=15054. 60

Chapter Three Grounding Carceral Feminist Theory: Sex Working in Real Life

“As soon as I started doing sex work, I, I had, it was a revelation to me. I really felt like this should be legal. I felt like it was anti-feminist to be -- to want to criminalize it. And it was, I mean I really had a revelation then. It really informed my attitude toward sex work.”101 In her interview, Carol Leigh discusses how she had initially forayed into sex work because she was curious and justified it to herself through the framing of doing an exposé written piece in the way

Gloria Steinem had done with the Playboy Bunny position in her 1963 essay, “A Bunny’s Tale” for Show magazine.102 However, she notes that it was her experience actually doing the work that changed her mind and helped her recognize the dangers of criminalizing sex work. As much as I can analyze primary sources and work through the theory of carceral feminism, understanding the consequences of carceral feminist ideas experientially is perhaps even more important.

This chapter aims to ground the discussion of the previous chapters in the experiences of sex workers who recount the violence that resulted from anti-trafficking laws, police who believe in their authority and power, and structural oppression. The point of this chapter is not to be voyeuristic and watch over the lives of sex workers, but rather to analyze the results when feminism and abolitionist morality have been corrupted by carceral tactics to hold control over others under the guise of “saving.” Surprisingly, many of the sex workers I interviewed

101 Carol Leigh, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 19, 2018. 102 Ibid. Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny recruit to gather information and write an exposé essay for Show magazine about her experience and criticized the beauty standards for women. For more, see: Gloria Steinem, “A Bunny’s Tale: Show’s First Exposé for Intelligent People,” in Show, May 1963. http://sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/sites/dlib.nyu.edu.undercover/files/documents/uploads/editors/Show- A%20Bunny%27s%20Tale-Part%20One-May%201963.pdf. Elizabeth Varnell, “Gloria Steinem Knows Firsthand How the Original Playboy Bunnies Got Their Hourglass Shape,” in Vogue, September 28, 2017. https://www.vogue.com/article/playboy-bunnies-hourglass-body-gloria- steinem-hugh-hefner-death-playboy-club-new-york.

61 highlighted the reality that many sex workers on the ground today – whether they are consensual workers or experiencing forced sex labor – are not aware of the term “trafficking.” For example,

Victoria Schneider, a sex worker activist who helped found the famous St. James Infirmary in

San Francisco, was my oldest interviewee. I asked her towards the end of the interview, “Has anyone ever asked you if you’ve been trafficked?” My intention was to create room for both the possibility of an NGO or non-profit organization attempting “rescue,” and the possibility of police violence via anti-trafficking discourse. However, Victoria Schneider responded with, “No.

And that's what I couldn't understand. What the fuck does ‘traffic’ mean? Does that mean stop lights, go lights, uh, maybe no right turn, no left turn?”103 In the form of sarcastic humor,

Schneider subversively points out the difficulty in understanding “trafficking” as a concept in and of itself while simultaneously refusing to consider the possibility of trafficking within the borders of the United States.

As Schneider alludes, “trafficking” as a term to describe forced labor and movement of people did not become widely used until the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. This timeline matches the passing of the Palermo Protocols and the TVPA. The Palermo Protocols were the three protocols adopted by the UN in 2000 to supplement the Convention Against Transnational

Organized Crime, which included the Protocol to Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,

Especially Women and Children. The Palermo Protocols significantly focused on law enforcement as a means through which to achieve their goals, and ultimately heavily influenced the United States’ TVPA.104 Carol Leigh, who has been the most continuously active within the

103 Victoria Schneider, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 12, 2018.

104 “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,” fully and officially adopted on November 15, 2000. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolTraffickingInPersons.aspx. 62 sex worker rights activist community of all the interviewees, charted the history of the term as it relates to sex workers. When I asked her about the first time she encountered the term trafficking, she responded, “1999 was maybe the beginning that I was invited to some of the organizing, or '98? Could've been that.”105 Leigh had in fact been a part of the organizing to prevent trafficking from becoming an anti-prostitution weapon against sex workers. She explains:

I did a lot of work, and I have all the emails, of what our group did to try to figure out how we were going to participate in the writing of the Palermo Protocol and not have it be a -- a weapon that's going to be used against sex workers as much as possible, how we could avoid that as much as possible. And most of it, of course, was around definitions, i.e., the definition of trafficking, or the definition or exploitation, or the definition of whatever -- sex work -- I, I don't remember all the definitions we were arguing over. But basically, we would be talking about definitions in the language that was going to be going into the Palermo Protocol.106

Leigh’s words recall Anita Botti’s explanation, in the previous chapter, that her office concluded mail-order-brides may or may not fit into the definition of trafficking, depending on whether their inclusion would be useful to her department’s work. The document ultimately allowed each signatory to decide whether prostitution was a human rights violation, creating the space for carceral feminism to become a part of the larger discourse.107 Leigh herself was involved in the work of trying to prevent trafficking from being conflated with sex work, but her efforts were not as successful as she’d hoped. Although she had aimed to steer the Palermo Protocol towards more harm reduction and resource directing frameworks, they were unsuccessful:

But, as soon as the Paler -- the protocol was only about law enforcement, and not about -- not about helping people, not about social services but the protocol itself is about arresting people and border control, it was a lost cause. All we could do was damage

105 Carol Leigh , interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA, January 19, 2018. Leigh later notes that her earliest participation in the anti-trafficking debates was 1997, so she estimates the date to sometime during the late 1990s. Carol Leigh, personal correspondence via Google Docs edits, May 1, 2018 106 Carol Leigh , interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA, January 19, 2018. 107 Carol Leigh, personal correspondence via Google Docs edits, May 7, 2018 63

control. Soften it a little bit. And I really, and if you look at the Palermo Protocol, it certainly is a lot better than most countries' regulations, or policies, a lot better. But we understood that we -- then -- then the act -- then the CATW people would be coming back to the US and they're going to have a lot easier time creating a punitive approach to trafficking. And we understood that was true in many countries.108

In this section of Leigh’s interview, I would like to focus attention towards the notion that “the protocol was only about law enforcement.” Because the UN addresses “preventing” trafficking, through “suppressing and punishing” traffickers by law enforcement frameworks, the Palermo

Protocol frames the aims of anti-trafficking as inherently carceral in nature.

I asked Edith, who began to do sex work over twenty years ago, the same question I posed to Schneider regarding trafficking, and she told me, “No, trafficking wasn’t even in the lexicon when I was young. […] I’m a very privileged sex worker at this point, so it’s never really been a question or concern.”109 I also asked Carol Leigh this question, and she responded similarly. I began to see the pattern emerge: those individuals who are white and relatively privileged are not viewed by the larger domestic US society as being involved with trafficking, whether as a victim or perpetrator. It is then important to interrogate who is meant to be controlled through anti-trafficking discourse and the infused logic of carceral feminism. If carceral feminism relies on incarceration as a part of its analysis, who is being incarcerated?

Although my interviews do not contain explicit answers to these questions, I attempt a speculative analysis: the ideology of carceral feminism, Evangelical Christians who seek social control, and non-profits/NGOs use the imagery of white women and girls violently forced to engage in the sex industry to captivate the public’s imagination and sympathy for anti-trafficking

108 Ibid. 109 Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 64 discourse.110 At the same time, anti-trafficking discourse is utilized by the state to control black and brown bodies through incarceration and the criminal justice system. The US public’s attention is thus drawn away from the violence by the state. While my research strongly points me in this direction, I cannot support this speculative analysis with hard evidence quite yet, so I offer it as a site at which a new research project might begin.

Perhaps most striking in regards to the terminology of “trafficking” is Kristen DiAngelo’s interview. DiAngelo, who has been a sex worker for over forty years, has in more recent years become an outspoken activist and speaker, balancing the call for decriminalizing sex work and sharing her experience as a trafficking victim.111 She notes that “[…] if you go on the streets, and you ask people, ‘are you trafficked?’ they’re going to give you all kinds of crazy answers, but none of it’s about working or being forced to work […] when we did our research, I asked one woman ‘Well, you know, have you ever been trafficked?’ She goes, ‘Man I don’t even have my license.’”112 It is clear that “trafficking” is still not a term commonly used or understood by those who experience forced sexual labor – the question that arises for me is: if they are labeled as a trafficking victim by the police, what is the process by which that determination was made?

Although this thesis cannot examine that specific process, this is a critical question in regard to how this notion of “sex trafficking” is precisely passed from law enforcement to those who become trafficking victims in the eyes of the law.

DiAngelo’s interview contained a particularly intriguing manner of understanding the term “trafficking”:

So, when you say that word [trafficking], I don't think that word -- I use it now because I speak a lot, but I had to say it a lot to take the power out of it because it really bothered

110 This captivation is a mechanism through which those non-profits/NGOs can elicit funding and support from the general public, as well as the US government. 111 Here, I preserve how DiAngelo identifies and describes herself. 112 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. 65

me because it didn't speak to me. But, under the -- the, um, federal guidelines of what trafficking is, I definitely fit those guidelines. So, if you're talking about when I was younger, when did I realize I was in a bad position, we used to just call them gorilla pimps back then. There was pimping and gorilla pimping.”113

In the following lines of the interview, DiAngelo defines the difference between a (sugar daddy) pimp and a gorilla pimp:

Hatanaka: What’s the difference?

DiAngelo: Sugar daddy pimps were the ones that were your boyfriends who you wanted to be with, and treated you good, and they were your daddy, and well you call your gorilla pimps your daddy too because you were made to. So those were basically, what I would call support staff, if we were to really look at it in a work or labor context. They're people you wanted to be with you. […] But when we talked about gorilla pimps, that meant they were heavy handed. And that meant that you didn't want to be with him and you didn't have a choice. You'd be like, ‘nah man, I got a gorilla pimp.’ That meant ‘I'm not going anywhere. I don't have a choice.’ So, you always know it's going on.114

DiAngelo’s practice of speech repetition to “take the power out of” the word “trafficking,” is crucial to understanding just how foreign of a word she finds it to be of her experience. Although

DiAngelo fits the legal, federal definition of the term, she does not initially identify it. While I will not reproduce her deeply violent and upsetting experience on the page here, DiAngelo’s time with a “gorilla pimp” was horrific, and no one should ever experience that.115 However, the fact that DiAngelo did not immediately identify with the terminology of trafficking, and in fact

113 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. 114Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. 115 The term “gorilla pimp” is heavily racialized and relies upon the imagery of “the black brute” and relies on harmful, violent stereotypes of black men (and black people in general) as “savage.” Linda G. Tucker explain that “The specter of the black brute recalls the trauma wrought by both the imagined figurations of violence and the literal violence that defined the axis around which turned and around which were negotiated the practices that governed how black and white men were to behave and thus their relationship to each other.” (Linda G. Tucker, “Holler If Ya Hear Me: Black Men, Bad Rap(s), and the Return of the Black Brute,” in Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 138.) For further resources at the Williams College Libraries regarding this topic, consider the following: From Ferris State University: https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/brute/ Felkins, Shawna, Harker, Jaime L., Dellinger, Kirsten, and Wilkerson, Jessica. Fetishizing Southern Brutality: An Intersectional Analysis of Animalistic Dehumanization in Interracial Pornography, 2015, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Dagvobie-Mullins, Sika. "Pigtails, Ponytails, and Getting Tail: The Infantilization and Hyper-Sexualization of African American Females in Popular Culture." Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 4 (2013): 745-71. Shelton, Rayvon, Di Carmine, Roberta, Brooks, F., and Rahman, Shazia. Representations of Blacks in Contemporary American Film, 2015, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. 66 had to work in order to feel more comfortable with it, speaks to the manner in which the term is placed upon survivors of forced sex labor, as opposed to being claimed by the survivor.

Because the police are a local law enforcement entity, it is worth asking what local government is currently doing to combat forced sex labor and make work conditions safer for sex workers. In San Francisco, the mayor has assembled a Sex Work and Trafficking Policy

Impact Committee within the Department on the Status of Women.116 I was invited to sit in on their January 22nd meeting to observe. The committee included representatives from Asian

Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, Department of Public Health, Human Rights Commission, and

Victims Services in the District Attorney’s Office, as well as independent researchers and current and former sex workers. The focus of this particular meeting was to review the public reception of a newly announced policy that was created in partnership with the San Francisco police department. The policy mandates that police cannot arrest sex workers who come forward to report violence.117 However, two issues stood out to me: the bureaucracy of the system led to slow moving work – it took years for this one policy to be shaped, written, and approved – and the work is further constrained by the fact that sex work is still criminalized.118

Furthermore, the efficacy of this policy is not certain. While Carol Leigh is on this Task

Force and had hopes for the new policy as a way to build bridges for further work, four other interviewees doubted whether the new policy will actually result in any increase in the protection

116 “Sex Work and Trafficking Policy Impact Committee,” City and County of San Francisco: Department on the Status of Women, accessed April 12, 2018. http://sfgov.org/dosw/sex-work-and-trafficking-policy-impact-committee 117 Evan Sernoffsky, “New SF policies bar arrest of sex workers who come forward to report violence,” SFGate, January 11, 2018, https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/New-SF-policies-bar-arrest-of-sex-workers-who- 12492173.php. Hazel Cills, “Sex Workers in San Francisco Can Now Report Violence Without Fear of Being Arrested for Prostitution,” Jezebel, January 12, 2018, https://jezebel.com/sex-workers-in-san-francisco-can-now-report-violence- wi-1822035553. 118 San Francisco Sex Work and Trafficking Policy Impact Committee Meeting, recorded by Ayami Hatanaka, January 22, 2018. 67 of sex workers.119 They were all proud of the work their fellow sex workers had done to push this new policy through, and although they were excited about the possibilities this new policy might signal and also model for the rest of the country, however they were not naïve. Kristen DiAngelo responded to my question about the new policy by likening it to a process of evolution, although she was quick to mention she was proud and optimistic:

It’s like they’re going to say ‘see, why do we even do this because people aren’t running through our doors.’ And like do you understand what we’ve been going through? Do you realize, and I can, I mean I had to stand on the witness stand and be questioned about what occurred to me. And if I could just give anybody ten minutes of how that felt, and what I’ve lived through since that, they would understand how if you don’t have a really compassionate ear on the other side, you can be hurt so much worse by what people say and how they treat you when you’re trying to tell them about the trauma that occurred.120

Cinnamon Maxxine was quicker to note that they did not think the policy would be effective.

Maxxine echoes DiAngelo’s concerns:

I think that [the new SF policy] might be bullshit. [laughs]. I don't know! I don’t know! I don’t know! I just don’t trust cops. I don’t know. And also you say that. Also it’s not just about sex workers. People who have come in to report, like anyone who has come in to report rapes in the past have been thrown to the wayside. It’s not just about sex workers. […] But is that actually going to fix it? I don’t know. It doesn’t just end there. And then, also, it doesn’t mean that the worker is going to get justice. […] You don’t think that sex worker isn’t going to be ripped to shreds about being a whore on the stand? Like, that’s not enough.121

Maxxine’s words offer a searing critique of the work of this task force. They indicate that the problem is the entire criminal system – the criminalization of sex workers exposes them to the entire gamut of the prison industrial complex. Even without the specter of anti-trafficking discourse, they are already vulnerable to the violence of law enforcement and the criminal justice

119 Leigh later noted that it was only once a group of sex worker activists staged a demonstration were sex workers invited to join the impact policy committee. Carol Leigh, personal correspondence via Google Docs edits, May 7, 2018 120 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. 121 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. 68 system. Criminalizing the way in which someone feeds and shelters themselves (and possibly their family) is to criminalize their existence and survival.

Several of the interviewees discussed the importance of reliable and helpful support staff to their wellbeing and experience. Earlier in her interview, DiAngelo explained the Sugar Daddy

Pimp as an example of support staff:

Sugar daddy pimps were the ones that were your boyfriends who you wanted to be with, and treated you good, and they were your daddy […]. So those were basically, what I would call support staff, if we were to really look at it in a work or labor context. They're people you wanted to be with you. That, or family members that you loved, but they were people you were paying the bills for and they added to your work in some way. So they might be lookout for you, or they might cook dinner for you when you got home or know where you are. You know, they were like having a partner or, or somebody you hired to help you so you weren't alone and you survived.122

Just like many other work environments, having administrative and support staff who can do tasks such as (but not limited to) scheduling, cleaning, ensuring safety, and transportation can be very helpful.123 However, sex workers’ fear of engaging in “support staff” positions have exponentially increased following the introduction of anti-trafficking discourse and carceral feminist ideology through legislation. Edith shares that

While I am still privileged in many ways, I’m at slight risk. Especially when I was doing more, like I worked in a brothel, and at one point I was actually doing managing in the brothel, and it was really scary because the laws from, I think they’re like five or ten years ago maybe eight years ago laws or something in the Bay Area, or in California. That’s like a mandatory minimum in prison for seven years. Of pimping charges. If I was ever busted doing the management stuff.124

Edith’s job included the management of shifts, cleaning, book-keeping, and making sure people are safe; she did not find clients for the individuals who worked there. However, under vague

122 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. 123 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, CA. January 20, 2018. Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 124 Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 69 pimping and trafficking laws, she is still susceptible to arrest and prison time. According to

Edith, such laws actually make sex work less safe: “Because the thing is when you criminalize support staff and pimping and pandering and all that stuff, what it really does is it really lowers the rate of people working together and supporting each other because there’s all this fear.”125

Cinnamon Maxxine similarly argues that “I think they [trafficking laws] are set up to discourage people [from doing sex work], I think they’re set up to scare people out of doing it. I think they’re set up to overfill your mind with all the things you have to keep track of, like it gets you overwhelmed and you slip up somewhere […] They’re setting you up so we don’t help each other out because then we could be seen as pimping each other.”126 Cinnamon names several ways that trafficking laws can apply to sex workers, including family members being supported through their work and driving a friend to a client and waiting for them outside to make sure they’re safe. In short, they posit that there is a blurry legal line between “trafficking someone” and helping someone have a safe experience in sex work.127

Rarely discussed thus far in this thesis are the finer points of the legal status of sex work in the United States. All of the sex workers I interviewed advocated for the decriminalization of sex work in the US. For example, Kristen DiAngelo explains one particular angle of the decriminalization argument:

That's why so often we're asking for decriminalization because in the legalized model, there's all kinds of ways to discriminate. And for me, the biggest one, which doesn't affect me a lot because I have privilege but has affected my best friend and so many other people I know, is racial profiling. Because the houses want to provide the mix that the customers like. And so, with that said, you're going to have 80 - 90 percent Caucasian women, and then 10 percent is going to be like one white, one Hispanic, and one Asian. And that way, if somebody comes in and wants a black woman, well there's only one.

125 Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 126 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. 127 Ibid. 70

And that way they can provide that service, but that isn't as demanded in their eyes. I'm just speaking how the house is, as the Caucasian woman is.128

A decriminalization model for sex work would help to prevent, or perhaps even reverse, conflating sex trafficking with sex work all together. The reason why forced sexual labor/sex trafficking and sex work are so easily conflated is the underground status of sex work: because sex workers are criminalized, it is easy to frame someone as sex trafficked when their work is not legitimated; a sex worker cannot come forward to clarify and explain they were not forced but that they are trying to make a living as a sex worker – if they do, they would likely be arrested for breaking the law. It is also easy to frame someone in a support staff position as the trafficker, particularly through aspects of transportation and client management. For example, if someone considered support staff drives a sex worker to a location for work (and will likely wait outside for the worker, and drive to ensure safety), the support staff could be considered a trafficker, or at the very least a pimp, due to their transporting the sex worker.

DiAngelo identifies another issue within the sex industry: the whorearchy. Whorearchy – or the sex work hierarchy – structures perceived social stigma within the sex work industry.

Writer and former pornography performer Belle Knox articulates the whorearechy in a 2014 article as “arranged according to intimacy of contact with clients and police. The closer to both you are, the closer you are to the bottom. That puts ‘outdoor’ workers […] at the foundation.

They are disdained by ‘indoor’ prostitutes, who find clients online or via other third parties. They are disdained by the strippers and escorts who perform sex acts for clients, who are disdained by those who don't. At the top sit sex workers who have no direct contact with cops or clients, such

128 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, January 20, 2018. 71 as cam girls and phone-sex operators.”129 This definition, however, does not account for the added layers of complication that identities and experiences such as race, gender, sexuality, and class add to the whorearchy.130 Such identities and experiences often factor into access to different types of positions within the sex industry. Those sex workers targeted by anti- trafficking discourse are largely those who are “closer to the bottom” of the whorearchy. It is highly unlikely that a phone-sex operator will be thought of as a trafficking victim. Privilege remains as a factor that affected interviewees’ experiences within the sex industry. Mariko

Passion, who identifies as Asian, also has similar experiences with race. She notes that she has often, especially while working in the Bay Area, had to “play up” her race and act into the racial fetishization and wishes of her clients. She notes that this was common within the circle of workers around her.131

Although DiAngelo and Passion discussed race, a variety of other identity markers can affect one’s experience within this whorearchy. For example, Cinnamon Maxxine in an earlier quotation mentioned their needing to work around their agoraphobia – this means they are likely to work with clients they have seen before, which limits their clientele, but that they “have to

129 Belle Knox, “Tearing Down the Whorearchy from the Inside,” Jezebel, July 2, 2014, accessed May 2, 2018, https://jezebel.com/tearing-down-the-whorearchy-from-the-inside-1596459558. 130 A very simple example of the whorearchy in popular example is a lyric of rap artist Cardi B’s latest album. On her song “Get Up 10,” Cardi B details her hard work to rise up as an artist and begins with: “Look, they gave a bitch two options: strippin’ or lose / Used to dance in a club right across from my school / I said ‘dance’ not ‘fuck,’ don’t get it confused / Had to set the record straight ‘cause bitches love to assume.” Cardi B, “Get Up 10” on Invasion of Privacy, Atlantic Records, 2018, streamed on Spotify. Cardi explicitly makes the point to clarify that she used to strip, as opposed to being a full service sex worker having sex with clients, as she does not want the two types of sexual labor to be conflated or confused, as she does not want to be mistaken for a full service sex worker. This song also shows how race and class play into experiences within the whorearchy and the sex industry. Cardi B notes how she had two choices as young black woman with little to no income, who did not have a high school diploma, and in an abusive relationship: to either engage in sex work by dancing or “lose.” Cardi B details this story in an interview with VladTV, uploaded to YouTube on January 12, 2016. This interview can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzfcNl-o9bI. 131 Mariko Passion, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Skype, February 12, 2018. 72 prepare days in advance to leave my house and go see you [a client].”132 Futhermore, Maxxine highlights that their disability is not the only factor. Because they identify as fat, as well as black, their prices are lower than many of their counterparts.133 Perhaps most striking, was their note that “A lot of my friends are white and have more resources than I do, or at least more capacity to check references and stuff.”134 One of the main ways sex workers today maintain safety is through checking their clients’ references and asking other workers about their experiences with that client. Maxxine explained this further:

I just feel if I do that, if I ask for references, I'm – the couple of times that I have, I have not heard back, or have not been able to follow up, or mostly I just don't want to deal with it because I just need the money. I don't have twenty people in my inbox trying to see me. I have three. And my rates are already lower than what I think I should be paid.135

The fact that these various intersecting factors have harmed Cinnamon within their experience in the industry is a stark reminder that the sex industry, just like any other industry, is riddled with discrimination, and in Cinnamon’s case, danger. They said, “I’m just really, really lucky.”136

As I think about the words the interviewees have entrusted to me, I envision the carceral feminist understanding of trafficking worming its way into sex work – the term clearly does not fit well into the framework of sex work and inevitably conflates sex work with forced sex labor.

While one can argue that in theory the terminology is clumsy, the various experiences of the interviewees concretize how much “trafficking” causes dangerous problems for sex workers.

132 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 73

Chapter Four Epilogue: Carceral Feminism Logic Today with FOSTA-SESTA Signed Into Law

I started doing sex work in 2007. Yeah in 2007. I got hired at a peep show in San Francisco, and from there, that was enough money, obviously, and from there I got into hustling on my own with help from other people, but mostly I just figured it out on my own because I didn’t know who else to ask. […] Mostly that was when Craigslist was, it was, you know? You’d post on Craiglist – mostly posted on Craigslist. I responded to a few ads, but mostly people would respond to my ads.137

The internet was crucial to Cinnamon finding a job that fit them and their agoraphobia. It was a means through which they found new clients, maintained a relationship with returning clients, and could keep a relative flow of money. With the internet, sex work has become safer and accessible for workers of various backgrounds through screenings, references, and online communities sharing information with each other about safe or dangerous clients.138 However, on

April 11th, 2018, the president of the United States signed a package bill called FOSTA-SESTA into law. FOSTA is the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, while

SESTA is the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.139 The bills, introduced separately and later combined into a package, appear to be well-intended.140 However, the lurking carceral feminism ideas become apparent as soon as a deeper examination is taken. As I showed in the last chapter, sex workers have been deconstructing these ideas for a long time.

FOSTA was what the House bill was known as, while SESTA is what the Senate bill was known as. There are two big problems with this package bill. First, it creates a major exception

137 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. 138 Ashley Velez, “Watch: This is How New Legislation Puts Sex Workers in Danger,” The Root, March 30, 2018, https://www.theroot.com/watch-this-is-how-new-legislation-puts-sex-workers-in-1824209063. I highly recommend watching this video and hearing the voices of sex worker advocates and activists today discuss what they see as the dangers of then-legislation (now signed into law) and what they see as necessary for the future. Topic discussed include: Outing and violence by police, shaming by communities, defining “sex work,” discrimination and criminalization, and more. 139 Alana Massey, “If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities,” Allure, March 7, 2018, https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-celebrity-psa. 140 Aja Romano, “A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet as we know it,” Vox, April 18, 2018, https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-backpage-230-internet-freedom. 74 the “safe harbor” rule of the internet. As one reporter has explained, Section 230 of the 1996

Communications Decency Act “has allowed the internet to thrive on user-generated content without holding platforms and ISPs responsible for whatever those users might create.”141

FOSTA-SESTA challenges this. By being able to criminally hold a third party (the owner(s) of a website) accountable for posting advertisements for sex work on their sites (including consensual sex work), FOSTA-SESTA has scared website owners into removing all content regarding sex work from their platforms and shutting down lines of communication between sex workers and safe clients. Website owners’ fear, combined with the relative success of FOSTA-SESTA in shutting down such pages, platforms, and websites, will also contribute towards increased censorship on the internet.

Secondly, by removing ads, FOSTA-SESTA plunges the sex industry back into further darkness. According to sex worker and writer Emily Smith, “Professionals who serve actual trafficked victims believe the only way to track [sex trafficking victims] now no longer exists.”142

Smith points out that online ads are one of the few tools law enforcement agencies have to monitor and track down cases of forced sex labor. Furthermore, sex workers who could previously screen clients for safety by initially making contact online are now forced to look for work literally on the street. This increases their exposure to a number of dangers including unknown clients and police violence.143

Sex workers themselves have been actively speaking out against both FOSTA and

SESTA since they were first proposed and early on began to collaborate with internet freedom

141 Ibid. 142 Emily Smith, “Sex Workers Are Canaries In The Free Speech Coal Mine,” Buzzfeed: Opinion, April 7, 2018, https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilysmith/sex-workers-sesta-censorship-free- speech?utm_term=.eiNvlRA4O#.pnw59NzlM. 143 Alana Massey, “If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities,” Allure, March 7, 2018, https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-celebrity-psa. 75 and internet equal-access activists to lobby and protest against the bills. The movement against

FOSTA-SESTA has heavily utilized the internet and popular media platforms to organize and mobilize throughout the nation, as well as educate non-sex workers about the ways in which this legislation will lead to real, physical harm and death for many sex workers and those who experience forced sexual labor. For example, Allure magazine (a periodical aimed at later teenager and young women) published an article by a former sex worker critiquing a celebrity- heavy PSA for SESTA, and Buzzfeed (a news and entertainment website and media company particularly aimed at the “millennial generation”) posted an op-ed by a current sex worker warning of the dangers FOSTA-SESTA.144 Trans sex worker advocate and founder of GLTS

(Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society) Ceyenne Doroshaw establishes that “As a sex worker, you should have the right to screen your demographic, who you’re dealing with, [as] opposed to being in street work, you don’t know what situation you’re walking into.”145 Sex workers have deconstructed FOSTA-SESTA and have loudly and vocally expressed how this law will harm them and those experiencing forced sexual labor in the long run. The fact that

FOSTA-SESTA will put people in danger is without question. The real questions are: who was listening? And why don’t they care?

In conversation with other black sex worker activists, Doroshow notes, “These are bills that are going to change everything. They’re going to just make our lives a living hell, from the

144 Alana Massey, “If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities,” Allure, March 7, 2018, https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-celebrity-psa. Emily Smith, “Sex Workers Are Canaries In The Free Speech Coal Mine,” Buzzfeed: Opinion, April 7, 2018, https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilysmith/sex-workers-sesta-censorship-free- speech?utm_term=.eiNvlRA4O#.pnw59NzlM. 145 “Watch: This is How New Legislation Puts Sex Workers in Danger,” The Root, March 30, 2018, https://www.theroot.com/watch-this-is-how-new-legislation-puts-sex-workers-in-1824209063. 76 allies to the sex workers to how we’re defended by the law. With laws out here like this, I can’t imagine what kind of predicament it’s going to put us in.”146

The logic of carceral feminism is not hard to excavate within the national and political conversation about FOSTA-SESTA. I became close to individuals within the sex worker community, and I found it hard to “sit on the sideline” and observe the fight to reject FOSTA-

SESTA. I soon found myself engaging my peers and friends in conversations about the bill, encouraging those around me to get in touch with their representatives in Congress, and emailing my senators (of Hawai‘i) to express my own thoughts on the issue. In these emails, I included a link to the Allure article to show them that “stopping sex trafficking” is not an accurate aim in trying to pass this bill because it will in fact endanger children who are targets and victims of sex trafficking.147 I mentioned that not only was I their constituent but also writing my undergraduate thesis on the topic. I eventually received a response – after the legislation had passed – from the offices of both of my senators.

The response from Senator Mazie Hirono’s office was clearly the same response sent to every other individual who contacted her regarding the issue. [See Appendix 3.] The response did not even acknowledge that I opposed the bill and was written to chronicle Hirono’s long- standing commitment to passing anti-trafficking laws. The fact that Hirono’s office assumed all individuals who contacted her were in support of the bill highlights Religion scholar Yvonne

Zimmerman’s critique of anti-trafficking discourse: that “condemnation of commercial sex is easier than having a sustained critique of the global labor system.”148

146 “Watch: This is How New Legislation Puts Sex Workers in Danger,” The Root, March 30, 2018, https://www.theroot.com/watch-this-is-how-new-legislation-puts-sex-workers-in-1824209063. 147 Although throughout my thesis I have made a concerted effort to use “sex trafficking” only when necessary as to highlight the aspect of labor involved in sex work, given how the topic of FOSTA-SESTA has been discussed within the public sphere and the sex worker rights community, I will be using “sex trafficking” and “sex trafficking victims” to be consistent with their language. 148 Yvonne Zimmerman, "Speaker Series Yvonne Zimmerman," (YouTube, 2016). 77

The response from Senator Brian Schatz’ office acknowledged my “opposition to this legislation and [my] concerns about the possibility of unintended impacts on the safety of sex workers.”149 [See Appendix 2]. He did not, however, address the concerns I raised for victims of sex trafficking, and instead only focused on the point I raised about “unintended impacts” on sex workers.150 Schatz then explained that he voted for the legislation because he “think[s] that the legislation is necessary to help stop illegal sex trafficking and the exploitation of children.”151 By ignoring my mention of victims of sex trafficking and focusing only on sex workers, Schatz implies that he thinks it is okay if sex workers become collateral damage to this legislation.

Furthermore, Schatz’ support of the legislation to “stop illegal sex trafficking and the exploitation of children” relies on his ignoring the harm that will happen precisely to exploited children and victims of sex trafficking. Fifteen days after I received Schatz’s email, I was reading through my Google Alerts and read an article from the SC Times about a woman named

Ashley Ann Pick-Gassama who was recently sentenced to seven and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to “aiding and abetting the promotion of the prostitution of a child.”152 The reporter notes that “Investigators received information from a 17-year-old girl, who said another woman had been trafficking her for sex using ads on Backpage.com.”153 While some might initially see this as supporting evidence in favor of FOSTA-SESTA, the very last sentence of the article states, “Police connected Pick-Gassama’s phone number with the Backpage.com advertisements involved in the case.”154 Just as several sex worker and sex trafficking survivors

149 Although I imagine Senator Schatz himself did not write this response, but rather an intern or an aide did, it was signed by him, so I will discuss it with the assumption that Senator Schatz was the author of the response. 150 Schatz’ language uses the words “unintended impacts” in regards to the effect the law will have on sex workers. 151 Ibid. 152 Stephanie Drickell, “St. Cloud woman to serve more than 7 years in sex trafficking case,” SC Times, April 14, 2018, https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2018/04/14/st-cloud-woman-serve-more-than-7-years-sex- trafficking-case/517295002/. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid. 78 activists have noted, ads such as the ones on Backpage.com or Craiglist.com provide a valuable resource, within an already small pool of resources, to those who are trying to identify trafficking victims.155 Founder of the Black Sex Worker Collective and sex worker activist Akynos explains,

These laws aren’t trying to protect children at all. What they’re trying to do is control women, they’re trying to control sex, they’re trying to control how you consume sex, how you have sex. […] No one seems to care that their nail tech is probably trafficked, the person making their food, the housekeeper, no one really gives a fuck. It’s just when it comes to sex, sex is this taboo subject in this society.156

The above-mentioned case from St. Cloud and the work of activists in fact directly refutes

Schatz’ argument for voting in favor of the bill. So why aren’t law-makers listening to those they claim they are trying to protect? What else might be motivating these law-makers?

In response to these questions, the first aspect of carceral feminism that comes to my mind is part of my own intervention into the topic: through the voices and words of sex workers, it is clear that carceral feminism as an ideology is useful to mask other incipient policies regarding the lives of marginalized people. For example, the TVPA and related hearings noted the overlap between immigration policy and sex trafficking.157 In this case, and although trafficking has long been associated with immigration, I am inclined to think that FOSTA-

SESTA is not merely about control over immigration. As a reporter for Vox writes, “[FOSTA-

SESTA] does make it a lot easier to censor free speech on small websites – as evidenced by the immediate ramifications the law has had across the internet.”158 Given the current presidential administration’s tense and strained relationship with media outlets, it would not be without reason to imagine the logic of carceral feminism and the lives of sex workers being utilized to

155 Alana Massey, “If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities,” Allure, March 7, 2018, https://www.allure.com/story/sesta-sex-trafficking-bill-celebrity-psa. 156 “Watch: This is How New Legislation Puts Sex Workers in Danger,” The Root, March 30, 2018, https://www.theroot.com/watch-this-is-how-new-legislation-puts-sex-workers-in-1824209063. 157 Recall my close reading of the exchange between Greenwood and Botti in Chapter Two. 158 Aja Romano, “A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet as we know it,” Vox, April 18, 2018, https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-backpage-230-internet-freedom. 79 further another insidious cause. Given that FOSTA-SESTA is playing out in the contemporary moment, the best I can muster is a speculative analysis of the ways in which carceral feminism is shaping the legislation. However, the immediate ramifications that Vox notes are neither trivial nor negligible.

I write this last section on April 23rd, 2018 – it has been just twelve days since FOSTA-

SESTA was signed into law, and yet this law has already had significant effects on those working in the sex industry. An Australian news site reports that fourteen sex workers in the

United States have gone missing, with another three confirmed dead, since the passing of

FOSTA-SESTA.159 The site pointedly asks why there have not been vigils or protests to bring attention to this deadly issue. Within the sex worker community, there is speculation that Brandy

Odom, a twenty-six-year-old black woman with known experience in sex work, was murdered as a result of the effects of FOSTA-SESTA.160 [See Appendix 5].

A collective of sex workers and sex trafficking survivors called Survivors Against

SESTA formed in response to SESTA. I participated in a couple of dial-in panels and have received their email updates. On April 14th, 2018 Survivors Against SESTA included a note in their email regarding resources: “We are switching to MailChimp because our gmail is blocking the emails we’re sending. Please forward this email out to community as we’re having technical issues.” [See Appendix 4]. Within three days of being signed into law, it appears FOSTA-

SESTA began restricting the communication abilities of sex workers and sex trafficking survivors by intimidating website owners with potential criminalization through the victimization

159 Kate Iselin, “Why don’t feminists care about dead sex workers?,” The Herald Sun, April 18, 2018, http://www.heraldsun.com.au/rendezview/why-dont-feminists-care-about-dead-sex-workers/news- story/958225f912a8917c16ee38495f3a3923. 160 “Police ID remains of dismembered woman found in Brooklyn park,” CBS New York, April 13, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-id-remains-of-dismembered-woman-found-in-brooklyn-park/. 80 of sex workers (by holding website owners accountable for the forced sexual labor of sex trafficking victims and through the conflation of sex workers and sex trafficking victims). By shutting off their online resources, not just their online advertising abilities, the over-reaching scope of FOSTA-SESTA is alarmingly cutting off sex workers from each other and from coalition building.

The ideology and logics of carceral feminism have been a part of the discourse concerning sex workers in the United States for a long time – in some ways, carceral feminism is at home here in the US – and it has continued to exist, and at many points in time thrive, within the discourse, legislation, and policy regarding sex work. Although carceral feminism has only become more thoroughly intertwined and infused into anti-trafficking discourse and utilized to conflate sex work and sex trafficking over the past twenty years, it is clearly evolving to become more powerful, more accepted, and more utilized in this particular political moment.

Further research must be done to fully understand the unseen mechanisms at play within the conflation of sex trafficking and sex work, as well as comprehend the logic of carceral feminism and its implementation. There are a few areas I would recommend. First, the privatization and business models of the NGOs and other non-profit organizations must be further deconstructed.161 Laura Augustín’s body of work in Anthropology, which ranges from

161 I understand this privatization to be the Anti-Trafficking Industrial Complex – an international privatization model that uses the stories and experiences of those who have experienced forced (sexual) labor to solicit donations and raise money. For examples, see news reporting on Somaly Mam, who headed an organization whose name in French is Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situation Précaire, or AFESIP. Another example is critiques of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. See: Marks, Simon. “Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (And Sinner) of Sex Trafficking.” Newsweek. May 21, 2014. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/30/somaly-mam-holy-saint-and-sinner-sex-trafficking-251642.html. Joseph, Pat. “’Victims Can Lie as Much as Other People: What the Somaly Mam scandal says about the media’s treatment of humanitarian heroes.” The Atlantic. June 5, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/somaly-mam-scandal-victims- can-lie/372188/. Ahmed, Aziza. “The unintended consequences of Nick Kristof’s anti-sex trafficking crusade.” The Guardian. March 26, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/26/nick-kristof-anti-sex-trafficking- crusade. North, Anna. “The Anti-Nicholas Kristof Backlash.” Buzzfeed. October 3, 2012. https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/the-anti-nicholas-kristof-backlash?utm_term=.ljpxGvy18#.jez8OzGax. 81 critiques of the Trafficking in Persons Report (released every year by the State Department as a part of the requirements set up by the TVPA) to pieces regarding the racialization and neo- imperialism of language used in anti-trafficking discourse, speaks to this area. Reading

Augustín’s writing alongside Carol Leigh’s video pieces that explains the conflation of sex work and sex trafficking is intellectually informative and critically important to critiquing the privatization of NGOs and non-profit organizations. Melinda Chateauvert’s book, Sex Workers

Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to Slutwalk, utilizes a labor framework and is important to understanding the industry of anti-trafficking discourse. I also think that although there is work done on the issue internationally, studying the domestic field and doing comparative analysis is deeply important. As hinted towards earlier in this project, a more explicit examination of race as it functions within carceral feminism’s utilization of the criminal justice system and its ties to sex work and anti-trafficking discourse are in dire need of attention.

Lastly, I would offer that within the sex worker rights movement, further work on the whorearchy is deeply important, but with particular attention to intersectional experiences. This lands within labor studies, as well as studying movements to understand how the whorearchy is constructed within collective organizing. Of course, there is much more to be studied, but I would argue that these topics are good sites at which to begin.

This thesis project, however, presents a particular intervention around Elizabeth

Bernstein’s work on carceral feminism through putting the sex workers’ own words in conversation with other texts regarding anti-trafficking legislation in the United States. My intervention indicates that carceral feminism is not only “a crucial point of connection with state

Augustín, Laura. “Somaly Mam, Nicholas Kristof, and the Cult of Personality.” Jacobin. June 16, 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/somaly-mam-nick-kristof-cult-of-personality.

82 actors, evangelicals, and others who have embraced the anti-trafficking cause,” but that carceral feminism as an ideology has become imbued in the anti-trafficking legislation and laws in the

United States, further criminalizing sex workers and becoming a mask for other forms of state control that hide behind it.162

I cannot imagine closing this thesis with my own words. As I wrote in the introduction, I envision my own positionality within this project to be that of a facilitator and critical analyst, as opposed to the central voice. The sex workers I interviewed are the central voice interacting with other texts in this thesis, and I find it most appropriate for their own words to serve as the conclusion. I asked each of the interviewees the same exact question at the end of every interview: “If there were one thing you’d like people to know about sex work, what would it be?” Below are each of the interviewees’ answers.

Shawnie Walker

That it's not this horrible thing that people seem -- and like shameful thing that people make it out to be. You know? Um. You can make people feel good about themselves, who don't necessarily feel good about themselves, you know? You can be a friend to someone who doesn't make friends easily, and... you know? You can give a little bit of like, joy to people's lives. And it can be fun, you know?163

Victoria Schneider

[…] I think it's, uh, really important for people to not feel like they know it all. Because you can't know it all. And you can only share your own experiences with other people. That's all. That's all you can do. [...]164

Cinnamon Maxxine

162 Elizabeth Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” in Signs 36, no. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 58. 163 Shawnie Walker, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, January 20, 2018. 164 Victoria Schneider, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 12, 2018. 83

You're never paying enough. […] You're -- you don't understand the complexities that go into getting ready -- I mean, maybe for some people that's different, but for some, you know for some of us, it's not -- I have to prepare days in advance to leave my house and go see you. Um, I am often times talked into getting paid a lot less. I should also, again, restate that I'm not -- like no longer doing client-based, one-on-one sex work right now. But one of the reasons I stopped doing this is because I was always talked into doing less than I was asking, for more of my physical body or more of my labor. It's also like emotional labor. Academic people should, when they ask us to do an interview like this, like you're great, you offered compensation of some kind. I've done countless interviews like this where I've not been compensated, and I've pretty much stopped doing them. But at the same time, then I also realize that the amount of – the amount of voices from black, from black sex workers, the amount of voices from fat sex workers, the amount of voices from disabled sex workers completely drop significantly without certain of us – without certain people being willing to do things for free. So then I started doing things for free again, and I just thought to myself, "this is fucking stupid." Here my broke black ass is doing this shit for free, when my homegirl is getting paid a bunch of money to do this for fucking Buzzfeed. I don't know if that was a real thing. I actually don't know if that person got money or not. I'm just saying. But at least she got her face out there. I'm sure she got a client from that. I just want them, I just want people to think about things more. Think about who you're talking to, think about what your perspectives on sex work are, compensate your local whore. Especially your not mainstream workers. I could provide a long list of stuff. [laughs]. The list goes on. The list goes on.165

Edith

[…] That there's people doing it from all walks of life. Um, that any assumptions that you might make based on what you've learned in our culture is probably wrong, and that it would be really important to actually talk to people to understand what people's realities actually are. Also, that I think that like the stigma around it is a product of the patriarchy and that it used to be like very esteemed work, and it was a religious experience and it was a way for people to come together, become one with the divine, and um because of sexism and misogyny and the patriarchy, over time it's become a very stigmatized thing, and um just for people to like really examine where their stigma is coming from. And also, another big thing that I really try to reiterate for people is I also think a lot of the stigma around sex work is stigma of the clients because people feel like, I think the common understanding of clients is they're like perpetrators, and creeps, and perverts, and actually clients also come from all walks of life, and like a lot of them actually just need like connection and like time and, and emotional resonance and also sex, which is fine too. And, um, that like most of them are actually way more polite and caring than like guys you'll just like meet on Tinder or something that are just looking for sex without pay. And there's something to me like, sacred about -- like I call it a tribute, and I see it as paying a tribute for me, in terms of like, it's really connected for me in terms of my religious practice too because as a Pagan, I feel like we all have the divine within us. And they're coming to me as a dom, especially, to like worship the goddess and the feminine. I

165 Cinnamon Maxxine, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 23, 2018. 84

think there's lots of ways to look at it as a sacred thing. And I don't think just the kind of sex work I do is a sacred thing. I think like, sex workers working the street and seeing ten tricks a night are doing a sacred thing too.166

Mariko Passion

People shouldn't be arrested for it. People shouldn't be arrested for having sex with each other. People shouldn't be arrested for touching each others' genitals. Consensual, um, adults should not be arrested for, like, sex work, you can't even do what I'm doing. Someone has erection problems, he can't even come see me, it's illegal! Right? They can't even get happy ending massage, that's illegal! Why? Why is that illegal? [sigh]. Like, why is this a crime? This [criminalizing sex work] is ruining so many people lives. It's wasting so much money. Like, there is really no reason in 2018 that this still be a crime. But it's going to happen in your lifetime, and probably my lifetime too. And I've always been more hopeful than Carol Leigh. But like, look like how marijuana has changed, and we've been alive to see that. Like, I'm sure we never thought that that was going to happen. But this will happen. Like, prostitution will be decriminalized next. So, I'll be around to see that, I'm sure, and that will be great.167

Carol Leigh

Well, just that the circumstances in which people engage in sex work is so incredibly diverse, it's like, what -- if I was talking about telling people about what it's like to be a wife, for instance, and -- how would I characterize being a wife? I mean, you're, you don't have much -- if you don't have much money, if you do... There's so many different circumstances that would influence your -- your conditions. And the same is true of, of sex work. There's so many different, different contexts. And different reasons. And... That the main issue, I think, is that people don't remember that they usually think of sex work as always very dangerous, and always something that would always make you unhappy. And no, it's very diverse. And in terms of what makes it more or less dangerous, I mean, I don't really want to quote statistics because I think that's better done in another place, but when you have them in front of you and you can actually be right! [laughs] But from my understanding there's not much -- that there's, that when it's more legal, that it's less dangerous. It doesn't have to be dangerous at all! Well, it might be more dangerous to work at a convenience store, I mean, it might be dangerous on the same basis as many other kinds of work is.168

Kristen DiAngelo

166 Edith, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Oakland, CA., January 21, 2018. 167 Mariko Passion, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Skype, February 12, 2018. 168 Carol Leigh, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, San Francisco, CA., January 19, 2018. 85

That sex work is work. That we’re just like everybody else. There’s no difference from us than anybody else, we’re just in a profession that maybe you don’t understand, or maybe you won’t ever understand, but that’s okay. I might not understand yours. You know, all we want is the same respect and the same human dignity that we give you and your line of work. That we – you know, we – this isn’t a sexual proclivity because if it was I could do it for free and not fuck and go to jail [laughs]. Come on. You know, really? So, sex work is work. I mean, that’s really what I really want them to know. This is a labor industry, and also that there are a few of us that aren’t going back in the closet about us. Like, you’re going to hear a lot more about that. We’re, we’re here, you know. We’re done being quiet. We’re tired of our family and our loved ones being killed, you know? We’re going to keep going at it. Yeah, that would be it. Sex work is work. It’s a job.169

169 Kristen DiAngelo, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Sacramento, January 20, 2018. 86

Appendices

Appendix 1

Here, you will find a brief bio about each interviewee. Not every interviewee used their real name, and in some cases I was never told their real name. The information provided is the information they have consented to having in this thesis.170 I have listed them in first-name alphabetical order.

Carol Leigh is an internationally-known sex worker activist and artist. Leigh identifies as white, Jewish, bisexual, and female. Born in 1951in New York City and raised in attending the Reform Temple on Long Island by socialist parents, Leigh has attended a variety of institutions of higher learning. Leigh now cites her religious denomination with Goddess. Although she is best-known for coining the term “sex work” at a conference, Leigh has also been a Founding Member of SWOP (Sex Worker Outreach Project), the founder and Executive Director of BAYSWAN, founder of the Sex Worker Film Festival, currently serves on the San Francisco Mayor’s Sex Work and Trafficking Task Force, and is or has been involved in COYOTE, Desiree Alliance, the ACLU, Sierra Club, and the National Association for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Leigh’s book is titled Unrepentant Whore: The Collected Works of Scarlot Harlot. Much of her video work can be found at sexworkermedialibrary.org.

Cinnamon Maxxine has been a resident of the California Bay Area for their whole life of over thirty years. Maxxine identifies as Black/mixed-race, AFAB/non binary, and disabled. They have been a sex worker for multiple years.

Edith is a sex worker in her mid-forties. She has been doing sex work since her twenties and identifies as white, Jewish, queer, and a female. Edith describes her current religious practice as Pagan, Earth-based and pre-monotheistic Judaism. She was what she calls a “street kid” during her youth. She is involved with the Sex Worker Film Festival.

Kristen DiAngelo is the documentary filmmaker of American Courtesans, in which she interviews sex workers about their experiences, as well as discusses her own experiences. DiAngelo identifies as white/Caucasian, female, and a trafficking victim. She has since become an advocate and activist, and has been a sex worker for over forty years. Born in San Francisco in the end of the 1950s, she has lived her life between Sacramento and San Francisco. She is, or has in the past been, involved with SWOP Sacramento, NSWP, and Amnesty International.

170 Interviewees filled out a bio form. This bio form asks them, if they feel comfortable, for their gender. The language I use for gender/sex in this appendix mirrors the language that interviewees have used in their bio forms, and does not necessarily reflect my own personal understandings of language, gender, and sex. Other information listed in this appendix is based on what interviewees have decided to list on their bio form. The language used in this appendix mirrors the language they used on the bio form. Interviewees had the option to not list anything for any section they wished – the lack or large quantities of information in this appendix is based on that form, as to accommodate the interviewee and their comfort.

87

Mariko Passion currently lives in Japan. She was born during the 1970s and raised in the California Bay Area until age twenty-nine and continued her sex work and activism in Los Angeles. Passion identifies as Asian, female, and LGBTQ. She is currently self-employed and has worked as a tantra facilitator since 2013. She no longer identifies herself as a sex worker. Passion was the founder of SWOP LA in 2006.

Shawnie Walker was born during the 1980s in California. She had been a resident of Sacramento for three month at the time of our interview and identifies as white and a female. Walker has previous experience in the dancing sector of the sex industry as well. She had recently escaped from a forced sex work situation and identifies as a trafficking victim. She is involved with SWOP Sacramento.

Victoria Schneider has lived on and off in the Bay Area in California since the 1970’s. She identifies her ethnicity as Slovenian and does not identify as white. Schneider identifies as female. She was born in Harlem, New York as a fraternal twin during the early 1950s. She spent some time in the military during the Vietnam War. Along with being a founding member of the famous St. James Infirmary, Schneider has noted her involvement in the Harvey Milk Club and a women-only needle exchange. Her work has also been in places such as Australia and Thailand.

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Appendix 2

4/22/2018 Gmail - Response from Senator Schatz

Ayami Hatanaka

Response from Senator Schatz 2 messages

Senator Brian Schatz Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 5:11 PM To: [email protected]

Dear Ms. Hatanaka,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (S. 1693) and Allow State and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) of 2017 (H.R. 1865).

I noted your opposition to this legislation and your concerns about the possibility of unintended impacts on the safety of sex workers. I voted in favor of the amended version of FOSTA, which passed the House and the Senate in March 2018, because I think that the legislation is necessary to help stop illegal sex trafficking and the exploitation of children.

While we may not agree on this issue, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind as I monitor the law's implementation. Mahalo again for contacting me.

Sincerely,

BRIAN SCHATZ U.S. Senator

To respond to this message or comment on other issues, please visit my website and use the correspondence form at http://www.schatz.senate.gov/contact.

Ayami Hatanaka Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 3:23 PM To: [email protected]

[Quoted text hidden] ­­ Ayami Hatanaka Honolulu, HI.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=bc5fe0a5ea&jsver=OeNArYUPo4g.en.&view=pt&cat=Community%2FPolitical&search=cat&th=162da368fc4a4755&siml=16278c08613

89

Appendix 3

4/22/2018 Gmail - Reply from Senator Mazie K. Hirono

Ayami Hatanaka

Reply from Senator Mazie K. Hirono 2 messages

U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 11:22 AM To: [email protected]

April 16, 2018

Dear Ms. Hatanaka, Thank you for contacting me regarding federal efforts to prevent the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and youth, specifically S. 1693, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. I appreciate hearing from you about these serious issues and agree that we must do all we can to stop these activities.

Human trafficking is a serious domestic and international problem. This criminal enterprise victimizes individuals in the United States, many of them children and foreigners brought into the country under false pretenses, who are coerced into forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Experts estimate that each year at least 100,000 children in the United States are exploited through prostitution.

Trafficking is a complex and varied problem that requires a multi-disciplinary, cooperative solution. Reducing trafficking will require the federal government to address victims and their abusers, and to provide specific trafficking training to law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and child welfare providers. That's why I have consistently supported federal programs and funding to combat the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and youth throughout my time in Congress.

On August 1, 2017, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced S. 1693, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). This legislation eliminates federal liability protections for websites that violate federal sex trafficking laws and empowers state law enforcement officials to take legal action against such businesses. I voted in support of this bill, which passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives on strong bipartisan votes of 97-2 and 388-25 respectively, and which President Trump signed into law on April 11, 2018.

In addition, I have cosponsored various bills to address this serious problem. I cosponsored Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-NY) Trafficking Survivors Relief Act of 2017, a bill that would amend the federal criminal code to establish a process to vacate convictions and expunge arrests for criminal offenses committed by trafficking victims that directly result from or relate to having been a trafficking victim. I also cosponsored the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse Act of 2017 introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Finally, I cosponsored the Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017, a comprehensive bill to provide assistance in abolishing human trafficking in the United States, which was passed unanimously by the Senate. For more information on these bills, please visit: http://thomas.loc.gov.

Supporting programs and policies that help protect children and youth from trafficking and sexual exploitation is important to communities in Hawaii and across our country. Please be assured that I will continue working with my colleagues to advance these efforts throughout the 115th Congress.

Again, thank you for contacting me. If you would like to stay in touch with me on this or other issues of importance to you, please visit my website at: http://www.hirono.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to contact me again in the future if I may be of assistance to you in any way. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=bc5fe0a5ea&jsver=OeNArYUPo4g.en.&view=pt&cat=Community%2FPolitical&search=cat&th=162da3610bdd9cbf&siml=162cf0e5d8e

90

4/22/2018 Gmail - Reply from Senator Mazie K. Hirono Aloha,

Mazie K. Hirono United States Senator

You can follow my work in the U.S. Senate on Twitter. Please do not reply to this email as this mailbox is for outgoing messages only. If you would like to contact me again, please visit my website.

Ayami Hatanaka Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 3:23 PM To: [email protected]

[Quoted text hidden] ­­ Ayami Hatanaka Honolulu, HI.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=bc5fe0a5ea&jsver=OeNArYUPo4g.en.&view=pt&cat=Community%2FPolitical&search=cat&th=162da3610bdd9cbf&siml=162cf0e5d8e

91

Appendix 4

4/23/2018 Williams College Mail - Week 2: lobbying + direct action info, media guides + workshops

Hatanaka, Ayami

Week 2: lobbying + direct action info, media guides + workshops 1 message

Survivors Against SESTA Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 1:13 PM Reply­To: [email protected] To: [email protected]

View this email in your browser

**We are switching to MailChimp because our gmail is blocking the emails we’re sending. Please forward this email out to community as we're having technical issues. **

Hi lovelies,

This is a hefty email with a lot of resources, so we’re sectioning it into three chunks: lobbying, direct action, and media training. Please continue to encourage community to sign up for our mailing list so more people can get connected to the information and trainings we’re sending out. We are still working on a KYR document for organizers.

Lobbying: In DC, and cities across the country, sex workers, trafficking survivors, and community members are taking to the offices of our Reps to talk sex work, community needs and how SESTA made us all more vulnerable. We’re coordinating point people and host organizations in each city to finalize logistics and begin planning for how we want to hold our Representatives accountable--and what we’re asking from them moving forward. Each location will be able to chart their course and get support including training, leave- behind materials, and resources for determining targets and strategy.

Are you a solo ho who doesn’t live near your reps? You can still plug in. Sign up here if you haven’t already, and we’ll send ways that you can engage politically. If you’re in a more remote area, there’s a good chance that reaching your Reps is even more vital to let them know that we’re voters and community members who have a voice.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/?ui=2&ik=bb555102cd&jsver=OeNArYUPo4g.en.&view=pt&cat=Academics%2FSpring%202018%2FWGSS%20THESIS&search=cat&th=162c52

92

Appendix 5

Permission to use this particular screenshot was granted via Facebook Messenger on April 24th, 2018.

93

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