Let Us Survive:
An oral history of sex worker movements before and after FOSTA-SESTA
by the Hacking//Hustling Collective
“Remember, I am a second generation of third generation sex workers. That means that I have children who are sex workers. So I worry about first my children who are sex workers and their safety, and how they would vet their clients and make their money, and how they must be feeling in this moment, defeated. They too might feel worried. And then also for my extended kin, an extended family in which I have been providing, been in community with. What they would be feeling. So sadness, grief, and also the need to fight more, right? Like, what are we gonna do? Fight like hell and continue to fight like hell.” – Lakeesha Harris, executive director of Chicago Volunteer Doulas
The community response to the United States bills known as FOSTA-SESTA represents a sea change in American sex worker organizing. Supposedly, these bills were intended by their Congressional authors to change how the internet is regulated in order to make the country safer for victims of sex trafficking.
We’ll talk plenty over the course of this podcast series about how that was supposed to work, and why it hasn’t.
Let Us Survive, an oral history project by sex workers for everyone, covers a decade of American sex worker justice movements, roughly 2013 to 2023. It also gazes towards the future: of the industry, and of our labor organizing.
This podcast does something that US Congress didn’t do: we listen to sex worker voices. Voices along the Choice-Circumstance-Coercion spectrum. We explore how sex workers use technology to keep ourselves safe, to build community and culture, to not only survive but thrive. We listen to our fellow sex workers and survivors as we talk about our movements, how we’ve responded to FOSTA-SESTA and other policies. How we feel about federal raids on internet platforms like RentBoy and Backpage. How we feel about the Communications Decency Act and freedom of speech. What we believe reproductive justice activists and others can learn from sex worker organizing. Why we’re fighting for the decriminalization of sex work, and how that will only be the beginning of the changes we need to see.
“Sex worker” as defined by the Hacking//Hustling collective is: A political, unifying, umbrella term for people who sell sex, or performances, materials, or services associated with sex acts, in exchange for resources.
So over the course of four episodes, you’ll be hearing the voices of full service workers, strippers, pro-doms, cam models, and pornographers. People who work in hotels and on the street, in clubs and in their homes. People who sell digital content online, and people who use the internet to market their services.
Workers, survivors, activists, and allies from all over the United States who have built solidarity and collapsed binaries.
People whose political identity as sex workers intersects with other identities both marginalized and privileged, as experts in harm reduction and tech privacy, as lawyers, as advocates, as parents, as drug users, as doulas, as bloggers, and so much more.
Let Us Survive interviews Lakeesha Harris of Chicago Volunteer Doulas; Desiree Collins of the Colorado Entertainer Coalition; Jared Trujillo of CUNY Law School; Chibundo Egwuatu of HIPS (Honoring Individual Power and Strength) in DC, Elizabeth Ricks of the Trans Life Care Program at Chicago House; Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore, Marla Cruz, a sex worker and writer from Texas, Caty Simon of Whose Corner Is it Anyway in Massachusetts; Kate D’Adamo of Reframe Health and Justice, and M of APAC (Adult Performer Advocacy Committee) in Los Angeles, along with Danielle Blunt, Red, and zara raven of Hacking//Hustling.
This podcast was hosted, produced, written, recorded, and edited by Tina Horn and Mickey Mod, with additional production support from Christopher Holloway.
To learn about this project, other research by Hacking//Hustling, and more about the past, present, and future of sex worker movements, please visit HackingHustling.org.
These interviews were conducted in 2023. Some facts and perspectives may have evolved since then.
You can stream all of the episodes, as they drop, here.
Episode 1: Sex worker organizing before FOSTA-SESTA
“SESTA FOSTA meant that these were no longer singular, discreet events. This was going to now become a trend in federal law that threatened our access to cheap, low threshold advertising as independent workers. In the context of that, it was so hard to have any more faith. It was so hard to not see these constant ‘How to’s’ to be anything less than like the flailing of the few, of like the small swaths of sex workers who are privileged enough to be able to survive the latest blow. SESTA-FOSTA meant that the blows were never ending. They would never stop. Sorry, I don’t mean to paint such a bleak picture, but that’s what it felt like to me at the time. I feel like we were always bracing ourselves for the next individual blow. And I feel like we were always watchful for the broad language in anti-trafficking legislation that wasn’t actually attuned to the needs of trafficking survivors that could possibly be used against us. But I don’t think we understood or I don’t think every sex worker on the street or even every common sex worker in the movement, understood that this would be the ultimate end, you know, of those two trends. Maybe we understood in theory, but those of us who had been just privileged enough to be able to maneuver and keep our scant livelihoods, we thought, ‘Well, I survived the last one, I can survive the next one.’ You can’t really imagine something like SESTA FOSTA is coming up in the future because then you can’t keep going.” — Caty Simon of Whose Corner Is It Anyway in Massachusetts
Right from the start, activists knew that if the bill package known as FOSTA-SESTA became law, it would be devastating for sex workers. And that it would basically do nothing to protect victims and survivors of forced sexual labor. In fact, it would make us all less safe.
In our opening episode, we explore the landscape of online sex work and the activists fighting against stigma and criminalization. We detail the federal raids on advertising websites such as RentBoy, and how sex worker rights movements saw the FOSTA fallout coming.
Read the full transcript here.
Episode 2: The Cassandras in the Coal Mine
“All of us were local organizers, moving to a national scale. We did what we do, you know? There’s a threat and you get your people together. That that informed a lot of our decisions, because we were all place-based organizers who also were community organizers and labor organizers where, you know, our workplaces under threat. We just got to get our people into the same room and talk about what’s happening. I didn’t know what else to do.” — Kate D’Adamo, of Reframe Health and Justice
The authors of FOSTA-SESTA positioned online platforms as potential villains in the fight against sex trafficking. But sex workers and trafficking survivors have always understood that these platforms are simply a neutral communication resource. And that FOSTA-SESTA threatened much more than it stood to protect.
Activists weren’t just the canaries in the coal mine; we were like Cassandra, the Greek myth of the woman screaming prophecy, whose tragedy is that no one listened to her. Until it was too late.
In Episode 2, we explore the early days of FOSTA-SESTA before it became law: how the movement responded, what it stood to change, what we had to fear, and what gave us hope.
Read the full transcript here.
Episode 3: “We really hate to say we told you so…”
“We have these big moments as sex workers where we can all come together and agree that this was just an earthquake that we all experienced. To different degrees, but we all experience it together. And then we have these moments as individuals where we experience all the other factors that make us unsafe, where we experience all the other times and all the other customers and clientele that decide that we’re not worthy of the safety that other people get in their work environment.” — Marla Cruz, sex worker and activist
During the years leading up to FOSTA-SESTA, any online discourse about sexuality was in ever more increasing danger of being lumped in with human trafficking. That came to a head when the FOSTA-SESTA bill threatened to expand liabilities for websites that host user-generated content.
Some platforms, like Craigslist and Tumblr, changed their terms of service preemptively out of an abundance of caution. Others, like Backpage, were shut down by law enforcement.
Despite all of the grassroots campaigning by sex workers to speak out against FOSTA-SESTA, the bill still passed with major bipartisan support.
Without listening to sex workers.
And then… everything we warned about came to pass.
In Episode 3, we explore the devastating FOSTA fallout.
Read the full transcript here.
Episode 4, Parts 1 & 2: The FOSTA Effect and the Future of Sex Worker Justice
“Sex working people are unbelievably gifted at figuring it out, but also wouldn’t it be nice for folks to not have to do that, not have to always be strong, and just enjoy life a little bit?” — Elizabeth Ricks, legal director of the Trans Life Care Program at Chicago House
Years after passing, FOSTA-SESTA has barely been used for its stated purpose.
But it has done exactly the kind of collateral damage that sex worker advocates predicted it would.
In our final episode, we recount all the struggle we have endured in the wake of FOSTA-SESTA. We also discuss what comes next: a renewed push to decriminalize all kinds of sex work in the United States, and all the hard work that will come after that, too.
How can we continue to build a legacy of solidarity together?
Read the full transcript here.
About the podcasters
Tina Horn
Tina Horn is the author of Why Are People Into That?: A Cultural Investigation of Kink — a book based on her long-running indie podcast of the same name — and the sci-fi comic book series Safe Sex (SfSx). Her journalism on sexual subcultures has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, the Wondery podcast Operator, and in book anthologies such as We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, which she coedited. Tina is known for the theatrical sensibility she brings to her BDSM workshops in feminist pleasure boutiques, university lectures on sex worker rights, as an emcee at kinky art shows, a panelist and moderator at writing conferences, and a fetish commentator in the media. Her work explores the narrative shapes of perverted experiences and the pornographic potential of pop culture. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence in Creative Nonfiction Writing, and is a LAMBDA Literary Fellow, an AVN nominee, and the recipient of two Feminist Porn Awards.
Mickey Mod
Mickey Mod is an Oakland-based adult performer, erotic filmmaker, and sex worker rights advocate with nearly two decades in the industry. A former software engineer, he brings a multidisciplinary perspective to adult content and labor issues. He served as Creative Director at Kink.com before co-founding Collective Corruption, an award-nominated, queer performer-owned and -operated BDSM production studio. He has also worked with feminist director Erika Lust’s XConfessions, as well as Bellesa, Pure Taboo, and Deep Lush. A multi-award-nominated performer recognized by XBIZ and AVN, Mickey has held board positions at sex worker rights organizations and is a sought-after voice on consent, ethical production, and racial equity. He has spoken at The New School and been featured in GQ, Glamour, Jezebel, Mother Jones, Slate, Cosmopolitan, and Mic, among others.
Christopher Holloway
Christopher Holloway is an Oakland-based content creator with over a decade of experience producing things for the internet. He cut his production teeth on the stone walls of the SF Armory for Kink.com. It was in that castle that he co-founded Failed Films, an underground adult film and art event that gives artists a container to risk failing. Over 10 years, Failed Films has featured hundreds of artists across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and most recently, New Orleans. He was also the founding producer for The Whorecast, a podcast that chronicled the stories, art, and voices of American sex workers. Whether you find him peddling smut or a SFW production, Christopher brings a vision, steadiness, and problem-solving that makes him invaluable to any production.
Hacking//Hustling is a collective of sex workers, survivors, and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice to interrupt violence facilitated by technology.