Let Us Survive: An Oral History of Sex Worker Movements Before and After FOSTA-SESTA

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, pornographers, and more. 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.