This episode explores the world of sex trafficking myths surrounding the Superbowl with M and Blair from the Sex Worker Outreach Project - Behind Bars. We're going to talk to them about that and how we can all be better educated and how we can actually support actual victims of human trafficking without criminalizing and harassing adults that are engaging in consensual sex.
Blair is a writer and photographer and host the podcast, All in a Day's (Sex) Work, titled after her book of the same name. She's been a sex worker's rights advocate for over a decade, and currently serves as deputy director SWOP-Behind Bars. M is a writer of nonfiction, commentary and poetry, federally defined survivor of human trafficking and sex workers' rights advocate with SWOP - Behind Bars.
Join us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/crimejuicygang for bonus episodes, unaired content, exclusive expert interviews, swag, and a peek behind the juice!
This episode explores the world of sex trafficking myths surrounding the Superbowl with M and Blair from the Sex Worker Outreach Project - Behind Bars. We're going to talk to them about that and how we can all be better educated and how we can actually support actual victims of human trafficking without criminalizing and harassing adults that are engaging in consensual sex.
Blair is a writer and photographer and host the podcast, All in a Day's (Sex) Work, titled after her book of the same name. She's been a sex worker's rights advocate for over a decade, and currently serves as deputy director SWOP-Behind Bars. M is a writer of nonfiction, commentary and poetry, federally defined survivor of human trafficking and sex workers' rights advocate with SWOP - Behind Bars.
Join us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/crimejuicygang for bonus episodes, unaired content, exclusive expert interviews, swag, and a peek behind the juice!
Superbowl Sex Trafficking Myths
[00:00:00]
Carrie: Our cocktail hour tonight: Superbowl sex trafficking and sex work. We're going to dispel some of the myths that go along with that, and what's really going on and joining us tonight:
Becca: We got Blair Hopkins. She is a writer and photographer and hosts the podcast, All in a Days Sex - in parentheses - Work after her book of the same name. She's been a sex worker's rights advocate for over a decade, and currently serves as deputy director of the Sex Worker Outreach Project - Behind Bars, SWOP - Behind Bars. And we're going to be talking a lot about this project, how you can support these people, the work that they do, and it's awesome. Y'all are gonna love this.
And also with us is M. She is a survivor and an advocate, and an advocate in training for SWOP – Behind Bars. We're just stoked to have them this week right before Superbowl. Blair's already down in Florida ready to kick some ass and yeah. We're going to talk to them about that and how we can all be better educated and how we can actually like support actual victims of human trafficking without criminalizing and harassing adults that are engaging in consensual sex. With that, let's kick it off. Yeah. Blair do you want to tell us a bit about SWOP – Behind Bars and the kind of work that y’all do?
Blair: Sure you, I can start off if you want. SWOP - Behind Bars was created in 2016 with the increase in the changes in laws, the increase of arrests that were going on. These laws were changing. In the last year and a half, we've gone from 175 followers on Instagram to, I believe we are about to hit 12,000.
Carrie: I think that's a huge number, actually. 12,000 is huge on Instagram. You should be very proud. I give you kudos. Especially knowing that these are people that it is directly affecting and impacting, and they're interested in it. And that's an engaged audience.
M: Thank you.
Blair: This weekend, we will be in Tampa. Well, I'm already in Tampa, and we are focusing on offering post-arrest resources to people. We're a 501(c)(3), we're based in central Florida. Our primary focus is on current and formerly incarcerated sex workers with an emphasis on street-based sex workers and people from kind of marginalized communities that are compounded in how they're marginalized. So trans women of color, street-based workers, people experiencing homelessness, things like that. This weekend, one of the things we are focusing really hard on is there's a huge increase in stings that are billed as like anti-trafficking stings around any major sporting event, and so the Superbowl is an especially big one. These are really pervasive myths that have gone on for a long time. And so we have a pretty extensive network due to our community outreach. And then we also use, open-source court records to find out where arrests are trending upward and find out where stings have happened and are happening. We're checking the jail roles every day, and we're going down there and we're bailing people out and then we're connecting them with host release resources.
Krista: That's amazing.
Becca: That's awesome.
Carrie: You're using open-source records to find an increase - an uptick an arrest and going in and swooping in like Batman?
Blair: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We run a lot of promo. Every week we have an outreach clinic here in Orlando, and then we have some of our coalition down in Tampa and stuff too, down there on the strolls. So we're very well connected down there to be able to get information about where stings are happening in the first place. But yeah, I mean, everything, Florida in particular, like, it’s a little bit of a misnomer that Florida has more weird stuff happen than other places. It's really just that Florida has extremely loose reporting laws. So all of this stuff is right out there. You can very easily keep an eye on law enforcement activity trends.
Becca: They've got super loose reporting laws.
Blair: Exactly. I mean, to be fair, there are, you know, there is a lot of, a lot of crazy stuff that happens down here in the swamp, but you're more likely to hear about it if it's Florida.
Yeah. That's what we do, man. We, I was I spent a couple of hours today witnessing first appearance hearings. We had four women who were arrested last night, we got all of them bonded out. A couple of them were migrant workers, so that puts them at a at a particularly dangerous situation if they're subjected to law enforcement action, because they can end up in ICE custody. So we went down there to do that. Sometimes there's other charges that we then have the opportunity to help people navigate, you know, if there are accompanying drug charges, or maybe somebody violated a protective order or that's how they, you know. Because actually I figured this out today, the state will place a restraining order between you and the location where you were picked up for prostitution. So if the girl goes back on the stroll the next night, she's also in violation of that.
Becca: Can you talk a bit about the relationship between these sex trafficking sting operations, or quote unquote, sex trafficking sting operations, and anti-immigration and ICE raids and that sort of thing.
Blair: Oh boy. There's a lot to unpack there. So if I could just psychically hyperlink the old Facebook you know, tag groups that are like, “There's a lot to unpack here, but we should just burn the whole suitcase instead.” So let's see, where do I start with?
Becca: We got a lot of candles back there behind Carrie Anne, so we’re ready. And again, before you know, we really, really, really want to emphasize that the big myth here is that there's increased sex trafficking around sporting events, including the Superbowl. And that's used to justify ramping up the police state, conducting more ICE stings, like really clamping down on marginalized populations at arresting a fuck load of people under this, like, guise, and have something that people get flown into hysteria about. Because no one wants human trafficking to happen. No, one's like for human trafficking and it gets exploited as an excuse to push an authoritarian agenda and put people behind bars.
Blair: Yeah. Actually we had 71 people arrested earlier this month and this is a little bit of an aside. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but it definitely bears noting that in Florida this year was enacted a law called the Prostitution Database. And so it's basically a specialized sex registry that if you are a man who is arrested for solicitation you go on this registry for a minimum of five years, unless you are able to hire a lawyer to fight it. And of course that is life wrecking and insane. Another one of the things we've been doing down in Tampa this week is handing out a lot of information about that. We’re starting in class action lawsuits, all of these, all of these efforts integrate together. That said we are not bonding out johns. They can bond themselves out. They're fine.
Krista: I mean, obviously had the money.
Blair: They got money. They're fine. As it pertains to immigration though. You know, some people may remember, it feels like it was a thousand million years ago, but it was like 2019. The Patriots won the Superbowl. Shortly thereafter, one of the owners of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft got busted at a massage parlor here in Florida and he was arrested. He's a billionaire, he's fine. All the charges were dropped against him. However, the 12 women who were arrested in that sting, they are less fine. Right. And they were all of Asian descent. I don't know the status of each individual here, but I know that the bulk of them were on some kind of visa or another. Some of them have ended up in ICE custody, and it's been an incredibly disruptive life shattering event for those women. And that is often the result.
Krista: It seems like these laws are really kind of in favor for the trafficker, because what happens to the trafficker? Nothing. They lose, they lose, they lose that girl, but they have five more waiting.
Blair: There's a couple of ways you can work on that from a law enforcement perspective. One is that you can pivot to like end demand or Nordic-model laws that that will like decriminalize sex work for the worker, but not for the people who are patronizing the workers. And the problem with that is that it is just as disruptive and it's to people's lives. It's just as disruptive to business. It ends up with more customers being like afraid, and scared horny men are not anything that anybody wants to deal with ever, for any reason. It's just as ineffective at netting actual exploitation. What's a trafficker? Like who is a trafficker, right? It's a very, very broad legal definition. When they pick up, for example, the women at the salon that Kraft got busted at they billed that as like a big international sex trafficking ring bust. It wasn't. It was a bunch of women who knew each other who came from the same region. Some knew each other more tangentially, but they all came from the same region of the same country and they have, mutual friends and they came together in an expatriated community or sub-community and worked in the same industry. It's a tale as old as time. And the fact that sex is involved is pretty ancillary in my personal opinion. But it's like, is the woman who ran that salon a sex trafficker? I don't - by the legal definition. Yes. But like, did the women working there feel trafficked? Did anybody ask them?
Krista: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Who leads the trafficker? In that sense?
Blair: [00:10:00] Who's just an abusive partner? Or who's a purveyor of capitalism?
Becca: If you're looking at - it's not a pimp per se, it's an abusive partner. Like that's the issue, sex trafficking is used as an excuse to criminalize the act while not dealing with deeper issues of why the thing is happening.
Blair: If like, dude is like beating his girlfriend and coercing her to work the streets and then taking all her money, I would like to see him put away for as long as possible, even though I am personally like not into the carceral system, but like, you know, say that violent predators should probably be kept away from the general population in some capacity, even though the carceral system has, it's like, you know, it's not exactly retributive. Meanwhile, if she weren't getting…the same woman, let's say Jane Doe is being pimped by her boyfriend and she gets caught doing sex work. She gets caught up in a sting, and then she and her boyfriend are both prosecuted for some level of trafficking. She's got a prostitution charge. Maybe he gets charged with trafficking. In the exact same situation, if she were to, I don't know, call the police because he was beating her, probably nothing would happen, unfortunately.
Krista: True. I've seen it, so I've lived it. Those pieces of paper that they say - they don't mean anything. Nothing. It doesn't mean anything.
Blair: Yeah. It especially doesn't mean anything if - if the person who is your abuser is the person that you've been groomed to become completely emotionally or financially dependent on. Right? And you can't necessarily rely on those survivors to testify against their abusers, or stay away from their abusers, or believe that their abusers don't love them or, you know, and I'm sure in some sick way the abuser does think that they love the person. These are really, really complicated emotional issues for people and there is just no fucking nuance in the way that we handle this legally. And that is why it ruins people's lives.
Becca: What are ways that people can support victims of human trafficking that are actually being trafficked and not engaging in consensual sex work?
Blair: Give money to peer, to peer sex worker, run organizations that do the work. Stop reporting interracial families at the airport. Vote for politicians who support increasing the social safety net. Right. Because having a social safety net in place, that includes, in my opinion, prevention services, youth, substance abuse prevention services, child abuse and neglect prevention services that are outside the immediate purview of law enforcement is an excellent way to help people make decisions that will help their lives. Right. Ultimately you have to take a look at like, what is your goal? Is your goal to end sex work? Well, good fucking luck. That is not going to happen. That is never going to happen ever in. It's never happened in the history. Bonobos trade sex.
Krista: It's exciting. It feels good. It's never gonna go.
Blair: Yeah, exactly. So if your goal is to end the sex work then I would suggest that you grow up. But if your goal is to help people. Then you need to let them have a seat at the table and take the reins on what their actual needs are. Like, let people speak for themselves, what they need, meet them, where they're at you know. Vote for progressive housing policies that encourages reasonable, sustainable, urban density and expansion of affordable housing provision.
There's so much that you can do that doesn't involve sticking your nose in somebody, in how somebody makes their money. And doesn't involve moralizing them and judging them, right?
Becca: Yeah. I think in general, like, don't knee-jerk reaction called the police on a situation you don't understand. Because they're going to show up and understand it even less and then they're going to enforce something. Like when cops show up, they have to, you know, it's a thing where it's like, oh, you called me to provide a service. I got to provide a service somehow. So once they show up, they're going to find a way to do their shitty job. And it's going to suck.
Krista: Yeah. I hate to bring them up, but people reported Jeffrey Epstein.
Becca: Yeah. That worked out great.
Krista: Multiple times. Like went to the police station, brought their child to them and said, oh yeah, hey, he told me to massage him and then said, hey, let me touch his weird egg shaped penis. Some don’t understand that he was deformed. How did he get away with it? And like, he was like, they knew he was deformed and multiple people, multiple children at that confirmed the deformity.
Blair: It's gnarly. Yeah. I mean, I hate to answer a question about like, how can you help? And it's like, I don't know, defund the police and dismantle the patriarchy. Send money, you know, like that's, that's really, that's it.
Krista: Assumptions are ridiculous. When it comes to judgy-McJudgerson, snooty-Mc-look down their noses, who are the worst? Is it, is it women? Other women that aren't part of it that don't understand it, the abusive part of it, the mentality of that part, or the fact that, hey, maybe I enjoy having sex. I want to enjoy my job. So why don't I do that? And I do it safely and in a place where I'm in control. And I know that doesn't always happen, but it does. So is it women or is it men? Is it older people?
M: The snarky comments that I see, like, say on the social media actually seem to be coming from young foreign men. Would you agree with that Blair? Like the, it starts getting like really strangely caustic and that's what, what I've seen is that it's young men and usually men that are not American.
Blair: Yeah. There's, I mean, the trolling is, is unreal. I think so it's not, I mean, it really all just manifests differently depending on your demographic. Right? So like when I, when I was like 18, I worked at a sex toy shop and people would always ask me like, you know, what, what kind of people by what things or whatever. And they'd be like, what do you see the most of? And I'd be like, well, you know, it's really a matter of you know, couples come in and they get the sex furniture, and like straight 25 – straight-appearing 25-year-old guys come in and they get the, they get the what is now referred to as transgender porn. You know, like there's, it's really just a matter of like, how does that present itself? Because everybody's got their special flavor of weird and fucked up and terrible and great.
When I was 18 working at that store, Aneros had just come out the prostate stimulator, that white one, that was such a big deal in like 2004. And like Hustler that year wrote an article that was like, the big article about straight men wanting prostate stimulation and everyone's fucking minds were blown. It's, it's amazing to me now where we're at culturally it's hard sometimes to see the forest through the trees on like social progress and open-mindedness.
M: Well, the pocket vajay-jay was what was popular when I was doing novelties. And that's something that you never hear mentioned anymore.
Krista: The Fleshlight?
M: No, I was way before 1986, a long time ago. And they would be imported from Asia with like real human hair. But they had to put it in Made in the USA boxes because though it was legal to sell a pocket vajay-jay, it was not legal to sell one that was made in Southeast Asia. It had to be made in the United States. And it had to be repurposed, but I often wondered when I was sitting there doing the packaging, who - who does buy those. Because these are, they would just be stacked up, you know, like, you know, way, way, way, way up into, you know, like these columns. And I'd be like, who are the people that are purchasing these little pocket vajay-jays? Are they truck drivers? Are they cab drivers? Are they, or are they people who are just like lonely, bored?
Blair: But now they have whole porn star molds that have that, they're modeled after a specific porn star and it's like her whole lower region. And it's like the cyber-flesh stuff. The dolls were definitely like turning into big business.
M: You know a few years back as the laws were changing, they were starting to have like interactive doll bars in England, wherever like for five, 10,000 dollars you could have your own mold ready for you when you arrive.
Krista: Well, and there was some controversy about that because people started having children made.
M: If I remember correctly, they were calling them partial-size so that they could easily be tucked away.
Krista: No, they were, they were clearly children. There was – no. They weren't vertically challenged adults by any means. They still make them and their, their argument is okay, well, if they have this won’t it prevent other things from happening? But then the other side is, but what if it increases the craving for the real thing.
M: You have to really respect the fact that there are some challenges to being the lawmakers. Because if you are a lawmaker who is in, you know, you, you think that you are doing your work really well for the greater good of your society and then somebody throws that one on the table and you didn't see that coming from left side there. How do you respond to that? Where do you even start the research to see what, what, what are the criteria to determine what is legal and what is not?
Becca: Yeah, it's interesting because in the US we have like, kind of fucked up legislation surrounding pedophilia, because even if you haven't done it yet and you like to go to seek help about it, that's like a mandatory reporting thing. You know, it's really hard - for people that have these urges to seek help before they offend, without being criminalized right away. [00:20:00] So, you know, finding the middle ground on that I think is, I don't even know if it's like the middle ground. We gotta find like some fucking ground on it in this country. It's like something we got to do.
Krista: It's a whole other thing of the thought crime. I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. So how can I be charged for something that I didn't actually do? I didn't harm anybody. I just thought about it. I maybe shared it. But I didn't do it.
M: That's where sex ed can be such an important topic. I mean, when I was on the airplane coming back from Florida, the couple next to me had downloaded a film onto their phone and they had their headsets on so there was no volume. And I had to do a keyword search when I got home to, I could try to figure out what they were watching because all of a sudden there was like a, it was an adult animated, kind of you know, feature. And out of nowhere there was a talking bleeding vajay-jay going on, and there was like an alien mother and her daughter was sitting there on the toilet and then there would be this, the bleeding vajay-jay and dialogue, and then someone surfing through waves of blood. And then there were little boys with mosquitoes and I'm like, what in the world are they watching? It turns out. I did, I did. It's a Netflix it's a Netflix series that is getting a lot of praise for addressing challenging issues in the, you know, the topic of contemporary sex ed.
Becca: Big Mouth?
Krista: Big Mouth. I watched it. It does make you uncomfortable, but…
M: Yeah, well, yeah. So imagine if you're on an airplane and you're not prepared to watch it. And all of a sudden it's like right at that, that like, let's talk about it. Yeah. You know, your, your menstrual cycle
Becca: What if you, like, dub over the talking vagina, you could like say anything coming out of its mouth.
Krista: Like, honestly, I watched it and if they let, let's say they let 16-year-olds watch that. Just because it is pretty, it was pretty bold. Or maybe not even, I mean, I don't know, do whatever, let your kids watch it. Don't let your kids watch it. But I remember I watched it and I was like, damn, I remember feeling that way. That's exactly what it was like.
M: So I still haven't heard any of it. I've only seen it. I still have to, at some point I am going to sit and pull it up and watch it so I can hear what goes along with the visual. Just having the visual without any filter unexpectedly made me feel like I was over 50. I admit it, but you know, the, the people that were watching it were so into each other and so involved in it. Cause the guy's like, look, I downloaded it for you. So babe, I've got it on the phone for you. It's going to be a really fast two hours, you know, just here, we've got this. And they're, they're cuddled together and they're laughing and they're there…I'm like, wow, they're actually having like more intimacy and more like engagement there then I've seen in all, this whole year. They've got something on us. If it took all that to do it, like good for them, but yeah. I had to try to figure out what it was because it was just so unexpected.
Krista: Yeah. Yeah. It's visually jarring sometimes. I watched it with my husband and I was like, is that how, like, it to be like a teenage boy and he's all like, yeah.
Becca: There's like a puberty monster in it, like…
Krista: There's hormone monsters. There's…they tackle…
M: Wait, is that the gargoyle, the gargoyles are hormone monsters?
Krista: Yes. They tackle a lot of issues. They tackle divorce, they tackle. One of their parents are getting divorced and the mom starts dating a woman. The one of the boys tackles, am I gay? Am I not gay?
M: They don't have pocket vajay-jays and life-sized –
Becca: There's even an awkward kid that ends up with a huge penis.
Krista: Yup. And then there's the boy who realizes yeah, he's bisexual because he, he has sex with pillows, which I'm sure that everybody's humped a pillow, I don't know. I'll air that out. I’ve humped a pillow, but like he finds out that he's bisexual because he has a girl pillow and then a couch cushion that's a boy. And so they, they tackled that. They also tackle like other family issues of parents that aren't around. Drug addictions…
M: And we all know when parents aren’t around that's when bad things can, like sex work can become sex trafficking.
Krista: Yeah, and they tackle a lot of hard things and they do make it funny and vulgar, but they make it watchable for somebody that may not be able to handle the actual feels.
Becca: We just watched Degrassi in sex ed.
Krista: So yes, yes. I do recommend Big Mouth.
M: Now you said you have two teenage boys?
Krista: I have a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old. So my 12-year-old –
M: You have tweens! You have tweens! Oh my gosh.
Krista: My 12-year-old son’s almost taller than me and he's already like sleeping and just eating.
M: Sleeping, eating, and just being like, no. So are you, are you going to show Big Mouth to him?
Krista: You know, if he watches it without my knowledge, I can't do anything. What, I don't know doesn't hurt me, but if I found out he watched it, I wouldn't necessarily like, be totally upset. I might talk to them about it and be like, do you understand what you watched?
M: Well, this is one of the other things about the solution solicitation for prostitution public database is that when people are put into a public registry for five years, instead of finding a way to get you know, these so-called johns the counsel that they might need to help keep their family together, being on a public registry can be devastating. They can lose their jobs. They can lose their children. They can, they can lose everything. And with that, then you have that added feature of what happens with, you know, situations where children have their dads arrested for the sex crimes and there is no real support service? You know, is it just brushed under the rug? Does, you know, like do a fast hookup into a new situation? Like how, how do people deal with that? And in 2019 there was a lot of media attention on the fact that the law was potentially going to be changing. Reason Magazine did a great expose on that. And then the new laws went into effect January of this year. And as Blair was saying, like there's 71 arrests for men so far. It's not clear if they're going to wind up being placed in that registry or how that's going to – or in that database or how that's going to work. But just throwing in there that that was one of the points of concern is how to get people to the proper services they need to prevent unnecessary harm to families and to people in the community who are impacted either way however this all plays out.
Blair: Yeah, it'd be really nice if you're, if the education that your kids got about sex and human sexuality didn't come at like the behest of, of the law on a, with your dad on a public database for soliciting…Maybe we could, maybe we could find a healthier, safer way to do that for people.
Krista: It's not shameful. And it's very much your own choice. Always let it be your own choice.
Carrie: If the database is that detrimental in Florida, do you guys feel that - what was the intention?
M: Partial decrim.
Blair: Yeah. They call it partial model, the Nordic model, end demand. It's a kind of neoliberal kind of maybe like second wave feminist kind of way of looking at it, which is that you shouldn't criminalize sex workers because they're all hapless victims, you know, being preyed upon by these dirty perverted men. And so we should instead not criminalize the women. Okay, good, good. Don't criminalize women, but instead criminalized the men more heavily. Right. But all of the law enforcement emphasis on customers. And it's like, wait, no, you had me in the first half!
Becca: Because it’s either like women are like these like vile temptresses or women are completely lacking of agency and in trouble. And they're both completely. No we just gotta like burn it.
Carrie: It kinda makes me happy that they're getting arrested for it. I'm sorry that wouldn't happen in Utah or Colorado. And you know…
M: The differences arrested is one thing, but to be in the public database for five years is, is the other, it's the registry…
Carrie: I know! That would punish something real good in Utah. Okay. Now you got a lot of men…
Blair: I guess. I just don't. I mean, personally, I don't understand why arresting anybody on its face is helpful, right? Like, so let's say you have a dude who is I don't know. I interviewed a guy for the podcast who I've known for a long, long time actually. And his, all of his sexual experiences have been transactional. He's my age, he's in his mid-thirties, and he is high functioning autistic. He works from home. He's a loner. He's, you know, he's a nice enough guy, but he's really not good at the social part of things. And he's never had sex with a woman that wasn't transactional. Unfortunately due to his autism leading to him not always having the easiest time with social cues he's gotten pretty dangerous situations also because of criminalization. Right. But like, you have to have sex. Like you need to have sex. And he needs to have sex, like…And there's nothing wrong in my opinion, morally with what he's doing, as long as he's tipping well. You know, pay well, tip well. fucking abide by consent, or even let's say some guy that's cheating on his wife, well, it's none of my business at all. Right. I hope that it goes well. I hope he's using a condom. I hope he's not spending the kids’ you know, college funds on it, but it's none of my business. Maybe she knows. Like the, the people that need to be targeted are violent predators and the problem is that just arrest - carte blanche, arresting any man who [00:30:00] pays a working girl doesn't actually catch these predators because these are catch and releases the same way that prostitution charges are right. They're usually ROR or at some marginal bail. And then they're, then they're publicly shamed, but it's not like.
Becca: So they're just trying to make a buck off these girls too.
Blair: When these, these women go to the police and say there's a violent predator on the streets it's not like they really, it's not like they're the prevailing experience is that they're believed. Right? So it just doesn't help anybody to arrest, you know, as much as it's kind of, you know, we all love to poke fun at pervy old men or, there's just not anything wrong with paying a sex worker to have sex with you. Cause it's her job, right?
Krista: No, not at all. Not one bit.
Blair: And it doesn't facilitate trafficking. What facilitates trafficking is putting people in positions where they are disempowered. When, where they're vulnerable and they're disempowered and they don't feel like they can trust institutions and they don't feel like they can trust law enforcement and maybe they are you know, have a substance abuse disorder and that has a tie into why they can't, or they don't feel like they can come forward with the exploitation that they're suffering. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why trafficking happens, and trafficking does happen and exploitation does happen. And not everybody who is doing sex work does it because it's, you know, their favorite job in the world that they love. Some people just do it to pay the bills. Some people do it to get high. Some people do it to sleep inside, like literally every other job on the planet. Some people just to explore something different and to see what it is.
Becca: I did want to talk to you about why these myths about increased sex trafficking around sporting events. Who's purveying these myths? Who is discounting these myths? Where is this misinformation coming from? Because it's been such a big myth.
Blair: It comes from anti-trafficking organizations who have a financial incentive and law enforcement agencies who have a financial incentive and a community approval incentive, political incentives to it's also…
M: Wasn't Shawnee Hunt one of the leaders in giving, getting attention towards that issue with the Superbowl?
Blair: Yeah, yeah.
M: Along with was it one of the, I know Jimmy Carter was on board with that and some of the Disney family, and other people that were powerful and, and very connected politically and socially and organizationally. But I don't know if I've ever seen the clear data on what inspired that specifically at the Superbowl just that it was an increased point of danger for, for youth and for all.
Blair: Yeah. And it's just kind of a faulty line of reasoning, right? I mean, it's a naturally like intuitive line of reasoning, but it's not, it's not logically sound, right? These are events that draw a lot of people to an area, there's a lot of like masculine energy around them. It stands to reason that similar to how, you know, brothels spring up in coal mining towns, there's going to be just like a hoard of women being shipped in to service all of these tourists. Well, first of all, where are you putting them? Okay. Second of all, what are you talking about? There's a lot of incentive structures. There's some kind of half-baked reasoning that goes into it. And then there's also like if you look closely at the data, you know, people will say that, well, you know the numbers show that there's an increase in prostitution around say the Superbowl when it's like, when you actually look at that data, it's like, no, no, no, no. There's an increase in prostitution arrests. There's an increase in arrests that are charged in prostitution. It's not that there's like this massive increase in the actual activity. It's, it's kind of like how people say like, oh, everybody has ADHD now or whatever. It's like, no, no, no. We just diagnose it in people now. That's the difference, you know? So if you're arresting if you, if you're enhancing your law enforcement efforts to meet this kind of overblown perceived problem, you're going to get the results that you want. You can manipulate that data really easily with your behavior.
Krista: Would you say maybe, maybe some people get more roped into the, hey, do you want to make some quick money? And then…maybe?
Blair: Maybe. Hmm.
M: Yeah. I mean, bad things happen when there are big crowds and people are drinking and, you know, potentially also getting high, but just add when people are excitable and drinking, I mean, you know, the, like just, you know, people do not act the same. I mean, it's. Kind of like you know, when Grand Funk Railroad would play in Detroit - I understand they used to open link for the Beatles and like, we'd get like so insane that people, that it was terror in the stadium. Cause people just got so amped and you know, I listened to Grand Funk Railroad and I'm like, really? I'm like, I, I can't see riots happening over that. So I'm like, I like it. I get it.
Blair: I mean, I go, I go to Mardi, I go to Mardi Gras to bartend. You know, I cause it's fucking, there's no work - well, when I used to live in New York, I would do this. I would like splitting my time between New York and New Orleans. In the summer there's no fucking work in New Orleans, and in the winter, there's no work in New York, you know? I would not qualify myself as having been trafficked between the two places.
M: Although would you ever say they have unfair labor practices? I would say a lot of times my labor was exploited…
Becca: Well, if we’re calling like seasonal work trafficking now, like I have been trafficked like, you know?
Carrie: I have a question. Why is there no sex work in New York in the winter? And no sex work in New Orleans in the summer?
Blair: Oh, I meant bartending.
Carrie: Sorry to bring that up, I didn’t know. I didn't fucking know. I just wanted to…
Blair: You know what though, you're actually right. That it actually is the same kind of pattern with with sex work because of the weather. It's 100% the weather. It is so fucking cold in New York in the winter and just so miserable and like the winters in New York City, I lived there for almost 10 years are an insult added to the constant injury of living there.
M: Yeah, it was crazy. Is I actually found winter in Philadelphia to be worse because of the wind currents that come up. If you're taking public transportation, if you're waiting, say on, on Gerard Avenue or on Market Street…
Blair: Yeah, but it’s cheaper!
Becca: Krista and I are from Minnesota, okay? I didn't get snow days. I got two cold days. One of them was because it was negative 60 degrees and they couldn't have kids standing at the bus stop or else we get frostbite in 30 seconds. The other one, it was negative - I think -70 was the wind chill. And it wasn't because it was cold. It was because the power went out at the school.
M: Yeah. I had that happen in Vermont. Once and I, it was like negative 32 or 34 and I don't need to experience that again. Yeah, our eyelashes froze. Our nose hairs froze.
Becca: It's weird because you go outside and you're like, not that bad. And then 30 seconds later, you're like I'm made of water and it's freezing.
M: Right. And then you start to hear this funny kind of splintering noise and you realize it's your eyelashes and your nose hair.
Becca: Yeah.
Blair: You have to keep in mind that New York is like the worst and most difficult place to live in the country. Like it's like,yeah…
M: I was there 10 years myself, but I will tell you what.
Krista: One year, the boys got 10 snow days, 10 consecutive, snow days.
M: Where were you located at?
Krista: I am in many of your Coon Rapids. At the time we were in Northeast Minneapolis. And one was because the temperature by itself was like negative 40, but with the wind chill, it was like negatives, like 60 something. So they call it like the winter vortex. So that happened one time. It was because of the roads turned to ice. One time it was because there might possibly be a snow storm. And then another time was because there was actually a snow storm and we got like 20, some odd inches in like 12 hours.
M: And so our little nor’easter here, it's just like pedals.
Blair: It’s cold as fuck up there it really is, and you take the train.
Becca: Oh. Speaking of like weather and shit affecting the industry, I'm curious about how the pandemic has affected sex work as an industry?
Blair: It has. Similarly to how this is manifested in a lot of other industries it is just really clearly widened and, you know, laid bare the privilege gaps, right? So people who have the ability to go online, have been going online that has caused quite a stir as it's kind of flooded the market. But then of course the markets adjust to accommodate much like vaginas. They can handle that. There's always enough demand to go around. So unfortunately, actually the online market has been okay partly because we have managed to stave off total economic devastation for the time being in this country, too. Right. So people have some money in order to spend it, but, you know, it's been a tough adjustment. I think that a lot of people have kind of gotten the hang of things as they've moved online. As for, you know, street-based sex workers who don't have that option, it has just made their job more dangerous and more difficult.
M: Yeah, for the Tenderloin Museum, I had started having discussions on that via, you know, EventBright last spring. There's been international discussion on it to try to keep people in touch, to report what is being experienced and the, the general sentiment that I get off of the, the listservs is that, you know, [00:40:00] there is so much fear. A lack of connection to medical services if there is a problem, the fear of being able to connect to them, which is another reason trying to do outreach to be able to connect to people and figure out how you can get them to the services that they need and where people will welcome them coming to those services as discreetly as possible is important.
Blair: Yeah. And a lot of those services have experienced major reduction in what they can make available for people too. So a lot of the things that in particular street-based people and people experiencing homelessness and things like that you know, in addition to it becoming more dangerous, the support, the community support, the social support has gotten less. And then what ends up happening is like, then when these women get arrested, men went in and, and, you know, gender non-conforming folks get arrested they are then shoved into holding where they're at in a greatly increased risk of contracting COVID.
M: One of the problems we are experiencing is that there's a great delay in the life mentor mail, getting into the prisons. Plus we also do holiday card like mailings and there are a lot of volunteers that participate in that to kind of like flood the prisons with holiday cards to let people know that they're not alone or forgotten. And the delay in the mail - like so far, I have only received two pieces of mail back. And so that's to me saying not that everything is getting through, but that it hasn't arrived yet because other people who do like holiday mailings are able to use my return address or if they want, they can use their, their own. But, you know, for just to have that, like veil. We have both the Behind Bars address or there's a Philadelphia address that people can use. And I've only received two pieces of mail so far. So I don't think it's arrived yet. Yeah.
Blair: It's really sad for incarcerated sex workers, especially the folks who are facing long-term incarceration. Like we have, we maintain contact with a lot of women, particularly, some men, but mostly women and quite a few trans women who are serving long-term bids for sex trafficking, because like for example, maybe they were like part of a crew working together and it turns out one of them was underage. You know, stuff like that can happen or you know, or maybe they got picked up for prostitution, but they had some crack on them or whatever. So there's, there's quite a few of our folks that we work with who are serving longer bids and COVID has been really, really, really, really hard for them because in addition to not getting physical mail, we have JPay and that's really nice. And there's a couple other services depending on the jurisdiction that you're in - federal or state, but they can't, you know, they're not getting in person visits either. And some of them haven't for almost a year now. Some of these facilities have stopped in-person visits since like March of last year. And you know, Ocala here in Florida, the infection rate was a horror show. And I had an inmate who used to call me all the time. I haven't heard from her in a little while, she was an older woman, and she was doing a pretty long, she had a pretty long sentence, I want to say 20 years. And she was hearing-impaired, and so she was like elderly and disabled and they were giving her no information whatsoever. So she would call me asking me to like comb the news and the websites, trying to get any information on what was going on with the, with the COVID rates in her facility. And I mean, the place had just become a death trap.
So, you know, our, our long-term incarcerated sex workers are super isolated. They're put in incredibly precarious positions. Depending on the state and depending on the facility, they may or may not have access to information. They may or may not have access to PPE. They may or may not have access to healthcare, you know?
So again, like, just like in every other industry COVID has really shown in stark ways the damage done the people by criminalization and various forms of societal inequality.
Krista: It hasn't slowed down, but now it's. I just another level of danger.
Blair: We maintain over 700 wish lists off Amazon for inmates so that we post them on our Instagram and people buy up their book wish lists. It's really rad, goes over super well and people are, that's a really fun and easy and like low impact way that people can support.
M: To have more people do that because each wish list has more than one book on it and we can't send, like, I was, there were so many requests for Maya Angelo's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. We can't say buy a bunch and send them, like in, in batches, they have to come right from the publisher. They can't be hardcover. They have to be paperback.
Blair: It has to go through Amazon, which sucks.
M: And the slowdown due to COVID around the post offices have hurt those people too. Right. So, I mean, eventually they're getting their books, but like it's taking longer and it sucks. And.
Becca: Yeah, what's the website that people can go to do this?
Blair: You'll want to follow us on Instagram for that. Yeah. We post those on Instagram and then we'll put the link in our bio and the link will take you straight to people's wish lists.
M: And the main thing is that when you go into the link bio shop, make sure you scroll down through it and don't just look at the top because there's a lot in there. Like check it out. There's links to Blair's podcast and there's a lot of different wish lists posted.
Blair: Yeah. We're at SWOP – Behind Bars on Instagram and Twitter. We try to post a couple of those wish lists per week and we try to repost them here and there too, so that people can get their whole wish list met.
Becca: Do you have instructions on there? How to send it because yeah, sending people to prison is a nightmare. It is so hard. I've had so much returned. It is ridiculous. It's like no stamps. There was like a smudge, just.
M: Yeah, in the SWOP – Behind Bars website in the section on how to be an ally there are instructions. And if somebody wanted to email us from the website because they don't see it, then it's easy enough for us to cut and paste that in. And people have, have asked that when doing the holiday cards so we've been able to like have either a zoom meeting where there's kind of discussion on that. The main things are you know, no glitter, no puffy things, no, no staples, no paper clips. No peel stamps I believe, right.
Blair: Yeah, and the rules change all the time. And honestly, if it's something you're participating in, it's almost inevitable that some shit's going to get sent back because like every institution's a tiny bit different and then like, sometimes, you know, somebody will, somebody will act up and then everybody gets put on a different kind of lockdown or they won't let them have this one thing for a while or whatever. And you just kind of have to, they'll usually tell you why something's rejected and you just got to kind of stay with it, right. Or contact us and contact us and we can try to track down what happened. But we definitely want to increase our efforts on training people to, to interact with the prison system, because it can be, it can be a very eye-opening…
Krista: It’s not easy. But some of them are for safeguards and for certain reasons, because like, let's say you send some pictures to a partner, which we all would like to, but let's say somebody that gets out before them sees those pictures and they find you. You know, like there's reasons.
Becca: I’m curious, what picture of mine got flagged as explicit? Because I did not send explicit photos. And what if it was like…
M: Sending it to a prison?
Becca: Sending it to a friend of mine who was in prison. And like he was told, oh, we couldn't like give you one of these photos. It was explicit. I don't know if they just told them that to fuck with them because you know, if I'm going to send an explicit photo, I’m gonna send an explicit photo. I did not send an explicit photo.
M: I was going to say, I can't get to sending like explicit photos into the prison, which is kind of precarious, right?
Blair: Yes. I used to, I had a family member who was in prison for a few years and we would go and visit him and my dad on the regular would get flagged and have to wear like the prison issue…They had like a, a sweat suit they would give you if your attire was inappropriate as a visitor. It was the department of corrections issue like off-color one so you didn't look like an inmate. But my dad would get flagged because he would have too much chest hair showing like, he'd have like his second button undone or whatever. And he's full white hair. He has a big old beach ball belly.
Becca: Sir! You're being provocative. Sir!
M: Obviously you are missing some kind of a subtext that maybe like Big Mouth helps to teach that we need to know. Maybe they have…
Krista: Wouldn't that be like, considered like in the fetish world like the Daddy, maybe? Yeah. Like, yeah, like that thing that happens…
Becca: The sweatpants though. I think the sweatpants would just make the Daddy fetish, like a more so, right?
M: That’s a different fetish, actually.
Becca: Don't you talk about grilling out.
Krista: All that wearing the sweatpants that like, yeah. Dad would wear sweatpants and then, you know, you'd like, see the whole outline and then he'd get angry and it'd be like, you're going to learn today! And it would just.
Carrie: You’re going to learn today, Sir.
Blair: I'm gonna. I'm gonna learn that you are saving for my future therapy is what I'm learning today, please.
Krista: Please start saving please.
Becca: I'm sorry.
Blair: They used to flag me for, and it was always like one guard that would have like one particular thing that they didn't like, and that they were an asshole about. So there was one corrections officer who would always flag me for my belt buckle. And I had this big, I used to wear [00:50:00] all the time. I don't really wear it that much anymore. I changed it out, but I used to have this big, huge Hank3 belt buckle. And they don't hold me one time that I had to take it off because it was like over three inches or whatever, you know, it was like, it was too big. And I was like, did I just get told that my Hank3 belt buckle was too big to let me into the prison waiting room to see my brother who's down for a bid. Is that the most white trash thing that has ever happened to me? I'm not actually sure, but it's gotta be up there. Yes. See, big nights. Oh, cool.
Carrie: It's too big. You can't get in this prison.
Krista: I love that also. Who was it? The Wonderful World, the Wonderful World of Whites, the West Virginia Whites. He wrote a song about them, Hank3 did. And it's about a family that got famous from tap dancing. It's insane. But Hank3 is like, I'm going to swear here. One of my favorite songs to play, when I tell people that I listened to country music is his song, I put the Dick and Dixie and the Cunt Country. Yes. One of my favorite fucking songs and they would be like, wait, wait, what are you listening to? I'm like, it's Hank3. And they're like, there's three of them.
Blair: There's only one left.
Krista: It probably means therapy, but okay. So, sorry.
M: You know, Carmen’s Country Kitchen was a place where you could get a great brunch in Philly. Right. And I always thought that her business card was like an original statement because the business card said Carmen's Country Kitchen: she put the cunt back into country and I didn't realize it was from a song so I’m going to have to look that up. Carmen’s Country Kitchen is a great place to get breakfast too, by the way.
Becca: And stop me if we're not allowed to talk about this, but how would one safely procure - purchase sex without getting caught up in a fucking sting operation?
Krista: The are you a cop thing? Is the you have to tell me if you’re a cop thing true? I don't think it is.
Carrie: Not only can law enforcement lie to you about it, but law enforcement can lie to you about it on both sides.
Blair: Whether they're trying to nab you as a John or as, as a working girl. In a lot of states, actually the police are allowed to have sex with women they're about to arrest.
Krista: Oh, what the fuck?
Blair: Yeah. So that's another, that's a whole other fucking thing. But yeah, the cops can lie about not being cops to the point that they literally have sex with the sex worker before arresting them. Totes rape.
Carrie: I don't think any cops should be able to have sex with anyone that they have any potential of a arresting. If you're a cop, if you're going to date someone that's a prostitute, you need to get a paper for her. Don't need to be fucking people that you're supposed to be protected.
Becca: So like priests rules, cause they could arrest like anyone. Oh, God. Oh man. Dude, that'd be terrible.
Blair: Not only can they have sex with sex workers, with impunity under duress and threat of, of arrest they also have like you know, law enforcement officers have really high rates of domestic violence reported and not really much gets done about that, but that's another story. As far as, as procuring, you know, sex workers, honestly, it's rough out there right now. I mean, first of all, COVID, but the thing to remember is that sex workers are, is avoidant of getting arrested as, as a potential client is right. Everybody wants this to go smoothly. Everybody wants to be safe. You know, the, the woman is taking on, well, the, the sex worker is taking on the disproportionate amount of risk. Right. Especially if they're female and especially, especially if they're a trans woman and especially, especially, especially if they're a trans woman who's not white. You know, as far as violence, as far as STI’s, as far as law enforcement consequences, the sex worker is taking on a much larger risk there. So they are going to be screening. Somebody who is coming from a place of having some agency in their situation is going to be screening to whatever means that they have to do so. Right. So the best thing you can do is abide by people's, you know, just like just like taking a woman home in any context, like let her lead the way. Right.
Becca: Right. Don't be a dick about it. And like, assume that if they're asking you for something that feels there…they've got a reason for it.
Blair: Yeah, they don't want to get killed or go to jail either. Right. Like…
M: Right. And on that note, you that's like, there was a recent episode on Blair's podcast about Donna Castleberry Dalton and vice officer Andrew Mitchell in Columbus. And that is a really like strong example of when there is that kind of misappropriation of power where it can lead to. And it is, it's not something that we want to see repeated. I believe her family was just given a million dollar settlement, but they haven't decided what his final sentence will be. Is that accurate Blair?
Blair: Yeah. I don't that hasn't resolved to my knowledge, but that case yeah, this officer picked her up on a quote unquote sting and was basically attempting to sexually assault her. And when she tried to get away, and I think she stabbed him in the hand when she was trying to get away. Right.
M: She had some kind of like a small pen knife that was somewhere in her clothes. She was in the front seat of an unmarked car and he was in plain clothes and he had picked her up in the street and then brought her to an area where they had to cross a railroad track and he parked the car against a building so that she would not be able to open the passenger door. And whatever all ensued he did not have audio-visual of the situation and he said that she attacked him. At the end of it, he unloaded his cartridge into her and, you know, she, she was killed in the car. She had what a – what was it?
Blair: She had a penknife and she stabbed him in the hand.
M: So she was, if she was in the car and it was then placed it into a location where she was sealed into a vehicle and had no way to get out. Whatever all happened, we can surmise that at the end of the day he owned property and it was understood that he was forcing people to engage in sex acts with him under fear of either being arrested as prostitutes, even if they weren't in any way associated with the sex industry, or eviction.
Blair: He was also a landlord.
M: That's right. And he was a landlord. He was stealing, he was stealing drugs.
Becca: He was raping people! He was coercing sex out of people, like left and right.
Blair: And he was a career law enforcement officer. And I mean, I could tell you a story like that for every day of the week. They don't always end in murder. They often do and in murder…
M: Yeah, that, that one is…
Carrie: He's a psychopath. That's a psychopath.
M: A lot of people say that, right. He just got caught. That's not that's the norm.
Krista: Yeah. Didn’t that happened in Oklahoma too with a police officer, Oklahoma city. I believe it did. I'm - forgive me for not having probably, my aunt told me about it.
M: We have an interview with somebody who had an experience in St. Louis. And that is resulted in, the officer that raped her was arrested and there has been, you know, a federal investigation into the situation. When those situations happen and the, the lines between what - if you're breaking the law, does that mean that you lose your, your right to equal protection? So we've been trying to collect narratives of people who have authentically had those experiences in ways that can be documented or family members of you know, people who have had situations that have been confirmed sadly, because they've resulted in death.
Blair: Yeah. We've got some really incredible interviews with, with survivors that came to me by way of - M linked me up with one of our survivors who we interviewed here recently, the one who - she went to the FBI, which is why she actually got results. And she was so funny. First of all, she was wily as hell and she got out of that situation alive in ways that I won't spoil you should go listen to the episode. But. She got out of that situation. And then she said is what she told me. She goes, I was like, I don't fucking live here. I don't got to live in this town. I'm reporting this fucking guy. And so she went to the FBI and she actually got him on the phone to admit to having raped her at the police station. And then after she went public, like 17 other women came forward.
M: And that's one thing cause you, it shouldn't take somebody coming from outside of an area to be able to inspire some kind of proactive change, but that's often the case. And in an interview with on sex with Timary with Eris Vale a few years ago, it was one of the points that came up is that there, there were these brutal attacks that were going on in Kensington and it seemed as though it wasn't until people from outside of the area were impacted by that it started to generate some, some change the situations. Why does it take outsiders to come in to be able to help with that? And, you know, part of that is the fear factor of when people have, they have to live in an environment and they know that there is the day-to-day reality that they're going to have to live with afterwards. Yeah. The people who have contributed to the survivor stories are like [01:00:00] brave. We have to give them a lot of credit.
Krista: Yes, we do. You can't ever discount what they went through. Cause you can't ever tell somebody how to feel if it's something that you've never actually had to go through yourself. You weren't there, you didn't feel those feelings. You didn't have to go through any of that.
Becca: We used to keep things internal, but when it gets out, when it's kinda one of those, like keep it in the family kind of things within communities and cities and systems, you know, and you know. There's the myth of the outsider where it's like, oh, we don't have problems. It's these interlopers, getting our people to feel bad about shit that doesn't have anything to do with them. But I think there there's ways of controlling people within a closed system that don't apply to people that are passing through it. And those voices are harder to discount because it gets to a broader audience. In a closed system, it's like, everyone's either like, in it to the point where it's normalized or like they're trying to protect someone, or there's like other factors at play that are keeping people quiet or in line.
Blair: Oh, definitely. Definitely some of those really insular communities and especially - in larger cities, that's going to happen too, because you have some police unions that have a really staggering and terrifying amount of power politically in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee.
Krista: Do not ever get pulled over in Wisconsin. You have to pay your ticket right then and there, and if not, you go to the police station.
M: How do you pay your ticket? Write that in there. So you wouldn't give them cash, right?
Krista: No, no, no. The officers do have a system, a way that you can pay by credit card.
M: Do they carry around like a square or something?
Krista: Some way. I mean, they already had laptops in their cars.
M: Thank you so much for sitting and having this lovely, lovely cocktail hour chat.
Carrie: It was really lovely having you here, we’d love to have you back again. We wish you really good luck this weekend, gals.
Becca: Again SWOP – Behind Bars, SWOP behind bars.org/donate to help these ladies out this coming weekend, it's gonna be a shit show and they're on the ground making it less shit show. So help them out. Check out their Instagram, check out their Twitter. Stay juicy, y’all.
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