8 ms·

“unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often

by myshpa 3y ago

“unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations.” - DOJ "In short, contrary to the public narrative you may have heard, Backpage worked closely with federal law enforcement to actually stop sex trafficking (and not just take it down, but to track down the perpetrators). But they refused to do the same for consensual sex work and that is why the feds eventually came down on them like a ton of bricks, all while telling the media and politicians that it was for sex trafficking. But that was all bullshit."

toomuchtodo 3y ago
From the Wired piece mentioned: > The government indictment that triggered Lacey and Larkin’s arrests, United States v. Lacey, et al., includes 17 “victim summaries”—stories of women who say they were sexually exploited through Backpage. Victim 5 first appeared in an ad on the platform when she was 14; her “customers” made her “perform sexual acts at gunpoint, choked her to the point of having seizures, and gang-raped her.” Victim 6 was stabbed to death. Victim 8’s uncle and his friends advertised her as “fetish friendly.” The indictment accuses Backpage of catering to sexual predators, of essentially helping pimps better reach their target audiences. Tough issue overall balancing free speech and legitimate consensual sex work against flagrant exploitation. My understanding is that even in jurisdictions with legalization and formalization of the work trafficking still occurs. No solutions to provide, Larkin’s suicide is still tragic and unfortunate.
- maxbond 3y ago
  From what I've read, it seems sex workers hold that they are safer online because they are able to directly manage their relationships with clients. This enables them to enforce vetting processes before they meet up in person (impossible in the street), and eliminate abusive middle men (pimps). We could do better than Backpage, we could probably make abuse of sex workers rare rather than a cliche, but it would require decriminalization first. For instance, that would enable them to hire their own security, or to press charges against abusers (though that's is own can of worms of course). It's also usually the sex workers who are in a position to understand who is being trafficked and by whom, but they are unable to intervene effectively without institutional support.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Bluntly, we tried drug decriminalization in the theory that decriminalization meant people could seek help. Instead of more people getting help, fewer did because the stick had been removed. [0] We should ask, well, does sex trafficking happen more or less in areas where prostitution is legal? That'll give us a good indicator of the effects of decriminalization. We have a great study on this [1]. Decriminalization makes sex trafficking WORSE - full stop. Prostitution means more sex trafficking happens, and crackdowns on prostitution successfully reduce sex trafficking too. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-drug-decriminalization-results-overdoses/674733/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-... [1]: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/ https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...
    - maxbond 3y ago
      This is pretty silly, prohibition has been an obvious failure in both drugs and sex work. Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions. Prohibition is an unreasonable restriction, enforced according to a set of puritan morals that are no longer even popularly held. After all, alcohol is more addictive and more harmful than many schedule 1 drugs. We're not enforcing any kind of consistent moral principle here, we're hewing to the arbitrary views of people who are long dead. I personally do not find prostitution compatible with my moral sensibilities (I'm a prude, I'm just a libertarian prude), so I don't engage with it, but I'm not interested in prosecuting those that do any more than I'm interested in criminalizing pineapple on pizza. Secondly, that study doesn't show that it made trafficking worse. It showed that it increased inflows of trafficking. Of course traffickers will prefer open markets to closed ones, that doesn't establish a causal relationship whereby increased openness lead to more net trafficking. What this shows is that prohibition makes trafficking happen in someone else's back yard. Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes. Is there really no more recent study? Browsing Google Scholar is evident that this is an active area off research. Here's a 2021 one I skimmed to cherrypick an article that finds decriminalization more effective ("Although it seems that partial decriminalization has greater benefits with fewer disadvantages, it is not without defects."): https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html Why should I find your article more authoritative? (I'm looking for a survey article on the subject presently.) Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer. If we want to find the traffickers, we're going to have an easier time in a lit market then a dark one. Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics. Statistics are cool and useful, but predictive mental models and lives experience is a better source of policy. Statistics is better able to tell us that something isn't working than what that something is, why it isn't working, and what should be done about it.
- Teever 3y ago
  So when's Mark Zuckerberg getting arrested for all the crime that happens on his platform?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > and legitimate consensual sex work What is legitimate consensual sex work? For those of us who don't transact with prostitutes, all we know about this is a stream of narratives we've seen on tv and in film. Julia Roberts falling for Richard Gere, or Maggie Gyllenhall refusing to have a pimp "manage" her. Yet, I remember reading one account of a porn actress, who despite signing all the paperwork, waivers and contracts and such, later claimed that every single act felt like rape to her. Even when there are no pimps or sex traffickers, many claim that they feel coerced by circumstances. Exploited by their clientele. On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?). In one episode of Californication, Fox Mulder's sitting there mocking a man that showed up with the hooker, calling him a pimp, asking where's his feathered velvet hat, and the guy drolly explains "I'm just here to make sure creeps don't try to beat up the girls". It's very unclear whether there is such a thing as legitimate consensual sex work, or that humans are even capable of formulating a reasonable definition of consent that would satisfy idiot frat boys and feminist activists both. To call this "tough" is world-class championship understatement. It looks absolutely intractable.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    It's the same consent I and probably also you have with working for money: coerced into it by the threat of penury and/or state violence. I choose the best of the options available to me, based on the other constraints in my life. As do sex workers. They are subject to the same coercive pressures, and their constraints are individual to them as everyone's are to themselves. Consent is simply the wrong framework for understanding decisions made under life and death consideration. In the same way a machinist's anger at their on the job maiming is righteous, a sex worker can consider any or all encounters to be rape. Just because they've chosen to be there doesn't mean they want to be.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    >On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?) This is essentially the problem. There is no positive definition of what consent is - only an arguments about what consent isn't. People posit that consent cant co-exist with power imbalance. Because no two people are identical, nobody is perfect, and nobody is omnipotent, consent can not exist at all. The term has been reduced to meaningless and eventually a new word will be coined for sober choices made free from threat of violence and deceit
- worik 3y ago
  I live in a jurisdiction where sex work is decriminalised. Trafficking does still occur. But it is a very small part of the scene. The difference it has made to workers is huge. Once they were at risk from pimps, clients, and cops. Now if pimps or clients bother them they go to the cops, and the cops protect them. As they should. As they do for shop keepers, plumbers, and computer programmers. Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking.
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
    >Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking. Super dark take: Hey, it worked to make drugs more profitable, why not sex work? I remember when it passed and pretty much every ordinary American was surprised and hadn't asked for it. It seemed to come out of nowhere with no news coverage that I was aware of and nobody was a fan.
    - mkatx 3y ago
      Black markets are dangerous and people are going to do it anyway. Albeit unintuitive, legalization and regulation is the way to go! As an average American, decriminalized drugs and sex work for the win!
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        I tend to agree, but many people get so riled up on the topic that they forget that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's good and just because something is bad doesn't mean it should be illegal. The legal system shouldn't be the single tool humans use to decide how to act. It should be a very High bar to prevent the most egregious and destructive Acts, not a tool for achieving optimal human behavior
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    No one ever denied that things happened. The difference was they actually worked against it. The question to ask is, did the slavery stop without backpage? Which means, (assuming the answer is no it didn't stop or even reduce at all) did the problem get better or worse by attacking backpage? Wherever the slaves are marketed now, is the owner working with police to discover and free them?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  This will always be an issue, but we don't run around shutting down and suing Monster.com because they allowed ads for unsafe construction jobs or financial firms that engaged in illegal activity. You want to encourage this stuff to all run through the same site, and to give police carte blanche to poke around that site wherever they want (as long as their customers civil liberties are preserved, due process, etc.). A site that would keep good records (and inform their customers what records would be kept.) That sort of thing. Instead, it just got driven back underground. Nobody is checking IDs underground.
fasthands9 3y ago
I feel like discussions around sex trafficking are weird. By legal definition they facilitated sex trafficking. Perhaps they could argue they are better than Average Joe Pimp, but Average Joe Pimp is also going to say he was kinder or more fair than Average Bob Pimp. It seems like everyone accepts face value numbers of sex trafficking when trying to make a point about how widespread the issue is - but then except most forms of it from being "bad" or "actual sex trafficking". I don't know what the best solution is. Legalizing is seems like it would solve most of the current issues, but ultimately I don't know how you get around issues of coercion with defenders (and backpage) would probably still consider "consensual". In places around the world where sex work is legal, its hard to point to many examples where there are no issues involving coercion.
- zer8k 3y ago
  I also don't know how you can differentiate "consensual" from "non-consensual" sex work. 1. They say "no im not exploited" because they are afraid 2. They say "no im not exploited" because they are not exploited You gain no information from interviewing them. No vice unit has the resources to do a top secret clearance level check on them to confirm externally they are not exploited. To act like the two can simply be distinguished really is willfully ignoring the very real problem that you cannot verify the honesty of the person through any line of questioning. I suspect despite the foaming mouthed progressives claiming it's some puritanical hatred for women the reason for it still being illegal is because of this exact problem. There's no actual way to confirm this concept of "consent" in a legally rigid frame of reference because nearly every aspect of a sex workers job can be coerced. EDIT: Somewhat hilarious I'm getting downvoted for an opinion. Groupthink HN truly the pinnacle of individualistic moral superiority.
  - clipsy 3y ago
    I know plenty of people who feel exploited by their (non-sex-)work, ranging from manual labor to retail to trades to high paying white collar jobs. Shall we ban all of that as well?
    - 3y ago
themitigating 3y ago
But they refused to do the same for consensual sex work Isn't that also a crime in almost the entire US? It's also where sex trafficking comes into play. How would you know consent was given by a sex worker? People who are trafficked to work as prostitutes are often blackmailed and threatened. Right now there's massive paranoia about this because it's being used as an election tactic but prostitution and sex trafficking are somewhat linked
- clipsy 3y ago
  > How would you know consent was given by a sex worker? How would you know consent was given by a McDonald's cashier?
  - tekla 3y ago
    Last time I checked with some lefty people, you wouldn't, since the worker would be too scared to possibly lose job/pay over critiquing their employer, so they would be heavily incentivized to say anything keep the status quo. So how DO you know consent was given by the sex worker?
    - clipsy 3y ago
      I don't, just like with the McDonald's cashier. Do you think both of these jobs should be banned? That neither of them should be banned? Or that one should be legal and the other banned? Please explain why.
      - themitigating 3y ago
        Being forced to work against your will at Mcdonalds sucks* being forced to have sex against your will is rape. Rape is considered by almost all countries to be one of the most heinous crimes imaginably. I also don't have a source but would you agree that the amount of people being forced to work against their will at Mcdonalds is much lower than prostitution? Your comment was trying to say "what's the line?" right? Like why should one profession be banned but another allowed if X percentage of people are forced to do Y against their will in each. The line is rape, multiple rapes day in and day out. *I assuming both still get paid some amount even though they are forced.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> But they refused to do the same for consensual sex work and that is why the feds eventually came down on them like a ton of bricks, all while telling the media and politicians that it was for sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There isn't a legal difference. That's why they're saying it.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There isn't a legal difference. Sex trafficking is addressed in 18 U.S. Code §1591, where a sex trafficker is "a person who recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains or maintains a minor for a commercial sex act" This is pretty distinct from prostitution, a service which is legal in Nevada (where federal laws apply).
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There are a number of definitions in different legal codes, but I’d be surprised if this was accurate in any of them (its not, as another reply notes, in US federal law): sex traffickers and sex workers aren't, even approximately, the same thing.

by myshpa 3y ago

toomuchtodo 3y ago

From the Wired piece mentioned: > The government indictment that triggered Lacey and Larkin’s arrests, United States v. Lacey, et al., includes 17 “victim summaries”—stories of women who say they were sexually exploited through Backpage. Victim 5 first appeared in an ad on the platform when she was 14; her “customers” made her “perform sexual acts at gunpoint, choked her to the point of having seizures, and gang-raped her.” Victim 6 was stabbed to death. Victim 8’s uncle and his friends advertised her as “fetish friendly.” The indictment accuses Backpage of catering to sexual predators, of essentially helping pimps better reach their target audiences. Tough issue overall balancing free speech and legitimate consensual sex work against flagrant exploitation. My understanding is that even in jurisdictions with legalization and formalization of the work trafficking still occurs. No solutions to provide, Larkin’s suicide is still tragic and unfortunate.

maxbond 3y ago
From what I've read, it seems sex workers hold that they are safer online because they are able to directly manage their relationships with clients. This enables them to enforce vetting processes before they meet up in person (impossible in the street), and eliminate abusive middle men (pimps). We could do better than Backpage, we could probably make abuse of sex workers rare rather than a cliche, but it would require decriminalization first. For instance, that would enable them to hire their own security, or to press charges against abusers (though that's is own can of worms of course). It's also usually the sex workers who are in a position to understand who is being trafficked and by whom, but they are unable to intervene effectively without institutional support.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Bluntly, we tried drug decriminalization in the theory that decriminalization meant people could seek help. Instead of more people getting help, fewer did because the stick had been removed. [0] We should ask, well, does sex trafficking happen more or less in areas where prostitution is legal? That'll give us a good indicator of the effects of decriminalization. We have a great study on this [1]. Decriminalization makes sex trafficking WORSE - full stop. Prostitution means more sex trafficking happens, and crackdowns on prostitution successfully reduce sex trafficking too. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-drug-decriminalization-results-overdoses/674733/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-... [1]: https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/ https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-...
  - maxbond 3y ago
    This is pretty silly, prohibition has been an obvious failure in both drugs and sex work. Firstly, it's a human rights issue, people ought to be able to engage in the commerce of their choosing with only reasonable restrictions. Prohibition is an unreasonable restriction, enforced according to a set of puritan morals that are no longer even popularly held. After all, alcohol is more addictive and more harmful than many schedule 1 drugs. We're not enforcing any kind of consistent moral principle here, we're hewing to the arbitrary views of people who are long dead. I personally do not find prostitution compatible with my moral sensibilities (I'm a prude, I'm just a libertarian prude), so I don't engage with it, but I'm not interested in prosecuting those that do any more than I'm interested in criminalizing pineapple on pizza. Secondly, that study doesn't show that it made trafficking worse. It showed that it increased inflows of trafficking. Of course traffickers will prefer open markets to closed ones, that doesn't establish a causal relationship whereby increased openness lead to more net trafficking. What this shows is that prohibition makes trafficking happen in someone else's back yard. Thirdly, you're linking to a 2014 article about a 2012 study, which is ancient as far as an academic paper goes. Is there really no more recent study? Browsing Google Scholar is evident that this is an active area off research. Here's a 2021 one I skimmed to cherrypick an article that finds decriminalization more effective ("Although it seems that partial decriminalization has greater benefits with fewer disadvantages, it is not without defects."): https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html https://brieflands.com/articles/ijhrba-106741.html Why should I find your article more authoritative? (I'm looking for a survey article on the subject presently.) Fourth, once you've prohibited something, it's next to impossible to intervene to make that market safer. If we want to find the traffickers, we're going to have an easier time in a lit market then a dark one. Lastly, I'm just more inclined to listen to sex workers and trafficking victims about what they would help than to look at descriptive statistics. Statistics are cool and useful, but predictive mental models and lives experience is a better source of policy. Statistics is better able to tell us that something isn't working than what that something is, why it isn't working, and what should be done about it.
Teever 3y ago
So when's Mark Zuckerberg getting arrested for all the crime that happens on his platform?
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> and legitimate consensual sex work What is legitimate consensual sex work? For those of us who don't transact with prostitutes, all we know about this is a stream of narratives we've seen on tv and in film. Julia Roberts falling for Richard Gere, or Maggie Gyllenhall refusing to have a pimp "manage" her. Yet, I remember reading one account of a porn actress, who despite signing all the paperwork, waivers and contracts and such, later claimed that every single act felt like rape to her. Even when there are no pimps or sex traffickers, many claim that they feel coerced by circumstances. Exploited by their clientele. On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?). In one episode of Californication, Fox Mulder's sitting there mocking a man that showed up with the hooker, calling him a pimp, asking where's his feathered velvet hat, and the guy drolly explains "I'm just here to make sure creeps don't try to beat up the girls". It's very unclear whether there is such a thing as legitimate consensual sex work, or that humans are even capable of formulating a reasonable definition of consent that would satisfy idiot frat boys and feminist activists both. To call this "tough" is world-class championship understatement. It looks absolutely intractable.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It's the same consent I and probably also you have with working for money: coerced into it by the threat of penury and/or state violence. I choose the best of the options available to me, based on the other constraints in my life. As do sex workers. They are subject to the same coercive pressures, and their constraints are individual to them as everyone's are to themselves. Consent is simply the wrong framework for understanding decisions made under life and death consideration. In the same way a machinist's anger at their on the job maiming is righteous, a sex worker can consider any or all encounters to be rape. Just because they've chosen to be there doesn't mean they want to be.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  >On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?) This is essentially the problem. There is no positive definition of what consent is - only an arguments about what consent isn't. People posit that consent cant co-exist with power imbalance. Because no two people are identical, nobody is perfect, and nobody is omnipotent, consent can not exist at all. The term has been reduced to meaningless and eventually a new word will be coined for sober choices made free from threat of violence and deceit
worik 3y ago
I live in a jurisdiction where sex work is decriminalised. Trafficking does still occur. But it is a very small part of the scene. The difference it has made to workers is huge. Once they were at risk from pimps, clients, and cops. Now if pimps or clients bother them they go to the cops, and the cops protect them. As they should. As they do for shop keepers, plumbers, and computer programmers. Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  >Make no mistake: Having a law against sex work encourages, and subsidises, trafficking. Super dark take: Hey, it worked to make drugs more profitable, why not sex work? I remember when it passed and pretty much every ordinary American was surprised and hadn't asked for it. It seemed to come out of nowhere with no news coverage that I was aware of and nobody was a fan.
  - mkatx 3y ago
    Black markets are dangerous and people are going to do it anyway. Albeit unintuitive, legalization and regulation is the way to go! As an average American, decriminalized drugs and sex work for the win!
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      I tend to agree, but many people get so riled up on the topic that they forget that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's good and just because something is bad doesn't mean it should be illegal. The legal system shouldn't be the single tool humans use to decide how to act. It should be a very High bar to prevent the most egregious and destructive Acts, not a tool for achieving optimal human behavior
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  No one ever denied that things happened. The difference was they actually worked against it. The question to ask is, did the slavery stop without backpage? Which means, (assuming the answer is no it didn't stop or even reduce at all) did the problem get better or worse by attacking backpage? Wherever the slaves are marketed now, is the owner working with police to discover and free them?
pessimizer 3y ago
This will always be an issue, but we don't run around shutting down and suing Monster.com because they allowed ads for unsafe construction jobs or financial firms that engaged in illegal activity. You want to encourage this stuff to all run through the same site, and to give police carte blanche to poke around that site wherever they want (as long as their customers civil liberties are preserved, due process, etc.). A site that would keep good records (and inform their customers what records would be kept.) That sort of thing. Instead, it just got driven back underground. Nobody is checking IDs underground.

fasthands9 3y ago

I feel like discussions around sex trafficking are weird. By legal definition they facilitated sex trafficking. Perhaps they could argue they are better than Average Joe Pimp, but Average Joe Pimp is also going to say he was kinder or more fair than Average Bob Pimp. It seems like everyone accepts face value numbers of sex trafficking when trying to make a point about how widespread the issue is - but then except most forms of it from being "bad" or "actual sex trafficking". I don't know what the best solution is. Legalizing is seems like it would solve most of the current issues, but ultimately I don't know how you get around issues of coercion with defenders (and backpage) would probably still consider "consensual". In places around the world where sex work is legal, its hard to point to many examples where there are no issues involving coercion.

zer8k 3y ago
I also don't know how you can differentiate "consensual" from "non-consensual" sex work. 1. They say "no im not exploited" because they are afraid 2. They say "no im not exploited" because they are not exploited You gain no information from interviewing them. No vice unit has the resources to do a top secret clearance level check on them to confirm externally they are not exploited. To act like the two can simply be distinguished really is willfully ignoring the very real problem that you cannot verify the honesty of the person through any line of questioning. I suspect despite the foaming mouthed progressives claiming it's some puritanical hatred for women the reason for it still being illegal is because of this exact problem. There's no actual way to confirm this concept of "consent" in a legally rigid frame of reference because nearly every aspect of a sex workers job can be coerced. EDIT: Somewhat hilarious I'm getting downvoted for an opinion. Groupthink HN truly the pinnacle of individualistic moral superiority.
- clipsy 3y ago
  I know plenty of people who feel exploited by their (non-sex-)work, ranging from manual labor to retail to trades to high paying white collar jobs. Shall we ban all of that as well?
  - 3y ago

themitigating 3y ago

But they refused to do the same for consensual sex work Isn't that also a crime in almost the entire US? It's also where sex trafficking comes into play. How would you know consent was given by a sex worker? People who are trafficked to work as prostitutes are often blackmailed and threatened. Right now there's massive paranoia about this because it's being used as an election tactic but prostitution and sex trafficking are somewhat linked

clipsy 3y ago
> How would you know consent was given by a sex worker? How would you know consent was given by a McDonald's cashier?
- tekla 3y ago
  Last time I checked with some lefty people, you wouldn't, since the worker would be too scared to possibly lose job/pay over critiquing their employer, so they would be heavily incentivized to say anything keep the status quo. So how DO you know consent was given by the sex worker?
  - clipsy 3y ago
    I don't, just like with the McDonald's cashier. Do you think both of these jobs should be banned? That neither of them should be banned? Or that one should be legal and the other banned? Please explain why.
    - themitigating 3y ago
      Being forced to work against your will at Mcdonalds sucks* being forced to have sex against your will is rape. Rape is considered by almost all countries to be one of the most heinous crimes imaginably. I also don't have a source but would you agree that the amount of people being forced to work against their will at Mcdonalds is much lower than prostitution? Your comment was trying to say "what's the line?" right? Like why should one profession be banned but another allowed if X percentage of people are forced to do Y against their will in each. The line is rape, multiple rapes day in and day out. *I assuming both still get paid some amount even though they are forced.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> But they refused to do the same for consensual sex work and that is why the feds eventually came down on them like a ton of bricks, all while telling the media and politicians that it was for sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There isn't a legal difference. That's why they're saying it.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There isn't a legal difference. Sex trafficking is addressed in 18 U.S. Code §1591, where a sex trafficker is "a person who recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains or maintains a minor for a commercial sex act" This is pretty distinct from prostitution, a service which is legal in Nevada (where federal laws apply).
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Sex trafficking is defined as sex work. There are a number of definitions in different legal codes, but I’d be surprised if this was accurate in any of them (its not, as another reply notes, in US federal law): sex traffickers and sex workers aren't, even approximately, the same thing.