THE POLICING OF SEX WORKERS
I’ve been an admirer and follower of Tara Burns for about two decades. I was extremely honoured and excited to interview her about her research, activism, and experiences as a sex worker and she did not disappoint! We talked about a few different important and fascinating subjects including sex trafficking, the way research can be taken out of context and used against sex workers, and the role of police in the lives of sex workers in Canada vs the USA since FOSTA/SESTA came into effect. Listen to how Tara was able to challenge and change laws in Alaska that were harming sex workers. She is a force, this woman!
WATCH on YOUTUBE or SPOTIFY!
Tara Burns is an Alaskan sex worker and a sex trafficking survivor living off-grid and remote. She is the research and policy director of COYOTE RI, a founding board member of the Community United for Safety and Protection, a former co-chair of the International Steering Committee of the Red Umbrella Fund, and has done groundbreaking academic research and lobbying for sex workers and sex trafficking survivors. She is the author of the Whore Diaries series and her writing about sex work policy issues has appeared in publications like the Anti-Trafficking Review, Vice, AlterNet, and the Anchorage Press.
Sex worker leaders have long observed the relationship between anti-trafficking legislation and anti-sex work policy. Now, a new book out from the USA brings together the findings of 6 separate participatory action research projects to explain and unpack what the conflation of trafficking and sex work looks like in practice. Alaska’s' anti-trafficking laws criminalize most sex work activity, making this jurisdiction a perfect case study for researching the strengths and weaknesses of policy that conflate the two. Rhode Island is another case study, important because anti-trafficking campaigners successfully oversaw new laws to criminalize sex work in 2009 after 6 years of 'accidental' decriminalization. Surveys before and after the bi-partisan FOSTA/SESTA anti-trafficking and anti-exploitation legislation are also examined in the book, as well as a survey conducted at the height of COVID-19, and a nationwide study that is the largest survey ever done of US sex workers and sex trafficking survivors.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/river.alchemy/
Substack: http://taraburns.substack.com/
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Newsletter: https://substack.com/@COYOTERI
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