Criminalization "barking up the wrong tree"

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H.B. No. 1540
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87...l/HB01540F.HTM

Long story short, it changes the law to target hobbyists "solicitation", and therefore targets consensual sex work even more, leading to the type of harm these nonsensical laws lead to.


Pushing things further underground, making police actions harsher, and more difficult, and making life harder for sex workers...pushing them into residential or other more precarious situations.

Get ready for things to get WORSE for the women (and men) involved in sex work.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5529480/




"Waterbed politics" ...push it down on one side, pops up somewhere else.


Criminalization "barking up the wrong tree":

Abstract

There is a notable shift toward more repression and criminalization in sex work policies, in Europe and elsewhere. So-called neo-abolitionism reduces sex work to trafficking, with increased policing and persecution as a result. Punitive “demand reduction” strategies are progressively more popular. These developments call for a review of what we know about the effects of punishing and repressive regimes vis-à-vis sex work. From the evidence presented, sex work repression and criminalization are branded as “waterbed politics” that push and shove sex workers around with an overload of controls and regulations that in the end only make things worse. It is illustrated how criminalization and repression make it less likely that commercial sex is worker-controlled, non-abusive, and non-exploitative. Criminalization is seriously at odds with human rights and public health principles. It is concluded that sex work criminalization is barking up the wrong tree because it is fighting sex instead of crime and it is not offering any solution for the structural conditions that sex work (its ugly sides included) is rooted in. Sex work repression travels a dead-end street and holds no promises whatsoever for a better future. To fight poverty and gendered inequalities, the criminal justice system simply is not the right instrument. The reasons for the persistent stigma on sex work as well as for its present revival are considered.

Conclusion

It is time to acknowledge commercial sex as a widely prevalent and basically fully legitimate form of sexual relations. For a variety of reasons, many women (and men) will turn to making money on sex and substantial groups of people will, also for different reasons, turn to paying for it. There is nothing wrong with asking or giving money for bodily services provided it takes place under humane conditions, is fully consensual, worker-controlled, free from discrimination and violence, and no more exploitative than the average job would ideally be. Anything retracting from these qualities should be fought, but without the unproductive criminalization of the branch as a whole. After all, we don’t criminalize marriage either because there is domestic violence.

Controversies on sex work seem to get stuck in simplified, stereotypical imagery of commercial sex, an imagery that denies it being widely diverse and varied, multi-layered, and multi-determined. Simplified visions of sex work as either exploitation or choice, either violence or victory (instead of it often being both or neither), obfuscate a nuanced, complex, and adequate understanding of commercial sex and sex work realities. This complexity in sex work builds upon the complexity of the societal conditions it is rooted in the first place. There are no simple solutions when it comes to improving sex workers’ position, like there is no simple solution to fighting gender and economic inequity or violence, abuse, and exploitation. Decriminalization is an important first step, but in itself not enough. The complexity of the issues at stake calls for long-term organizing, mobilization, and community interventions and painstaking processes of raising awareness, empowerment, and building solidarity and safety nets. And progress will be partial, uneven, and never ensured. One thing is sure though: increased policing and repression of commercial sex practices are not going to help any sex worker or victim of trafficking and will only make things worse. Clearly, all crime in and beyond commercial sex needs to be fought with all the legal measures available, but to improve the circumstances of the women and men working sex or the complex gender and sexual injustices that their choices and realities are rooted in, the criminal justice system simply isn’t the right instrument.