Reddit mentions of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry

In addition to the obvious strategy of continuing to be a good client, here's some more things clients can do to help, with varying degrees of commitment involved:

• Come out of the closet. Be open with friends and family about hiring sex workers. It's harder for others to demonize clients if someone they know and trust--a brother, a father, a friend--is a client.
  
• Speak out against stereotypes of providers and clients. Don't let the tropes of "prostitute as victim" or "exploitative john" go unchallenged.
  
• Speak out against the exaggerated statistics of rescue industry non-profits and sex worker hostile feminists.
  
• Talk up the "New Zealand model", and show how full decriminalization works much better than the "Swedish model".
  
• Talk up the support of decriminalization by well respected non-profits, such as Amnesty International
  
• Donate money to sex work non-profits such as SWOP-USA and Red Light Legal.
  
• Donate money to politicians who are sympathetic to sex workers such as Rand Paul
  
• Join the Free State Project, and work on decriminalization there. If there were a state where prostitution were wholly decriminalized, it could serve as a model for other states.
  
• Run for, and win political office.
  
• Write model legislation, if it doesn't already exist, so that you have something tangible to ask politicians to support.
  
• Write letters to the editor, blog posts, etc in support of decriminalization.
  
• Hold fundraising parties to raise money for decriminalization, legal defense funds.
  
• Join the ACLU/EFF, and help them fight back against FOSTA/SESTA.
  
• If you're an academic, host conferences and speakers in defense of decriminalization. Make sure that sex work hostile academics don't get tenure, don't get published, and don't funding. Speak out against the bad statistics, and bad methodology that are often practiced by sex work hostile academics.
  
• Write software to support sex workers, such as apps that help them to screen out cops and bad clients.
  
• Start businesses in support of sex workers, as AssemblyFour is doing with Switter.
  
• Out hypocrites such as Trump, Spitzer, etc, who persecute sex workers, even as they make use of their services.
  
• Join decentralized social networks such as Switter and Hubzilla, and boycott censorship prone organizations like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
  
• Buy and promote the books of sex worker positive authors, such as Laura Agustin, Chester Brown, and Lola Davina.

Oh yeah, it's libertarian bullshit for sure. This is her book: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Margins-Migration-Markets-Industry/dp/1842778609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481336883&sr=8-1&keywords=laura+agustin

EDIT: jesus fuck I am screaming about this Amazon review of it:

> The whole notion of "migrants" is deeply class biased; no one ever called an Indian bond trader working in New York a migrant. But he or she has travelled for the same reasons as dishwashers, nannies, and strippers - to make money, for sure, but also to see the world, or escape suffocating origins.

...what do you even say to something like this? What did I just read? Obviously there are class differences between bond traders and strippers and it would be INSANE to ignore the differences. The fuck are these people smoking?

EDIT2 (SORRY I JUST CAN'T GET OVER THESE REVIEWS): Another reviewer goes on to compare her to Emma Goldman and calls the book a classic! I'm just gonna leave this here (Goldman was decidedly anti-state interference in prostitution buuuttt she still wants it eradicated/calls it a social evil, etc): https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1910/traffic-women.htm

Sex trafficking is a moral panic. It's not real. Read this book and stop watching those documentaries; they're the modern equivalent of Reefer Madness.

While agencies are exploitative, it's not in the sense you're thinking of, just in the Marxist way of extracting surplus value from the labor of their workers, like any other company.

In that case, you might want to check out this book -- Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry . "Sex trafficking" is not as black and white as you've been lead to believe.

If you've read that, I recommend you read the other side of the story. Kristof has a specific agenda, and it is greatly at odds with the goals of those living and working in the sex industry. He is not seen as a savour, he is seen as an enemy.

There is no real evidence that the methods he promotes actually achieve positive results. If anything, it appears that they do more harm than good.

Google "rescue industry" for more details.