Apparently we woke up this weekend and the world collectively decided: sure, let’s add another war to the schedule. One minute everyone is arguing about grocery prices and student loan payments, and the next minute the headlines read like a deleted scene from a geopolitical action movie - coordinated strikes, retaliatory missiles, emergency United Nations meetings, airspace closures, and oil markets reacting like they just drank five Red Bulls.

There is a persistent fiction at the heart of modern feminist policy debates: the idea that sex workers are a new complication, an inconvenient edge case, or a group that can be spoken about rather than listened to. As if we arrived late to the conversation. As if we are an add-on, not a foundation. This framing makes it easier to design policy without us—and easier still to ignore the harm that follows.

The truth is far less comfortable for mainstream feminism. Sex workers have been part of feminist movements from the beginning. We have organized, theorized, provided care, funded mutual aid, built safety networks, resisted police violence, and articulated critiques of state power long before those ideas were safe, fundable, or hashtag-ready. What changes across feminist eras is not our presence, but whether feminism chooses to see us.

Somewhere along the way, criminalization learned a new language. What was once openly punitive is now framed as diversion, exit, or support. People are told they aren’t being punished - they’re being helped. But the help comes with conditions, and those conditions begin with arrest. The shift is rhetorical, not structural. The police still initiate the process, the courts still control the outcome, and freedom is still contingent on compliance.

In Florida, there’s technically a legal pathway for sex trafficking survivors to have prostitution-related charges vacated. On paper, it sounds like justice. When people explain it, they make it sound straightforward - file the motion, show your designation, and your life opens back up.

That hasn’t been my experience.

I was trafficked for more than a decade, moved across state lines, arrested again and again for things I was being forced to do to survive. Eight years ago, I received my official designation recognizing me as a trafficking survivor. I believed that would finally unlock the door - that it would mean relief, recognition, a chance to rebuild without my past following me everywhere.

Eight years later, I am still trying to clear all of my charges.

End-demand laws - often called the Nordic Model - are marketed as a feminist compromise. Sex workers won’t be punished, advocates insist. Only buyers will be criminalized. Demand will shrink. Exploitation will end. It’s presented as a clean solution to a messy problem: moral clarity without collateral damage.

On paper, buyer criminalization is sold as a feminist compromise. Sex workers won’t be punished, the story goes. Only buyers will be targeted. Demand will shrink. Exploitation will end. Everyone claps. Grants are written. Panels are booked. The theory is neat, morally satisfying, and endlessly fundable.

On the ground, that story collapses almost immediately.

In cities and states that implement buyer-focused enforcement, the first real outcome isn’t safety—it’s displacement. When clients fear arrest, transactions don’t stop. They move. To darker locations. More isolated spaces. Faster negotiations. Less screening. More risk. Sex workers absorb the pressure created by enforcement, recalibrating their behavior to keep income flowing while trying not to get hurt. Because rent still exists. Groceries still cost money. Survival does not pause for feminist theory.

Feminist support for the Nordic Model is often rooted in clear, articulated goals: reducing violence, limiting exploitation, and challenging gendered power imbalances. These goals are not in dispute. The problem arises when alignment with those goals is treated as evidence that a policy works.

The Nordic Model is often introduced to feminist audiences as a kind of political relief valve. Not full criminalization, they say. Not decriminalization either - but a principled compromise. A way to oppose exploitation without “punishing women.” A policy rooted in gender equality, sold as modern, humane, and feminist.

It sounds reasonable. That’s the pitch.

But like most good sales pitches, it relies on what’s emphasized - and what’s quietly left out.

I write this as a sex worker, a parent, and someone shaped by systemic harm, such as criminalization and stigma, and committed to community accountability, which informs my work. Harm reduction, consent-based frameworks, and non-carceral approaches to anti-trafficking and mutual aid guide my perspective. I recognize that experiences of sex work, coercion, and survival exist on a spectrum, and I write with respect for those who identify as sex workers, survivors, both, or neither. This piece reflects my perspective and practice, not a universal narrative.

Repost from January 2020