FOSTA AND SESTA ARE THE TROJAN HORSE OF TYRANNY, LET’S OPPOSE IT WHILE WE CAN
Legislation that hit like lightning. It left us all confused and angry, but also united and charged. It has to be said, it’s exciting and uplifting to overcome oppression with hi tech. Sex workers have been bubbling with energy, signing up on VPNs and LLC, migrating to sex work ran social media; using crypto etc.
But you have to wonder what happens to the parameters of your civil liberties in the meanwhile though.
Beyond the blow to our financial interest, what Fosta and Sesta do is advance totalitarianism via an avenue very hardly challenged (“dirty sex”, pornography and sex workers), and they’ve got to be opposed. Or else in 20 years it’ll be pretty much North Korea but with more shit to buy.
We’ll probably be OK, but everyone else will lose and us with them. Freedom, once lost, is never regained. It’s all good hosting offshore and masking traffic, but how do you know something else won’t hit harder?
In UK the Tories are drawing a plan to control the internet (or “a new, safe, controlled internet” as May put it); and they signaled they’d like to ban encryption. Like what if they ban VPNs?
What if they use AI to centralize and analyze all the massive data they collect on us every step we take, every air we breathe… and then no VPN and no offshoring can help you anymore. Shit’s getting VERY FUCKING REAL, and we, sex workers, are the first to feel it.
This bill’s real purveyors are not hypocritical, they know what they’re doing; and they’re not likely to be elected out of office either, as it’s not just the GOP. The Dems are pretty much of the same ilk. The bill is in line with the long term policy of and strategy of US and UK. The real purpose this law is product testing is people’s reaction to the removal of Section 230, so it’s open season on freedom of speech. And of course, the stealth way to test this is on the whores, as no one dares stand up for the sexual outcasts. In time, if this stays unopposed, they will apply the publisher’s liability for third party content to everything. So for instance, Twitter will be held accountable if you say something that can vaguely be construed to be “promoting terrorism”. In UK, animal rights activists, anti fracking activists and anti capitalists are on government “terrorist” lists. Make your own inference what this can mean on the long term.
The Investigative Powers Act, the Digital Economy Bill, FOSTA, SESTA, and more. These laws have to be opposed in court. ECC already said IPA is in violation of human rights. So are obviously FOSTA and SESTA too — violation of the US constitution’s first amendment. *They*..’re not going to stop.
If we don’t use the last bits of our freedoms and the courts while we have them, *they* are going to advance to the edge of our beds and tell us when, how and if we can have a wank; or a glass of water. I am not kidding. Look at North Korea. China. It’s not a joke.
They’re basically product testing totalitarianism on sex workers, because no one dares stand for the “whores”.
*where whore is every sexual outcast they don’t like.
Sex work is a broad church. But all, not just prostitutes, are thrown under the bus by this. Disproportionately affected are the femdommes and findommes. Yep, women EMPOWERED by sex work will be censored from the internet in the same way as pimps and traffickers. I’d say farcical but we all know this is rather TRAGIC.
This is the end of the golden age of female agency in sex biz.
Fosta/Sesta will end up pushing more vulnerable sex workers into the arms of the traffickers — the opposite of what it seeks to do. Online advertising allowed women to be in charge of their adult business, financial autonomy and online safety tools. This eliminates those tools. A large segment of the most vulnerable of them will be pushed into the arms of pimps, poverty, or even trafficking.
Once they smoulder this through because no one stood for the whores and the pornographers etc… it’s free passage to encroach you all… in a hi tech cage. Welcome to the future.
When the legislators see the placid resignation to this tyrannical law, in 5 years they’ll serve you an even worse law, which won’t just affect the “dirty sex workers”.. but all of you. How about installing cameras in your anus, to make sure you’re not smuggling some paid sex? Or how about not being able to say anything sexual because it offends someone,, somewhere? Or how about not being able to say anything at all, except “isn’t work wonderful” and “let’s go shopping”. That’s where this is going.
Anyone still making excuses for the government or thinking it’s going to be alright is a massive dupe and it’s going to drag us all into the abyss.
Want to talk about it/ways to organise >> erismartinet@protonmail.ch
Protonmail.ch offers secure encryption. But our correspondence is not encrypted unless we’re both emailing from an encrypted inbox. I recommend abandoning your Outlook/Hotmail and Gmail emails to communicate on all things SEX, sexuality and BDSM related, as Gmail and Microsoft released statements to announce they will be banning adult and “offensive” content. What constitutes adult and offensive content is not defined.
