ACLU: Decriminalization of ‘Sex Work’ Would Provide Greater Equality to ‘Trans Women of Color’

Sex worker in Havana, Cuba, on 1st January 2016. The night is still their best ally. They
Alvaro Fuente/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Dr. Susan Berry

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is promoting its campaign calling for the decriminalization of “sex work” in order to destigmatize it and, particularly, to provide “greater equality” for “trans women of color.”

In June, the ACLU claimed that police are brutal toward sex workers:

Police regularly target, harass, and assault sex workers or people they think are sex workers, such as trans women of color. The police usually get away with the abuse because sex workers fear being arrested if they report. If we lived in a world that didn’t criminalize sex work, sex workers could better protect themselves and seek justice when they are harmed.

The left-wing group called for the decriminalization of “sex work” so that sex workers can be protected from police brutality and also obtain healthcare benefits. Additionally, legalizing sex work, the ACLU claims, reduces both violence toward sex workers and further unnecessary incarceration and brings about greater equality for “trans women of color.”

However, Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), an organization of radical feminists who oppose the concept of gender identity and transgender ideology, responded to the ACLU with the statement, “Yes, the actions of rapist sex buyers and pimps shouldn’t be held against their victims.”

“How many women do ACLU staff buy to rape, anyhow?” WoLF asked. “We hope it’s none, but we really, really doubt it.”

In comments to Breitbart News, Natasha Chart, board chair of WoLF, explained most sex workers are unhappy in their work.

“The vast majority of women in the sex industry, and it’s mostly women, want out,” Chart said, but added, “It helps them if they aren’t saddled with a criminal record, and can report abuses against them if they wish to, without fear of repercussions.”

“The median sex buyer is an employed man with a girlfriend or wife, who wants to dehumanize a woman by acting out degrading things he’s seen in commercial sexual exploitation videos,” she explained. “He won’t ask a woman he has to pretend to respect every day, so he buys an impoverished woman to rape, he buys her silence.”

Chart said she and her organization support a policy whereby the law “penalizes pimps and buyers, but holds the trafficked person harmless as the victim of a crime.”

“The staff of organizations promoting this state of affairs as legitimate employment, such that a Harvey Weinstein could have written it into a job description and be free and clear of all his current troubles, should, in our opinion, only be asked whether or not they have personally purchased a woman to rape in this manner, or if they’re fine working beside such people,” she added. “That’s the beginning and end of our interest in their views on whether it’s appropriate to legalize the purchase of sex.”

As Breitbart News reported Monday, WoLF sponsored a poll conducted by SPRY Strategies that found 74 percent of California likely voters reject the type of gender identity policies that would allow minor children access to transgender medical interventions, such as hormone treatments and surgeries.

“The policies being pushed by gender extremists cut against the majority opinions of likely voters,” Chart said in a statement following the release of the poll results. “They should stop trying to win this debate by falsely describing themselves as representing the popular will.”

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.