Jared Trujillo, policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and a former sex worker, explains their campaign to decriminalize sex work. Jared shares how decriminalizing sex work would make it safer and why sex workers should be entitled to the same legal protections and workplace rights as any other worker. He discusses with host Rafa Kidvai the harm that comes from criminalizing sex work, including increased violence against sex workers and decreased access to healthcare and legal services.
Visit Repro Legal Defense Fund to learn more. Follow Jared on Twitter @JaredTruEsqueer.
If you have questions about your legal rights or access to abortion, go to the Repro Legal Helpline or call 844-868-2812. If you are being criminalized for something that happened during a pregnancy, go to reprolegaldefensefund.org.
Rafa Kidvai: This is No Body Criminalized, how the state controls our bodies, families, and communities. I'm Rafa Kidvai, director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. On our podcast we talk with experts, activists, and advocates whose daily work intersects with reproductive justice and the state's targeting of marginalized communities. SisterSong, a reproductive justice collective led by women of color, defines reproductive justice as the human rights to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. You will hear us restate this shared commitment throughout our interviews because regardless of the issues guests focus on, that is ultimately the world we all intend to create.
Our guest today is Jared Trujillo. Jared is Senior Policy Council at the New York Civil Liberties Union and an Adjunct Professor at CUNY School of Law. He is a former public defender and a former sex worker. Jared is fighting to decriminalize sex work in the state of New York and advocates for the rights and dignity of sex workers everywhere. His work shines a light on the challenges faced by sex workers, the harms of criminalization on sex workers, and how decriminalizing sex work ensures the safety and wellbeing of everyone.
Hey Jared, it's so wonderful to have you here, your voice and perspective are super important and we're thrilled to talk to you.
Jared Trujillo: Hey, thank you for having me, and it's just wonderful to see you again and to be in space with you.
Kidvai: So one of the major issues you've been working on is decriminalizing sex work in New York. What made you gravitate towards this work?
Trujillo: Sex work in general is just one of those issues that really does impact every aspect of people's lives. For myself, I'm a former sex worker and so a lot of my colleagues from when I was a sex worker or even myself, criminalization impacts your ability to get housing, if you're a parent, impacts your ability to maintain custody of your kids, it impacts immigration. And then there's some sex work issues right now that have real first amendment implications. And so sex work has always been an issue that I've been involved with since, I was a sex worker many, many, many years ago, up until now. Just because the criminalization impacts every aspect of people's lives and really beyond being criminalized having effects on people's lives, criminalization makes sex work more dangerous. Sex workers are real people. They are your brothers, they're your sisters, they're your cousins, they're your neighbors. They're just very real people and the criminalization only drives sex work further underground.
And so this is a campaign that's as much about removing criminal penalties as it is about making sure that these very real people can practice a job that is the oldest profession, that they can practice it as safely as possible.
Kidvai: So tell us what exactly you mean by decriminalized sex work.
Trujillo: Sure. So decrim refers to removing the criminal penalties for adults that trade commercial sex. So we talk about decriminalization, we're not talking about paying coercion, we're not talking about children. We are solely talking about removing the criminal penalties for adults, that means the seller, the sex worker, that means the client, the purchaser, and that also means the people that live and work together. There are a few different models of criminalization that exist and then there's a model that some people call decrim, it is not that. It is partial criminalization, a prohibitionist model that still criminalizes people that live and work together. So let's say that I am the sex worker and person B is a person who is maybe translating for me or is working with me because it's safer to work in pairs, we make sure that those people are not criminalized as well.
Kidvai: I think you touched upon some of this earlier, but I guess when you don't decriminalize sex work, what is the emotional cost to sex workers as they're being surveilled, controlled, criminalized by the state?
Trujillo: There's been a decriminalization model for the past 20 years. In 2003 when the United States was finally getting around decriminalizing sodomy, with Lawrence v Texas, New Zealand decriminalized sex work. And we know that New Zealand is just the first country, there have been others, but we know that with decriminalization and the adverse of that is the cost of criminalization, we know that one, people are able to negotiate condom use or safer sex more easily when you are not being rushed to complete a transaction because you or the client just worried about cops arresting you, you have more time to actually talk to people. It means that screening is much better with decriminalization. And sex work, like being an Uber driver, like anything where, being a housekeeper, any job where you are in close contact with people, I am not going to say that the risk of harm is zero, but being able to screen clients and try to determine what those risks are and to have harm reduction tools, whether that be working together or using a site like Ugly Mugs, that makes you safer.
And then there's also police violence. In the United States, sexual misconduct is a second most common complained upon form of police violence. And for sex workers, oftentimes there are a lot of male sex workers or a lot of non-binary sex workers. People do sex work oftentimes because of circumstance, because it's the best way to get by. A lot of people that are doing sex work are Black and Brown folks, they're trans folks. In New York, oftentimes they're trans and non-binary folks that are non-citizens. And so sex work is the best way for them to protect themselves. They're Asian women, a lot of people that have intersecting marginalized identities. What does that mean? That means that for anyone, sexual misconduct is rampant among police officers for these populations that are easier to invisibilize, that are easier to target, that are easier to coerce because what are you going to tell that non-citizen? If you say something to me, what happens with your citizenship status? Or who is going to believe you because you're a Black woman? With this population, the rates of police violence are even higher.
We know that in New York City in particular, it's always been an issue. Dating back to 1972, there was a Mollen Commission in New York that really looked at vice, the unit that polices sex workers and recognized all the harms that were happening. These harms did not get better when another commission really investigated them in the '90s. And that in 2017 when five or six vice officers in a unit that only has a little bit more than 100 officers, were running a prostitution ring. Two years later when another vice officer was caught weaponizing his badge to coerce sexual favors from sex workers, that same year when Yang Song, an Asian massage worker out in flushing, was basically chased to her death after vice officers rated a massage parlor after they had effectively raped her at gunpoint at that same massage parlor, she jumped to her death to not have to have another interaction with these officers. Instances of sexual violence are just rampant for sex workers, massage workers, and also survivors of human trafficking who are oftentimes prosecuted and policed the same way that sex workers are.
Kidvai: Thank you for laying that out. You talk a lot about the violence coming from police officers in the state and I'm wondering, are you drawn to abolition as a framework? Do you think that's helpful in a fight for decriminalization of sex work?
Trujillo: I absolutely do. One of the things about abolition is just the idea that abolition is just ripping down the police state and being like, we are Westworld, like free for all, good luck to you. And that's not really what it is. It's about recognizing the structures that we have now cause immense harm to people. It's removing those structures and it's building up pro-social structures, things that actually support people instead. And so that's actually really what we want to do with decriminalization. We want to remove the police state from people's lives. We've had policing of sex work for as long as we've had sex work, and sex work is the oldest profession and it has always been harmful.
So you want to make sure that we remove those harms in people and the police, meaning child welfare services, immigration services, meaning the entire prison industrial complex, which we could talk about for hours and hours, but also building things up. And what does building things up mean? In New York City right now and in other places, we're working on a sex worker bill of rights to ensure that people can have protections against wage theft, that people are able to actually collaborate with one another, that people have easy access to legal help.
We just really want to make sure, and then even until the people have pretty basic things like a community fridge, to share information, that people have access to information in Korean and Chinese, which is a real problem in New York right now, as diverse of a city as it is. So abolition is totally a useful framework with a recognition that abolition means ripping down what exists that criminalizes our bodies, but also building up structures so that we can actually help people reach their full potential.
Kidvai: Right. We still want people to feel safe, that's the whole goal.
Trujillo: Exactly.
Kidvai: So I guess I'm wondering, you talked about the sort of criminalizing of bodies and obviously that happens in the reproductive justice movement space. And I'm wondering what overlap do you see in the fight for reproductive justice and decriminalizing sex work?
Trujillo: Just conceptually, the idea for criminalization in general, people want sex work criminalized for a lot of different reasons. Some of it's morality, some people, particularly those that support more of a prohibitionist model thinking that you can end sex work by ending demand for it by just criminalizing one side of the transaction really hard. But people still need a sandwich, and so people are still going to do sex work to pay for a sandwich or to pay for rent or whatever. But you have all these different reasons for criminalization, whether that be morality or whether it be savior politics that people have. And I see the same thing with the abortion fight, is the idea of you can't have equity to your body because that offends whatever sky daddy I support or because you might regret it and so I want to help you.
So at the very base level there's that, but then also when it comes to some of the same laws that criminalize sex work, particularly around federal laws that make it even difficult for sex workers to talk about being sex workers online, to screen clients and everything else. I'm thinking about SESTA FOSTA. This is a bill that was signed in April, 2018 by President Trump, but this is not something that can be blamed on Trump, it was very bipartisan. 97 senators voted for it. So whether you like Ted Cruz or whether you love Bernie Sanders, your fav voted for it, one except for Rand Paul and Ron Wyden and I think one other person. And almost everyone else voted for it in the House except for Arbor Lee, which would tell you everything that you need to know about the bill. But it's something that, the idea of the bill was that it was supposed to be this bill that would help, "help fight online trafficking."
What the bill actually did, and the DOJ and everyone said the bill would do this, is that it actually drove sex work further underground and it made it harder for sex workers to use sites that they use to be able to screen clients and really employ a lot of other harm reduction tools. And I fear the same thing, and we're already, I think, seeing this, I fear that it's only going to get worse post stops for abortion, that a lot of people that are making policies are people that don't really care about the details and if there's a little bit of collateral damage, I just see instances of just really sloppy legislation being passed that's going to bring a whole bunch of people enter the cross hairs that are not even the intended targets of the legislation. And that's not to say that there aren't a whole lot of issues with also targeting people that are the intended target of the legislation, but I just see really broad legislation that's only going to push people's bodily autonomy further underground.
People are still going to make the bodily decisions that they're going to make, that's just as human is breathing. And making it harder for people to access information or to access help or to just have a conversation with someone, it's really scary for what the ultimate impact of that could be.
Kidvai: Why do you think the state wants to control our bodies so much?
Trujillo: Whose bodies are they controlling? Right? Because most of these laws around abortion or sex work or whatever, they're controlling non cis, male, white bodies predominantly. Of course these laws can affect anybody, but that is who they're intended to target. That is, again, just as a American as the flag or apple pie or whatever else. That's not something new. I think someone exercising bodily autonomy, that is scary. Exercising full bodily autonomy is scary for the structures that be. I think the perfect example of this is actually in New York, it's unlicensed a profession. This law criminalizes anyone who's practicing without being fully licensed. I could tell you I've been a licensed attorney and for all my time as a public defender, and I'm sure you probably saw this too, there were instances where prosecutors were not bothering to maintain their licenses. None of them were ever prosecuted under this statute.
Chiropractors, if they left their license passed by a few months are generally not being prosecuted under the statute. Of the 36 licensed professions that could be prosecuted, almost the only ones that are actually ever prosecuted in New York, massage workers. 95% of the people arrested under the statute are Asian women and midwives. It's a profession where the majority of people that are practicing it are women of color. And so the policing of people's bodies is something that is certainly not new in this country at all. And it's something that I think feels very comfortable, especially when the people being policed are not the majority, are Black and Brown folks, are non cis white men, are LGBTQ folks. And with the criminalization of sex work, those are the people that are targeted.
I know cis white male sex workers who are good friends and lovely people, they're not being criminalized. We can have decrim tomorrow and frankly, their lives probably would not be all that different. Frankly, I know lots of other sex workers that have lots of needs and criminalization does affect them. And then there are also a whole bunch of other issues as far as deplatforming for different online platforms, which are of course problems as well. But a lot of the on the ground policing of street-based sex workers that doesn't really affect them so much. The people that are always impacted the most by criminalization are the people that are the furthest from mainstream cis-het whiteness and the people that are economically marginalized.
Kidvai: Part of your work has been in the family regulation or family policing system, and I guess I'm interested to know what motivated you to take on that piece of the work?
Trujillo: I actually started my career doing that work. And a lot of it is because, some of them were my own experiences. I spent a good amount of my childhood outside of Chicago and just seeing how much the family regulation system was really just an extension of policing for indigenous folks, for Black folks, for so many other people, it is policing. There is no difference. And frankly, if you tell any parent that I am going to take your child away from you, they don't hear anything differently than I am going to put you into a cage. It sounds the same because it is the same for a lot of people and it's been weaponized that way. It's been weaponized that way against entire cultures. Particularly thinking about indigenous folks right now and some of the challenges right now in the country.
Frankly, when I started at Legal Aid, I actually didn't want to do child welfare cases, I only wanted to do delinquency cases. But very quickly, it's something that I'm really glad that I got to see both sides of it and got to do some fighting back against it.
Kidvai: It's like a matrix of state oppression.
Trujillo: I'm very happy that in the criminal legal system abolition reform phase that people are actually starting to see the two of those related. I'm super appreciative of that question because I don't think it's always been that way. I think that people most impacted by the family regulation system. I think that all parents and all kids and the entire family are, but I think it's been something that's traditionally been seen as mostly moms. And I like to think that the criminal legal system space is something that really cares about all people that are impacted. I think it's taken a little bit of time to catch up to really recognizing that we do need to watch out for everybody and I'm glad that by and large, I think the movement is getting there or gotten there.
Kidvai: Absolutely. I think people are absolutely seeing the connections between these systems much more than they were. So this podcast is called No Body Criminalized. When you hear that phrase, what does it mean to you?
Trujillo: I think it means a few different things. For me, it just like the term no body, it makes me think of just an inclusive structure of just everyone. Particularly with the criminalization of sex work, these movements or whether it be abortion or whatever. And it's just so easy to forget certain people because right now the people that are most criminalized are the people that have the most intersection marginalized identities, whether that be hard intersexual identities like race, gender, sexual orientation, or even just these soft intersectionalities such as disabilities, such as wealth, such as you name it. And just no body, and also just knowing who you are as a person and what your values are just really makes me think that ensuring that we're really including everyone, that we're not leaving people out.
And then the structure of criminalized, again, knowing who you are, knowing what your values are, and hearing the podcast, just a really broad view of what criminalization looks like. As we've talked about before, it is not just the police. Making sure that we're watching the police is important, but it's not just the police or the sheriffs. Prisons are not just brick and mortar prisons. They're everything from probation and parole to the child welfare system, the family regulation system. What No Body Criminalized means is a call to abolition and a call to ensure that we're including everyone when we're comprehensively thinking about criminalization. And then also having the context of who you're as a person, recognizing that we need different structures instead that are not criminalization and all of its different iterations.
Kidvai: I want to end on the note of asking you what sustains you in the work that you do. You've been doing this work for a long time and you have a lot of fight in you, and I would love to know your secret sauce.
Trujillo: I am still learning what my secret sauce is, so if you have ideas, I have all ears for them. I think that burnout in this work is real for me. It certainly happened at one point. I used to drink and now I no longer drink, and that frankly wasn't my choice. That was because of burnout from one of my last jobs. So things that sustained me or keeping in gratitude journal of the small wins, and not even just small wins, but the wins in general. When I was a public defender, I remember I won my first trial and I just cried because I'm like, this is one case and we removed one harm that people face. Because when you're a public defender, no one comes to you because they're having a good day. Everyone comes to you because it's the worst day of their lives.
That is true in abolition work, period, or reform work or whatever, is that you're fighting systems that have existed for centuries and it is harm reduction work at its core. And if I was able to abolish all the police with a snap of a finger, that's harm reduction, but that's different than building up. So what sustained me is just having a recognition that is harm reduction, but also knowing that there's value in harm reduction, knowing that getting a really oppressive law off the books is not going to be a panacea for everyone, but it is something to be proud of. So recognizing the value of harm reduction, recognizing it as also having my, not slice but big old half of the humble pie and being like, yo, these movements need more than me. And recognizing that whatever I could do with the law, that is only a piece of it and it is a valuable piece so it's something to be happy and proud of.
And then finally, I think the biggest thing that really sustains me is just also recognizing these movements are interconnected. I very much view myself as a community lawyer, but again, the law is one of and probably the most boring part of what movements actually look like. So seeing the young folks that are also doing stuff, seeing during COVID, so many of the Black and trans Latinx sex workers that were doing huge mutual aid efforts that they were getting no institutional support for. They were just like, "My people are hungry and I'm going to feed them." Plugging into movements and talking to people and seeing the other things that people are doing and sometimes just crying together. I've had a subway cry more times than I am going to admit in public, but just finding your people and knowing that this stuff is really hard and celebrating victories. I don't do housing work, but if my friends get something big on housing, they're like, we're celebrating. I'm like, I am going to. And making yourself happy and recognizing that it's a marathon.
Kidvai: Thank you. Thank you for your wisdom, Jared. I appreciate this conversation so much. It's been a joy to speak with you.
Trujillo: Thank you. I appreciate so much the work that you're doing on this podcast and just like the work that you're doing in the world.
Kidvai: We covered a lot of ground with Jared, so let's look at some key takeaways. We discussed the prevalence of sexual violence for sex workers and how this reality highlights the urgent need to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of those doing this work. We also discussed how abolition is about more than just dismantling the prison system. For him, abolition requires that we acknowledge the immense harm caused by the current structures in place and try to build up new ones. Lastly, we delved into the importance of decriminalizing sex work by removing the police state from people's lives and how this is the only path towards a future that ensures safety and dignity for sex workers.
Jared Trujillo's, senior Policy Council at the New York Civil Liberties Union and an adjunct professor at CUNY School of Law. You can follow him on Twitter at JaredTruEsqueer. I'm Rafa Kidvai, the host of this podcast and director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund, If/When/How. The Repro Legal Defense Fund funds bail and strong defenses for anyone criminalized for something that happens during pregnancy. Learn more at reprolegaldefensefund.org. If you have questions about your legal rights, go to reprolegalhelpline.org or call 844-868-2812.
No Body Criminalized as produced by LWC Studios for the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. Sage Carson and Jen Girdish are the media and marketing team at If/When/How. Pamela Kirkland is the show's producer. Paulina Velasco is the managing producer at LWC Studios. Kojin Tashiro is lead producer and mixed this episode. And remember, keep your community safe and don't talk to cops.
CITATION:
Kidvai, Rafa, host. “Treating Sex Work Like Work.” No Body Criminalized, Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. May 15, 2023. Reprolegaldefensefund.org.