It's an excellent article Cable. Thanks for highlighting it.
As far as I can make out, it is in relation to online advertising of sex work. One of the points the author makes is that this form of advertising empowers the sex worker rather than the reverse. There are points in this article which will be very useful to E-I, as it defends the advertising media for sex workers.
Some key quotations from the article are below. And I'm sure the majority of us will say "Amen" to them.
P.S. And the author is a woman! WHich I believe always adds strength to this sort of thing.
For many, the availability of these tools (IT advertising) gives them more power and agency over their engagement in the sex trade, not less. These online advertising spaces also create a record of interactions that can be a useful tool for law enforcement to track down violent abusers and traffickers.
Sex workers can't be reduced to the sexual equivalent of crack. The entire idea of sex workers possessing personhood is premised on their right to control their bodies and by extension, their leverage over the services rendered.
Of course, activists should be wary of profit-making institutions conflating the individual’s freedom to work with the employer’s “freedom” from regulation or “right” to exploit. But a legal ban alone doesn’t change the forces of supply and demand. Some organizations take a human rights approach to sex work (which can range from prostitution to exotic dancing) that focuses instead on engaging law enforcement and social agencies to protect sex workers from assault and harm—not just by pimps and johns, but by police, judges and immigration officers, too.
Globally, pro-sex-worker movements foreground the economic and political agency of people in the trade. Last year, advocates reported to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights that heavy-handed tactics allow authorities to use sex work “crime” as a pretext for discrimination, harassment and brutality against “street-based or outdoor workers, transgender or gender non-conforming people, people of color, migrants, and youth.”
Yet the perspectives of sex workers are sidelined in the public discourse on sex ads
Sex work is real work, which means sex workers have the basic labor rights we all expect, including a work environment free of violence and exploitation. Targeting companies that work with people in commercial sex will only lead to more shrouded interactions
"Don't be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours"