My friend Ruwan Meepagala just got a lifetime ban from YouTube for creating and sharing sex education videos–no nudity, just sex ed, including videos about consent.

This is the new reality we live in, post-FOSTA/SESTA. Internet platforms simply caved in to the demands of right-wing Christian moralists, who are on a “moral hygiene” crusade to kick anything having to do with sex off the Internet, while dressing it up as a crusade against trafficking. (Unfortunately aided and abetted by an anti-sex-worker wing of feminism–not all feminism, but that particular, moralistic/Victorian wing, who want to shut adult, consenting sex workers down: and who are now winning in high places through Senator Kamala Harris, who was one of the main backers of FOSTA.)

Yes, human trafficking is a serious problem–in many industries, especially in agricultural labor, which is the locus of a massive amount of the trafficking in the world. (Nobody is calling for the shutting down and criminalization of adult, consenting farm workers because some people in their field are subjected to horrendous trafficking.) No, FOSTA was not a good solution to trafficking and is actually making the problem much worse in lots of documented ways. But it wasn’t about trafficking–it was about sex-negativism.) Continue Reading

This year for my birthday, instead of the typical slew of “happy birthday!”s on my Facebook, I would rather raise funds for an urgent cause I care about. I know this isn’t the lightest “birthday fare”–but if you follow my writing, please listen to what I’m about to say, because with FOSTA just signed into law, we are in red-alert zone on fundamental civil liberties we all take for granted on the Internet, which are now being systematically dismantled by both sides of the aisle.

Here is one tweet that summarizes the situation we’re now in with FOSTA, which is leading to almost every Internet platform (including FB) kicking off almost everything that has to do with sex: “Sex workers are just the test run for how many of your rights to exist in digital public space can be quietly revoked due to legislative concern trolling and the US government is getting away with it because they chose a target that can be cloaked by moralistic handwringing.”

I know this is a challenging issue to begin engaging with, because there’s so much controversy around it, but if you care about an open and free Internet, this issue is absolutely on the front-lines, because the powers-that-be are using this issue as a wedge to begin systematically dismantling our civil liberties on the Net. Continue Reading

[If you’re a CA citizen reading this, and you’re outraged by what you read, please contact any/all of the CA State Senators listed at the bottom of this Open Letter before 9AM, Tues 4/24 and explain to they why you oppose SB 1204. You don’t need to be their constituent to contact them, though if you’re a constituent of one of them, let them know that when you call.]

Summary: California is about to pass a bill that severely criminalizes all speech that “encourages” sex work. This is a brazen encroachment on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and all citizens should rally against it, no matter what their opinions are on sex work. If this bill passes, as an author who cherishes my First Amendment rights, I will openly break the law with my speech, in an act of principled noncooperation with a clearly unconstitutional law—risking jail time of necessary—and will not stop breaking it until the law is overturned for the unconstitutional mess that it is. 

Dear Members of the California Senate Committee on Public Safety (including Nancy Skinner, Joel Anderson, Steven Bradford, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Holly Mitchell, Jeff Stone, and Scott Weiner),

I am writing to you as an author or co-author of three published books, and a life-long resident of Kensington, CA, in the district represented by your chair Nancy Skinner. As an author, I take legislative threats to free speech very seriously, and I am writing to express my strong opposition to Senate Bill 1204, on free speech grounds.

SB 1204 radically re-defines the long-standing definition of “pandering,” which has historically been conceived as providing financial inducement to someone to begin engaging in prostitution. The new definition, under SB 1204, will expand the felony to include any “encouragement” whatsoever towards engaging in prostitution, even if that “encouragement” takes place only in words and opinions, with no financial inducement.

This is an obvious violation of my First Amendment right to express my opinion as to whether a person should become a sex worker or not. Continue Reading

This week [3/21/18], the Senate will vote on legislation that would effectively force many Internet companies—including web hosts, classified sites, and social media platforms—to ban consenting adults from advertising or promoting any sex-related services whatsoever. The law would very likely lead to a ban on advertisements for perfectly-legal adult services such as stripping, adult modeling and performing, and BDSM services (which are legal insofar as they don’t not involve genital contact.) The ban would also extend to adults advertising illegal but victimless services, such as the non-coerced exchange of sex for money between fully-consenting adults. It may even lead to censorship of consenting adults talking about these practices with each other–including discussion of how to reduce harm associated with these practices–on the Internet. And among all this, to the degree that pimps and traffickers advertise trafficked victims online, it would prevent those ads as well.

This last category—which we can all agree is a truly vile phenomenon, which must be stopped one way or another—is the putative reason for the bill. Like the “USA PATRIOT Act,” it has one of those politically-charged names that makes it damn hard to oppose, or even question, without seeming evil. The act is entitled the “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” (SESTA, which is the Senate version of the House’s similar FOSTA bill.) Could anyone oppose the USA PATRIOT Act, and still be a considered a patriot of the USA? (The answer is “Yes.”) And could anyone oppose the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, while still being opposed to sex trafficking?

The answer to that question is also “Yes.” Not only could you be opposed to FOSTA-SESTA without being evil, but you should be opposed to it, as the law is breathtakingly destructive—including destructive of the very aims it purports to address. The remainder of this piece will be aimed at persuading you of why this is so, and why you should call both your senators today and leave them messages in opposition to the bill, urgently, before they vote tomorrow. Continue Reading