No one wants to listen to the sex workers

[Blue_Adept]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/04/10/if-backpages-shutdown-is-a-win-for-sex-workers-why-are-sex-workers-so-mad-about-it/

Advocates left and right have applauded federal authorities’ seizure of classified ads website Backpage.com as a victory for women in the sex trade. But who’s angriest about the shutdown? Women in the sex trade.

The Backpage debate has crystallized the broader conversation around sex work, and it has also brought out an ugly strain of false feminism. Card-carrying progressives from Capitol Hill to Hollywood have leaped to denounce Backpage just as they’ve leaped before to denounce the prospect of legalizing prostitution. But it seems these avatars of female empowerment have failed to do the one thing that would actually empower the women they claim to defend: pay attention to what those women think.

Without a doubt, Backpage is a bad actor. Last year, a Senate subcommittee investigation discovered that the classified ads website had been editing language to disguise listings for underage girls instead of deleting them, and an exposé by The Post revealed moderators actively solicited and even created similar ads. All this led to a bill currently awaiting President Trump’s signature: the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOSTA, which holds websites liable when their users advertise sex.

[Blue_Adept]

1. How Backpage Saved My Life

This is an essay that Sarah Fenix wrote on twitter and pulled together to tell her story, which WP links to.

https://medium.com/@sarahfenix/how-backpage-saved-my-life-445061bf147c

[zipplewrath]

2. Um, that's enabling

I mean, I get what she's trying to say, but basically all they describe was enabling a whole bunch of behavior, none of which can be described as "empowering" or any other positive way. It's basically just the "make heroin legal" concept, except without the opportunity to intervene. It would be vastly more interesting if Backpage was somehow offering a path out of her situation, as oppose to just making it less threatening.