If Kat Salas could, she would snap her fingers and decriminalize full-service sex work in Oregon tomorrow. But, she feels conversations and more education need to happen before decriminalization is not just a dream but actually reality.
A bill written to do just that; decriminalize outlawed forms of sex work, failed to pass during the last state legislative session in June, but advocates say the push to pass it must continue.
House Bill 3088, while a partisan bill introduced by democrats, is one many different groups — from public health officials to sex workers, to union organizers, to doctors and some politicians — believe in.
Before Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland), the primary sponsor of the bill, scrolled through his email inbox and read the request, he didn’t know much about sex work.
“I don’t have a personal journey in this space,” Nosse said. “I’m not a former sex worker, I didn’t even know anyone as a sex worker.”
But he felt the email about what would become House Bill 3088 sounded interesting and important, so he decided to learn a little bit more about the issue. Nosse is now fully behind the push and plans to re-introduce the bill in the 2023 session.
“There’s a union person in me,” Nosse said. “I fundamentally believe that all kinds of workers deserve rights and protection.”
Currently, sex workers have very few of the protections or rights afforded to other workers — changing that is a core goal for decriminalization. As a result, many sex workers experience a sense of limited safety.
As the fight to decriminalize sex work continues, so too does the need for people to make a living and pay their bills.
For the first time in almost two years, Dylan put on her heels, and went back to the club recently, this time a different one than the one she’d been working at in Portland years prior. Dylan, who is also a practicing doula, providing guidance and support to people throughout pregnancy and childbirth and is preparing to begin nursing school, has been in and out of the industry for a little over 10 years. She identifies as a sex worker and has engaged in full-service sex work.
Dylan said the dividing lines in the spectrum of sex work, which is anything from dancing at strip clubs to full-service sex work, are lines blurry, which she believes makes it even more difficult to identify within the parameters of the law and even easier for law enforcement to target sex workers.
“I could be jailed, cited and all of a sudden (law enforcement) makes your life really impossible,” Dylan said.
For Dylan, decriminalizing sex work means she can more easily live her life and do it with a feeling of safety and a knowing she, like other sex workers, are part of society.
Dylan, a queer woman, said she loves being a sex worker and the fulfillment her job brings her.
“For any self-made individual, which I am, it’s a whole different ball game,” Dylan said. “I am my own promoter, I am my own hype person, I am behind everything.”
She also says there is a lot to lose.
“There is no security, no insurance, no guarantee that if you fall and break yourself, you’ll get help,” Dylan said. “It is an uphill battle within the system of capitalism, and I am not set up to succeed.”
Dylan also says once you layer in the taboo of sex work, it has implications for her life.
“My point of view is sex workers are just trying to make money and live their lives,” Dylan said. “There are already enough hurdles for us. There aren’t agencies we can go through, there are so many layers to this and really, people are just trying to live their lives and have their relationships.”
Like Dylan, Anna feels the biggest issue facing her industry right now is safety and the lack thereof.
“One of the biggest things is safety,” Anna, who identifies as a sex worker in the Portland area, said. “Not having someone there for protection, being able to call the police if someone attacks them, not being able to take proper precautions, so many levels of it not being safe.”
Anna loves the flexibility the industry gives her. She wakes up late most days, takes her dogs for a walk and makes herself some self some food to eat that night at work.
She says like herself, a lot of people use it to add income to their schedule because they can’t get a second job, or to continue to make much more income than one would make in a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job, or what Anna calls a “muggle job,” referencing Harry Potter.
“Money is another thing, not feeling like you can charge as much,” Anna said. “At this time, you should be charging plus occupational hazard, since it is illegal … (and) because it’s illegal to be a full-contact sex worker, our trade puts blame on sex workers ... It’s not fair. This sets sex workers up to being attacked, or being in a position of being arrested.”
Like Anna and Dylan, Salas also brings up safety and the lack thereof as a huge issue experienced by most in the industry.
“Trickle-down liberation doesn’t work,” Salas said. “In order to achieve a place where there is safety for all folks, we have to start with full decriminalization of prostitution.”
Advocates were careful to dispel myths conflating sex work with sex trafficking, saying criminalization actually leads to the inability to address harm and coercion in sex trades, including human trafficking. Decriminalization, on the other hand, will help further delineate between consensual sex work and sex trafficking,
Decriminalization means people who are engaging in sex work consensually are not arrestable. Legalization, on the other hand, would create restrictions for who can do the work, when the work can be done, how the work can be done, which will add even more barriers to who can participate in sex work.
“One end is sex trafficking and the other end is autonomy,” Salas, an enrolled member of the Chiricahua Apache Nation, said. “When we talk about decriminalization, we are specifically talking about prostitution.”
Salas is an expert on the subject, testifying in Salem on numerous occasions and working as a consultant for doctors and public health professionals about how to compassionately, and in a trauma-informed way, provide care to sex workers and survivors of sex trafficking.
“I was in the adult sex industry, specifically in sex trades, for seven years, since I was 18,” Salas said. “I worked as a consensual sex worker and am also a survivor of sex trafficking.”
Salas also works at a nonprofit providing mentorship and advocacy by survivors for youth survivors of sex trafficking, and is a co-founder of a mutual aid program called PDX Sex Worker Resource Project, which has raised nearly $100,000 in 2021.
In most of Salas’ lectures, which she’s delivered at many academic institutions in and around the Portland area, Salas explains how she benefits from colorism. As a light-skinned sex worker, her experience in the sex trades is different from others. In all of the work Salas does, she works on creating space for sex workers from all different backgrounds so one dominant narrative is not the only one individuals focus on, especially now, as society becomes more comfortable talking about sex work.
For instance, Salas explains dominant culture has normalized specific and socially acceptable forms of sex work, which has decentered the narrative from full-service sex workers who built the decriminalization movement, specifically Black trans women.
“We owe them for every right that we have as sex workers,” Salas said.
Salas says society needs to be careful as it moves toward decriminalization. She feels even if more people begin to learn about sex work, it can be dangerous if only one type of narrative is pushed (white, thin dancers mostly working downtown).
“If we are to fully decriminalize sex work, we need to have an open abolitionist framework when it comes to our leadership,” Salas said. “We also need to have a consensus on some type of spectrum or picture of what sex work looks like because right now, that doesn’t exist.”
Sex workers and organizers are pushing for decriminalization which means people who are engaging in sex work consensually are not arrestable. Legalization, on the other hand, would create restrictions for who can do the work, when the work can be done, how the work can be done, which will add even more barriers to who can participate in sex work.
Dylan likes to dream and think about what decriminalization would do for her and her community. She still can’t fully conceptualize what could look like, but she feels it would mean having safe spaces within to operate as a full-service sex worker.
“There would be people keeping books, running numbers, there would be security, a walk to the car. It would look like health care, screening checks, security guards, tax breaks, people doing your taxes, punch-ins, 401ks, safety,” Dylan said.