Nickki Bell, Sex workers are not "very damaged human beings"!
It’s hard for me to not hate SWERFs especially when they come out all over media during prostitution stings or when we’re being systemically kicked out of our bank accounts, payment processors, homes, places of work to celebrate how great it is for the imaginary slaves they think they’re saving. They make the whole situation about their own hateful opinions about the industry and everyone in it. Sex workers in their narrative are reduced to helpless sex toys, objects of passive victimhood. They are of the mindset that the best way to help women is by ignoring them, and listening to the “good ones”. For instance this article":
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/02/25/amid-kraft-charges-former-prostitute-who-helps-others-sees-distinction-without-difference/lVhd7x2rIxiEA9A9b5HPOK/story.html
Nikki Bell founded LIFT which mostly just “trains” and “advocates” to criminalize sex work through the Nordic Model. Their “support services” for victims is referrals (so nothing new basically). Her organization got $5,990,066 in 2017 and they make around that much annually. The salaries of the people working there from the directors, and vice presidents are nice 6 figure salaries. This system of relying on preexisting services that may exist nearby, and public benefits while ALL THEY LOBBY FOR IS CRIMINALIZATION IS DISASTROUS. If they criminalize housing, working with, and buying services from sex workers, many of them will end in even worse economic and social conditions than ever before. These “anti-trafficking” organizations that get millions of dollars annually will have NOTHING to offer them.
Nikki Bell teaches at “John schools” where she teaches men that they should view sex workers as passive objects - damsels in distress. She yelled at the men that she was “pushed into prostitution as a teen, forced to stay in it for a decade to feed a drug addiction”. I really wish SWERFs would apply their hatred to the entire system, and understand that all workers are pushed into wage slavery under capitalism. That is the system that they are describing, but instead they blame the sex industry. The sex industry is not the coercive system under which people are forced to labor under the threat of homelessness, hunger, and risk of death. This system of poverty, criminalization, and wage slavery is an inherently violent system. Nikki doesn’t explain why she was pushed to work as teen (runaway, abusive home perhaps?). but we know she became addicted to drugs. Many people are further coerced to work because of the system under which which we live (capitalism), and drug addiction. Our government does not give universal access to healthcare so treatment options are not easily available for most people. In the video linked below sex workers share their stories and why the Nordic Model will endanger them. There is one story similar to Nickki of a drug using teen sex worker.
It was really hard for me to read the entire piece because Nikki made this entire situation about her moralistic views about it, so I wanted to link an article that did a great job covering what was wrong with the way the mainstream media covered the Orchids of Asia Day Spa anti-vice sting operation.
Though state attorney Dave Aronberg and Martin County Sheriff William Snyder are still hammering the narrative of “human trafficking,” only one human trafficking charge has been brought: against a woman also accused of engaging in prostitution herself. According to a Thursday press release from the Vero Beach Police Department, after six months of investigation there are only two “confirmed” victims. Snyder told the Times, “I don’t believe [the women] were told they were going to work in massage parlors,” a disconcertingly equivocal statement from someone who’s been working on the case for months. Snyder also said that only one woman was still in contact with the police and that the others refused to talk—yet he maintained the effort had been “a rescue operation.” Judging by the charges, it’s a fairly routine prostitution bust.
Bell completely eliminates sex worker’s ability to speak for themselves on what is abusive and what isn’t. Sex worker’s rights are a labor issue but because the word “sex” is in it they completely eliminate our agency. They begin to sound like a walking strawman feminist arguing that all sex is rape and there’s no distinction needed between sex and rape.
“For me,” she said Monday, “the really frustrating piece of the Robert Kraft situation is that people are saying, ‘Well, if these women were being trafficked, it’s not OK, but if they aren’t being trafficked, that’s a different story.’ Look, just the act of buying someone for sex is wrong. We say, ‘End prostitution because trafficking is so terrible.’ How about we end the demand for prostitution because it’s gender-based violence?”
You could argue that since marriage is a patriarchal system where women were property many of those traditions continued, and our capitalistic market still exists to coerce decisions from people, than all sex in marriage is slavery or rape. A wealth, power, and income inequality exists between the sexes in our society, and marriages (just like all our lives) cannot separate themselves from our economic system. It SHOULD matter to people the conditions under which sex workers work in. A sex worker being raped by a client, or being held against their will by a mugger, or having their money stolen SHOULD MATTER. Painting everything as just “wrong” is condescending and unhelpful. Men should be taught to RESPECT ALL WOMEN. Viewing all women as helpless victims does not teach men to respect women. It teaches men that women cannot enjoy sex outside of marriage or “love”, and that women working in the sex industry (or women that can be branded as “whores”) deserve zero respect, money, or recognizance. Many of the men I know who escort, and work in porn never get this kind of treatment.
To treat women who worked at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where Kraft was allegedly a customer, as somehow a special case in the world of paid sex is to lean on a distinction without a difference, she says. Almost all prostitutes don’t want to be doing it, whether they are trafficked or find themselves exploited because of an addiction or other vulnerabilities such as homelessness and poverty. She said the vast majority were sexually assaulted as children and meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Stories like this take the focus away from the women in the sex industry and makes their opinions on what’s happening to them irreverent. While all the news outlets were reporting on this case, all the sex workers I followed found the women’s photos being posted online, and found out they were in jail and facing prostitution charges as well as possible deportation. Bell’s opinions completely take the attention away from this, and instead make horrible tired arguments for her moralistic worldview. Most people in ALL INDUSTRIES don’t want to be doing their jobs. Many people are working their jobs to fed a drug addiction, to not be homeless, or try to stay afloat from poverty. This is not an exclusive sex work thing. Imagine if you told people in other industries that the solution to their problems is to eliminate their entire place of employment, or to make it illegal for their employer to hire them (end demand). This would do NOTHING to address the health, social, and economic problems people face. The argument that the vast majority of sex workers were sexually assaulted as children is the most disgusting argument of all. Basically she’s trying to say that since we were all sexually abused as children we don’t know how to make good decisions, we don’t understand what consent is, we have low self esteem, and we don’t understand the difference between sex and rape. We can’t really consent to sex work because we were sexually abused as children. This is a huge misogynist talking point. No one thinks to do research into how many women who are nurses, teachers, in politics, retail, the military were sexually abused as children. I’m willing to bet that no matter the industry, you’ll get high numbers. There’s probably many industries where the vast majority of women have experienced sexual abuse as children. But why does that matter? Why would that say anything about where she’s working? Would you make wild conclusions if a woman who was molested as a child is now working in a majority male dominated workplace? Would you think women wedding planners were unfit to do their jobs if you found out many of them were molested as children? Nikki is using the trauma that many people have to argue that sex workers should never be hired, and the industry should be abolished by the police and state.
“The idea that women who do this make a choice is nonsense, the ‘Pretty Woman’ fantasy,” Bell said. “It’s only a choice if you have choices.” The real choice, she says, lies not with the seller, but with the buyer. “My trafficker wouldn’t have been selling me if there wasn’t a buyer.”
At first she says she was working to support herself and fed her drug addiction, now she’s saying she had a trafficker and was being sold like a slave. This whole argument and story doesn’t make sense. There will always be a demand for sexual services, and the sex industry. Someone kidnapping you, forcing another person to labor, holding them against their will isn’t going to stopped by eliminating “buyers”. A trafficker can make a profit from all kinds of labor, or they could even just have people rape a victim for free. She wants all “buyers” to be put in prison, regardless of whether or not they raped anyone, or hurt anyone. The less customers there are, the less options sex workers have to pick and choose clients. There’s also a big difference between someone buying porn, phone sex, and other sexual services, and say a serial killers who kills sex workers. In a big way, Nikki is teaching men to not respect sex workers, their voice, or labor until they leave the industry. She’s also promoting the use of police force to crackdown on all sex work, focusing on petty crime, vice policing, and advancing mass incarceration.
“You might think you weren’t paying for a trafficking victim,” she recalled telling them. “Why does that matter? Money doesn’t equal consent. It is unwanted sex. You’re putting your wants above a very damaged human being. I hope at least that I have ruined your ‘Pretty Woman’ fantasy, and for those who don’t care, just know that every woman who gets in your car is disgusted by you.”
Many sex workers I know have great relationships with our fans, partners in the sex industry, or clients. My fans who pay my bills know my hobbies, my past, my dreams, my political views, and what makes me laugh. Nikki Bell has zero respect for women in the sex industry. The sad reality is that many of the men she’s yelling at probably have more respect and are doing more for the women “she’s saving”. I don’t know what else to say about this part of her rant, because she’s projecting her experience onto others. If she felt she was “a very damaged human being”, that is for her to say about herself, but it shouldn’t be used for all sex workers. The characterization is judgmental. You wouldn’t say a victim of sexual abuse or rape was “a very damaged human being”. Saying something like this implies that the person consented to it, or made a choice to do something. It implies that this person’s voice, and agency can’t be trusted at face value because they are “damaged”. The idea that women are lying, that we are all the same, that we can’t be trusted to make our own decisions, or that we are defective human beings if we are whores, are all misogynistic ideas. Sex workers come from all walks of life, with various experiences, and feelings. We should be able to state what consent means to us, what our relationships mean to us, and we aren’t “damaged goods”.
The criminal justice system is typically disposed to treat prostitutes as criminals and their customers as misguided consumers. Massachusetts spends about $1 million a year to lock women up for prostitution, but the men are usually sent to a four-hour session like the one Nikki Bell spoke at.
Women go to jail; men go to class.
Nikki Bell is wrong, under the Nordic model sex workers are still criminalized. In fact, the police in this sting operation were following the new guidelines of treating sex workers as victims and trained by “anti-trafficking” organizations to apply the Nordic model. Even if they make it illegal for escorts to go to prison for prostitution, many sex workers are incarcerated for other charges. This also wouldn’t stop deportations, or end the stigma and discrimination sex workers face. It’s illegal, for example for some legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants to work in the US, it’s illegal to buy labor and services from them. This doesn’t eliminate the demand and it still criminalizes the workers. You could even say that under such a model, the demand increases (from a more underground and worse employer options) because they have less protection under the law, they are more exploitable, and they are forced to accept lower wages, and more dangerous work.
But she has no patience for people who make excuses for men who pay for sex while they have no, little, or only conditional regard for those on the other end of the transaction.
Ironic isn’t it? That most human trafficking and child labor happens outside the sex industry. How interesting that these advocates never mention where the coffee, cloths, shoes, meals they buy could be from someone being exploited, from the hands of child, or someone in prison. These advocates will be responsible for sending people to prison for buying sexual services, all of them be abused, and exploited, and many will be forced to work for little to nothing.
“When I speak, I’m often introduced as somebody’s wife and mother and sister,” she said. “How about if I’m just somebody? That should be enough.”
Femme Sex workers are wives, mothers, and sisters. They are human beings. They are not “very damaged” and their voices matter. I wish she didn’t take a police sting that others are suffering through, to speak about her own issues and prejudice. This entire article is completely self serving and I’m disappointed (but not surprised) that the journalist and Boston Globe decided to cover what they believed to be a human trafficking story like this.