- The world's oldest profession
still isn't considered a job.
Why is that?
If you don't know what I'm talking about,
I'm talking about sex work.
- [Man] The oldest profession in the world, prostitution.
- And even though they say that,
a lot of society tends to portray sex workers
not as professionals, but people who need rescuing.
- I've never had anyone make me feel
as cheap as you did today.
- Somehow I find that very hard to believe.
- But hold up, sex workers are workers too.
Some studies estimate sex work revenues
to be around $15 billion.
And for many people it's how they pay their bills.
Which makes you wonder, is it time
to legislate sex work as real work?
Since sex work is a wide spectrum,
I checked in first with Lana Rain,
a camgirl and porn star who works exclusively online.
So do you do... what shoots do you do here?
Like the porn shoots?
- [Lana] I do that, and I also do like, cosplay shoots.
- And do you have, like, a director or you just--
- Um, no. - Do it all yourself?
- I mean, like, I write the script myself.
- [Yoonj] Lana has fans whom she interacts with
through streaming sites.
Do you feel like you're ever exploited
by any of the other sites that you use,
any of the other tech sites?
- No, no I don't feel like that.
- In the past you've had stuff pirated, you said.
People have stolen your content before.
- I mean, I feel like in any industry
with content creation there's always gonna be piracy.
- What would you say the biggest issues you face are, then?
- Uh.
Let me think about this.
- She couldn't think of anything.
So I asked her about FOSTA-SESTA,
a package of controversial bills that passed last year
meant to fight online sex trafficking,
but actually curtailed sex workers' freedom
to do business online.
How did FOSTA-SESTA affect you?
- I don't think it really impacts like, camgirls
and independent sex workers.
- Didn't you have that raffle you used to do?
Where people could meet you in person?
And then after FOSTA-SESTA ManyVids
wouldn't let you do it anymore?
- I had to take it down even though
it was just like meeting up with a person,
and hanging out with them.
For whatever reason, I'm not allowed to
meet up with people under any circumstance.
- And does that cut into your earnings?
- Uh, I like, I find my ways around it.
I actually do a thing every year
where my most important regulars
will come to Comic-Con, which I think is in October.
And they all hangout at my house.
- What? - Yeah.
- You have them hangout in your house?
- Yeah, for like two or three days.
I would never meet these people alone.
- Right.
Do you ever have sex with other people in it?
- [Lana] No, no I don't.
- It's just you?
- [Lana] It's just me.
- Like using sex toys and doing whatever?
- Yeah.
I'm not against that, but that's what I'm comfortable with.
I kinda just wanna be known as like
an independent sex worker.
That's what makes me happy.
- Lana was an example of a sex worker
who's in pretty much the most ideal situation, you know.
She's her own boss, she works from home,
she doesn't really have any issues.
And none of the laws really affect her bottom line,
like FOSTA-SESTA, or criminalization,
because what she is doing is technically legal.
So now, I'm gonna go check in with sex workers
on other ends of the spectrum who might be
more affected by the laws that they have to work under.
Gilda is a full-service sex worker
and undocumented immigrant, currently protected under DACA.
We're looking at Gilda's website and this his how
she gets most of her clients, right?
Or all of your clients. - Yeah.
- Through online?
- Yeah, I send them to the page
to look at my patronage, my pricing.
- What's patronage?
Oh, your pricing.
- Yes. - Stats.
Standard introduction, two hours $2,000.
- Yes.
- [Yoonj] What's a prompt encounter?
- It's just a one hour.
We always come up with like,
fancy names for each of the things.
- Oh, I see.
- And then there's the full day, and overnights.
- Oh.
- So like two meals and activities.
- Dude.
- One of them wanted to take me on a haunted house tour,
which we're planning to do in October.
- And you get paid to go on that?
- Yeah.
- I'm kind of new to this pricing though.
And I'm new to being in this tier, but yeah,
it takes work to climb up and...
- To get to that tier.
But you built it.
- Yeah. - Yourself.
Over the last like, however many years.
- Yeah. - Two years.
- I think two years I've been working to get to this point.
- And what about your immigration status?
- Well I've accepted since I was a teen
that I'm probably never gonna become a citizen.
- And how old were you when you crossed?
- I was five.
- Wow.
Oh my god. - Yeah.
- So you've been undocumented this whole time.
Is that part of why you do sex work in the first place,
because you're undocumented, or some other reason?
- It was a factor, I think when Trump was elected,
it was 2016 or something,
I just decided to be full out about it.
I was like, "Wow, nothing matters."
So like, you have to stop playing respectability politics
because it doesn't really work.
- So you used to do sex work in a legalized setting?
- Yeah. - In Nevada.
'Cause that's the only place in America where it's legal.
- Mm-hmm.
- But you didn't like it?
- No, Nevada's a really bad place to do sex work.
They take 50% of all your profits.
Yeah, it's not fun.
There's only about like, I think 400 or less
sex workers employed at any given time at the brothels.
And they're all owned by white people.
And if you look at the people that are employed
at these brothels they tend to be cis white women.
And there's gay men in this industry,
there's trans women in this industry.
But you don't see them at the brothels so,
you don't have a lot of agency.
- And now you're a full-time escort?
And full-service sex worker?
- Yeah.
- [Yoonj] She used to get
most of her customers through Backpage,
a classified site that was shut down
by FOSTA-SESTA for trafficking.
Which forced consenting sex workers
to find new ways to work.
- I used to have a bunch of bitcoin on there.
And there was a wallet for Backpage.
And then when Backpage went down all that money disappeared
and no one really talked about it.
- How much money did you lose?
- It was at least $100.
- Okay.
So like after FOSTA-SESTA happened
you kinda like had to build up your own presence
through your own personal accounts.
- But many weren't that lucky.
And the sex workers I talk to, like they kind of just...
- What did they have to do as a result?
- They fell back on their former customers,
their regulars, maybe they'll get phone calls
from their former manager, pimp or whatever.
Like, "Hey you know, FOSTA-SESTA passed
"if you need any work let me know."
- And why is that bad?
- 'Cause it just gives you less options.
And then you have less choices.
And less choices kind of make it more dangerous, you know.
- Right.
Then what would your ideal solution be?
- There's a lot of different solutions
that need to be implemented.
Public housing, public education, public health care
would help a lot of sex workers.
As well as the decriminalization of immigration
for marginalized people, like from Honduras.
And the decriminalization of sex work and drugs.
- And decriminalization might actually be a possibility.
This summer, two state senators in New York
introduced a bill to decriminalize sex work.
What is the Cliff Notes version of it?
- For people to exchange sex, even between
consenting adults, there are severe criminal penalties.
And what we want to do is make sure that
those very harmful criminal consequences
are totally eliminated from the law in New York State
so that we can finally help sex workers live their lives
and not have to live in fear anymore.
- Right.
And to be clear, this isn't
full legalization of prostitution?
It's decriminalization.
- That's correct.
We want to hold traffickers, aka pimps,
accountable for what they're doing,
for exploiting and oppressing, you know, the sex workers.
But what we want is to empower the sex workers
to be able to report violence against themselves.
- Any idea of the numbers,
even though it's an underground economy?
Like how many people it would affect,
or the dollar amount?
- We don't really have an accurate count.
And that's part of the problem.
- We do know that thousands of people every year,
in New York, are arrested for prostitution related
offenses and so at the very least
we know that many people every year
would be positively impacted by decriminalization.
- Right.
So it's also a criminal justice issue, it sounds like.
'Cause a lot of people of color,
trans people of color, get arrested for it.
- Absolutely.
- What's the biggest opposition you might have to this bill,
or facing right now?
- Where to begin. - Besides everybody else.
(laughing)
- Exactly, exactly.
It's not an easy feat to have taken this up.
The biggest challenge is miseducation, right.
I think it's miseducation, it's sexism,
and misogyny, right, and... - Transphobia.
- Absolutely it's transphobia, gender-based discrimination.
- Are both of you friends with actual sex-workers now?
- Yes. - Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the people who are closest to the issue
are closest to the solution.
And so a lot of the advocacy is being led by people
who are currently or previously in the sex industry.
And it's been a great opportunity
to get to know those people.
- And this is the result of a grassroots campaign.
Exactly, and we're leading policy,
we're leading legislation by the people who need it.
- Which led me right back to the grassroots beginning
with RJ Thompson, director of
the Sex Workers Project in New York.
RJ, you are a sex worker and a lawyer.
- Yes.
- How did that happen?
- Well I started doing sex work in terms of
go-go dancing and stripping in undergrad, in college.
Over the years I went to law school.
And unlike corporate lawyers, public interest lawyers
don't make six-figure salaries, so,
I decided to get into the porn industry.
Was in the gay porn industry for many years.
And then that moved to full-service work, as we call it.
So that helped me get out of debt.
- And then now, are you a practicing lawyer as well?
- Yeah, so I'm--
- You work with a lot of sex workers?
- Yeah, I'm the managing director of
the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center.
That is an NGO here in New York City.
We do direct legal services for sex workers
and survivors of trafficking.
Trying to change the laws to decriminalize sex work.
- So how would the decrim bill work into all of this?
- When sex work comes out of the shadows
and is destigmatized, and not criminalized,
it actually lessens people's vulnerability
to being trafficked.
Have you ever heard someone say, "Let's abolish farm work
"because there's human trafficking in farm labor?"
No.
Do people say, "Let's get rid of restaurants
"because there's trafficking in kitchens?"
No.
- It's the stigma.
- It's only the stigma around sex work
that they claim we should abolish it
to get rid of trafficking.
- And have you experienced it yourself?
'Cause you're obviously less mindful,
or like, you don't care about the stigma as much.
- I'm Native American, but I have
white passing privilege, I have male privilege,
I am less susceptible to arrest, sadly.
I'm less susceptible to being trafficked.
I'm a big guy, also, which helps protect myself.
All these things I wanna use my privilege to speak out
when other people can't because I also want
people to know that sex workers are
people with advanced degrees, who are people of all faiths,
all religions, all genders.
- So if you look at what's really going on
in the sex work industry, it's clear
that it's not about sex, it's actually
a criminal justice issue, it's a labor issue,
it's a human rights issue.
And if we continue to criminalize it,
at the end of the day we have to ask ourselves,
who is really (bleeping) who?