Last night I watched a documentary about sex trafficking on Netflix. I braced myself for the bias views that many documentaries show of sex work, and knew I was in for a frustrating watch just by the Trick blurb:

This in-depth documentary examines all sides of America’s sex-trafficking trade, which destroys lives as it generates $3 billion a year.

Reading that, I at least thought that all sides, as they stated, would be represented. Instead I sat in on an hour and 13 minutes of assaults, rapes, kidnappings and torture. That is sex-trafficking. What was frustrating was the lumping of all sex work as sex-trafficking. I expected an in-depth documentary stating it will “examine all sides of America’s sex-trafficking trade” would cover all sides of the $3 billion sex-trafficking trade, yet it did nothing more than show me what sadly happens across the world. This is why I am strong in my belief that stating all prostitution is sex-trafficking undermines real sex-trafficking. Personally, men making money off women as pimps has never been okay, but for Tricked to say all sex workers are sex slaves is erroneous.

Sex work is not sex-trafficking. Sex-trafficking is sex-trafficking!

Per Obama, shown at a press conference at the end of the documentary, sex-trafficking is human trafficking, and therefore modern slavery.

Lets be real. All sex work is not modern day slavery.

Beware:  This is where I will personalize this documentary.

To moralize sex work and state it is modern day slavery and sex trafficking is complete laziness on behalf of our lawmakers. Something must change.

“Criminalizing the sex industry creates ideal conditions for rampant exploitation and abuse of sex workers…[I]t is believed that trafficking in women, coercion and exploitation can only be stopped if the existence of prostitution is recognized and the legal and social rights of prostitutes are guaranteed.”

Marjan Wijers
Chair of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Trafficking in Human Beings
in her article in the book Global Sex Workers
1998

I have experienced modern day slavery. Anyone who has spent any “quality” time incarcerated has experience with it. The closest I have ever got to human slavery and having a real pimp was when I was in jail (human slavery), and in the halfway house (my pimp). In jail I worked for $1 an hour. I had one of the highest paying jobs, on average the pay is 35-65 cents an hour. At the halfway house I gave all my money to them, my checks, my tips, and I had to jump through hoops to request up to $100 a week (never allowed more than $100 on you, otherwise they would take it, you would get a write-up, and would not see the money again. That was the policy). I was forced to work when sick. I had consequences for not working a minimum of 32 hours a week. Do you see the pimp correlations?

Human trafficking is defined in the U.N. Trafficking Protocol as “the recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by such means as threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of adbuction, or fraud or deception for the purpose of exploitation.”

The definition on trafficking consists of three core elements:

1) The action of trafficking which means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons

2) The means of trafficking which includes threat of or use of force, deception, coercion, abuse of power or position of vulnerability

3) The purpose of trafficking which is always exploitation. In the words of the Trafficking Protocol, article 3 “exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

My crime, Sex Trafficking, is because I was a sex-worker, and I have the ability to advertise, market, create websites, screen clients, book appointments, and schedule appointments. I worked with women of age, and they had their own keys to the incall location. I booked for a few women I never even met in person, after the necessary age identification and independent contractor agreements were signed. After watching Tricked I wonder why the State of Alaska found it so necessary to focus on me and what my sentencing judge called a “slick call girl operation” rather than real sex traffickers.

Alaska changed their prostitution laws in 2012. Alaska’s definition of “sex trafficking” is broad and vague. Federal sex trafficking laws focus on fraud, coercion, and the exploitation of minors. Alaska’s law, on the other hand, defines trafficking more broadly, to include those who work indoors, or who work together. Read a clear overview in its entirety here.

As I stated before, I have a Sex Trafficking charge, a class B felony. I was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to 5.5 years. I am still incarcerated as I write this. I just made it to electronic monitoring, so now rather than the tax payers paying $140 and up a day to incarcerate me, I get to subsidize my incarceration, paying $400 a month to Department of Corrections rather than only the tax payers footing the entire bill.

This is Alaska’s sex-trafficking law in action.