On the Streets of D.C.

It was roughly 1:30 am when I made it to the intersection of 12th and N St. NW. The low buzz vibrated from the street lamps throwing off an orange hue, bringing the texture of macadam from the street to life. It was a balmy night with just a hint of a chill, unusual for mid-November in Washington, D.C. 

I noticed her walk first. She took slow measured steps with her knees turned slightly inward, balancing on sky-high wedge black booties with her head tilted downward. I approached her quietly, not wanting to impede on her moment of silence as she worked her way down the street, leaning on each parked car she passed. When I asked to talk to her as a journalist, she smiled warily and her chocolate molten eyes slid over my face before turning to the road to give a familiar come-hither wave to the men in the cars passing by.  

She chuckled, her long straw blond hair to pooling around her shoulders, and responded that she had nothing to say to me. This statuesque black woman with well-applied makeup, a knowing smile, and a slightly crooked front bottom tooth was not the least bit uncomfortable, but rather undeterred from her mission at hand as a seasoned sex worker. Continuing on down the street and eyes scanning for headlights, she had turned her back toward me indicating the conversation was over. 

Before she made it more than a few steps away, I tried to salvage the opportunity by mentioning that the questions I had for her were about the decriminalization of sex work, or rather, that she would no longer be prosecuted for the crime of prostitution, pandering or solicitation if it were to pass. After my words escaped my lips, her entire frame animated with new energy. 

Her spine straightened and she turned to face me fully, her calf muscles flexing to accommodate the change in movement. Beneath a set of fake lashes, her eyes hardened with purpose as she started to give voice to the frustration of having the police “be hot” in the area. She emphatically stated she needed to be home when she was done working for the night around 7:30 am to be with her three children who relied on her. She told me she just wanted to be a good mom to her ten, eight, and almost two-year-old who don’t know how she makes her income. Being arrested could put that in peril. She would have to rely on her pimp not only to bail her out but also to cover her absence at home while she would have to deal with the demeaning experience of being treated like a criminal. 

A few weeks later as the chill of winter descended upon D.C. with an untouched mug somewhere nearby and the aroma of earl gray tea swirling around me, I sat in front of my computer watching a recording from two years prior. Under the greenish glow of fluorescent lights, the microphone crackled to life as Charles Allen, Chairperson of the Committee on the Judiciary of Public Safety, adjusted its position in a seemingly morning ritual, and started the DC City council hearing. In room 412 of the historic John A. Wilson Building in Washington, D.C., Allen sat engulfed by government-issued grey furniture, facing an unusually crowded room of more than 170 people awaiting their turn to testify. While a 10:00 am meeting on October 17th, 2019 may not have been an auspicious moment in the collective consciousness of D.C. passersby, it marked a historic moment when the District was faced with deciding if decriminalizing sex work would come to a vote. 

Allen pleaded with the murmuring crowd to create a safe space as the hearing proceeded, something he would need to repeat for the entirety of the 14-hour long process, even threatening to stop the hearing if the crowd refused to cooperate. Under consideration in Bill 23-0318 or rather, the “Community Safety and Health Amendment”, is to amend the act that aims to suppress prostitution, amend the act in relation to pandering, and to remove certain criminal penalties for engaging in sex work. 

At home in my own virtual space I watched as tensions remained high as opponents and proponents of the bill came forward to defend their position. On one end of the spectrum is the belief that decriminalizing sex work will lead to higher demand as the criminal deterrence would be removed, leaving a certain portion of the population now willing to seek out sex workers; in theory, this new population of clients would fuel an increase in human trafficking to meet this new demand. 

 “Without doubt, it is women like me that suffer in prostitution, sold to men against my will during 9 years, these men, clients, raped me, strangled me, hit me, bit me, until I was finally able to escape and receive protection from the authorities.” recounted Janet Rodriquez, a human trafficking survivor from Mexico who was also coerced into sex acts in Washington, D.C., by her pimp. “I am here to tell you that to separate prostitution from human trafficking is impossible, prostitution is nothing that can be safe, my painful experience tells me that.” 

Rodriquez is not alone in her concern for what decriminalization could mean for women. Certain women’s organizations, such as National Organization for Women (NOW), made statements of concern for the female victims of sex work, while also expressing apprehension that D.C. would become a hub for sex tourism. 

“Important steps are being taken in the U.S. and other countries that aim to protect prostituted persons and to reduce demand by penalizing buyers, pimps, traffickers, brothel owners, landlords, property owners, and others who profit from the sexual exploitation of women” stated Toni Van Pelt, the former executive director of NOW. “The proposed legislation poses an extreme threat to women and girls, especially women and girls of D.C.’s poverty impacted communities”.  

Van Pelt is among a group that is loosely categorized as anti-prostitution or abolitionist feminists who believe that all prostitution inherently victimizes women as a microcosm expression of male dominance over women in a patriarchal society. It is evident in her language of “prostituted persons”, rather than the preferred label “sex worker” by certain individuals in the industry, the lack of autonomous decision-making power ascribed to those who engage in the industry. 

 Other opponents of the bill were against not the selling of sex, but rather, the buying of it. The “Nordic Model” first implemented in Sweden in the late 1990s, poses that criminalizing only the clients will “end demand” and in theory, if demand decreases or is eliminated, then prostitution as a trade will end as well.  

In a community report by Fuckförbundet, a Swedish grassroots organization with The Global Network of Sex Work Project, the “end demand” approach further stigmatizes and endangers sex workers, allegedly contradicting the feminist humanitarian principles on which the legislation was based. The authors of the report are sex workers who are currently, or have worked, in the Swedish sex industry and claim that working conditions have worsened considerably since 1999. By creating a system founded on the premise that every sex worker will leave the trade and “end demand”, the legislation assumes that prostitution can ultimately be eradicated and ignores the fiscal pressures that often lead many to choose sex work in the first place. According to this report, the system strips sex workers of their voices when it comes to the reality of working conditions as many women still choose to stay in the industry given their preexisting economic precarity. With the buying of sex criminalized, the cultural mentality further stigmatizes many sex workers who still need to be in the industry meanwhile there are fewer clients willing to risk criminal penalty and seek out sex workers. This gives the few clients who remain higher bargaining power to negotiate lower rates since many sex workers are desperate to get work even at a reduced price. 

When asked about the “Nordic Model” by Chairperson Allen, Cyndee Clay, executive director of HIPS, a nonprofit in D.C. that works directly with sex workers and sex trafficking survivors, responded: 

“Clients are going to be less likely to be open with sellers about their personal information, about background checks, about that kind of information because they are still afraid of being arrested... It pushed this still underground, in an economy where we know the current status quo isn’t working.”

Clay, whose organization supports the proposed D.C. legislation and full decriminalization, argues that any form of interaction between law enforcement and sex workers is problematic given the history of harassment, abuse, or violence at the hands of police officers, especially for Black, Brown and LGBTQ and gender non-conforming individuals who face higher levels of discrimination in carceral system. 

“To say that sex workers should be criminalized because of the existence of trafficking is the equivalent of saying sex should be criminalized because of the existence of rape,” stated Alexandra Bradley, outreach manager at HIPS in her testimony to the council.

Between January 1st and December 31st, 2019, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) reported 1,247 adult prostitution-related arrests. Of those arrests, 15 arrests were for sex trafficking of children and pandering, a lesser charge for those involved in human trafficking. It is noted that an individual can be arrested with more than one charge or have more than one arrest, so the number is not necessarily indicative of the number of people, but rather arrests associated with the trade. Included in the report, 90% of the arrests were identified as male, although the arrest records did not include LGBTQ or non-binary gender identities with 77% of arrests identified as Black and only 18% as white. 

D.C. sex workers are disproportionately Black and Brown and in the LGBTQ community due to discrimination, these communities face in traditional economies in legal workplaces. A 2015 report by the D.C. Office of Human Rights found that 48% of employers in the district prefer a less qualified candidate perceived to be cisgender over a more qualified person perceived to be transgender. The 2015 U.S Transgender Survey conducted by 28 organizations, ranging from human rights to public health, found that trans people who had lost a job due to anti-trans discrimination were three times more likely to engage in sex work in order to survive the economic precarity. Over 70 LGBTQ and ally organizations have endorsed the decriminalization bill in Washington, D.C.

“By criminalizing sex work, D.C. is effectively criminalizing survival and doubly punishing LGBTQ people for experiencing discrimination,” said Tyrone Hanley, senior policy counsel at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a member of Sex Workers Advocacy Coalition (SWAC). 

The World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have published policies recommending that governments move towards decriminalization in order to protect individual sex workers from violence, abuse, rape, harassment, stigmatization, and for access to healthcare, especially for HIV prevention. In 2003, New Zealand became the first country to fully decriminalize sex work in large part due to the effort of the New Zealand Prostitute Collective who was able to contribute to the legislation and create awareness around issues facing sex workers from the perspective of those within the community. A study commissioned by the New Zealand government cited safer working conditions and better relationships with law enforcement in the five years following the passage of the decriminalization bill. 

According to these organizations, the decriminalization of sex work would make workers safer since they would be able to report violence or threats of violence to police and avoid harassment at the hands of law enforcement. This would hold true especially in cases in which officers demanded sex in exchange for not arresting sex workers. 

Although terms such as the “Noric Model” and decriminalization may be relatively new, the debate about how to approach prostitution has just as long a history as the “world’s oldest profession” itself.  Until 1910 sex workers in Washington, D.C. drew little attention from law enforcement. The occasional ticket would be issued, but otherwise, brothels and parlor houses operated openly, with the distinction between the two being that of socioeconomic class. Brothels were catered to the common person whereas parlor houses were for the rich, often white, elite. Historical records document at least 109 regular houses of prostitution in Washington, D.C. during Reconstruction (1865-1877), with 31 occupying a single block in what is today the Federal Triangle three blocks from the White House. 

The early 1900s, however, also saw the rise of morality movements including the Women Christian Temperance Union, which fueled the flames for the prohibition of not just alcohol, gambling, and other social vices, but prostitution. In 1910 the U.S. Congress passed legislation effectively criminalizing prostitution nationally.

Prostitution was seen as an issue of not just of immoral character, but also one mired in a racist and xenophobic cultural perception of the existential and physical threat to the virtue of women, with the implicit meaning of white women. The Mann Act of 1910,  also known as the “White-Slave Traffic Act,” made it illegal to transport any woman or girl across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The law was famously used against boxer Jack Johnson in two of his consensual relationships with white women.

 With the start of WWI and the spread of venereal diseases among U.S. soldiers, prostitution was elevated to a national threat. Without available medical treatments, prostitutes were seen as vectors of disease and incapacitating eligible fighters. As a result of the morality movement gaining traction, condoms for troops were not part of public health policy. Additionally, arsenic remained essentially the only prevailing treatment for syphilis. The convergence of the morality movement, the public health crisis, and the war deepened the stigma surrounding sex workers and furthered the association between prostitution and the concept of dirtiness.

As long as there have been morality movements against sex work and other vices, there has also been advocacy by the sex work community, fighting for their rights and instigating some of the most well-known uprisings of the 20th century. While the 1969 Stonewall riots are mostly remembered today as the iconic beginning of the modern LGBTQ movement, the inception of the uprising was led by transgender women of color and sex workers who were fighting abuse at the hands of the police. Advocates such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were both sex workers themselves pushing against the oppression they experienced while working.

Carol Leigh, aka The Scarlot Harlot, is credited with coining the term “sex worker” in the 1970s at a Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media conference. She is quoted as saying, “This invention was motivated by my desire to reconcile my feminist goals with the reality of my life and the lives of women I knew. I wanted to create an atmosphere of tolerance within and outside the women’s movement for women working in the sex industry.”  By reframing prostitution as work and a job, Leigh believed it could foster understanding and empathy for the sex work community and what it is they do. 

Washington, D.C., and the U.S. more broadly have been subject to the battle concerning how to approach sex work from the voices of early prohibitionists to revolutionaries such as Marsha P. Johnson, and yet, only one thing remains clear: never has there been a unified consensus.

After hearing arguments in support of and against decriminalization of sex, the D.C. City Council decided in November 2019, to not move forward with the legislation. Councilmember David Grosso, who originally proposed the bill, did not run for reelection in 2020 and the issue has been tabled.  With the increased danger and financial strain caused by COVID19, many sex workers have been relegated once again to the shadows of D.C., working in increasingly perilous circumstances. 

When discussing her kids, the face of the sex worker I encountered visibly lit up as she described her two-year-old’s giggle and propensity to crawl all over the apartment. As time edged into the early morning, the trees around us bristled at the wind and the night chill.  It was after 3:00 am when we started to discuss the dangerous nature of the job. She crossed her arms, slumping her shoulders together in a protective stance. Looking into a vague spot in the distance she recalled a time when she got into a car with a client, not knowing he was wanted for murder. She wondered aloud how could she have known? She has to take a chance on every client and for the most part, the transaction happens without issue, but when there is danger, it is life and death. She recalled feeling incredibly blessed that there had been a cop parked up the block that had tagged the license plate. Only through the fortuitous circumstances of a cop sitting on the street having discovered the identity of the wanted man was she able to escape. He intervened in order to arrest him and she avoided an unthinkable situation. She shivered slightly, whether, from the memory or the wind, I do not know. She dropped her arms and stood straight again. What if that cop hadn’t intervened because she had chosen to do something illegal? 

 A few minutes passed and a beat-up old black car stopped in front of us. She made her way to the car, ducking slightly to perch in front of his partially opened window. With a tilt of her hip and a confident, sultry demeanor, she asked if she could get in. The driver, bathed in darkness, had one hand clasped around the wheel. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded his head, a light bouncing off the silver in his hat. Following with a gruff, emphatic “yes”, she opened the door and slid in without a second glance. Hitting the accelerator, his car leapt forward belying the clear damage and age it had sustained. And then she was gone.