Seattle Strippers Want Patron ‘Blacklist’ Law Due To FOSTA Danger

When the FOSTA/SESTA law that was supposedly designed to curtail “sex trafficking” via the internet was signed into law by Donald Trump in April, sex workers warned that far from protecting them from traffickers, the law would actually make their lives and jobs more dangerous—warnings that proved to be accurate, as at least one American city reported a 170 percent spike in sex trafficking cases after the anti-sex trafficking law went into effect, as AVN.com reported.   Now, strippers in Washington State are trying to do something about the problem by pushing legislation of their own. Washington Senate Bill 5724, “an act relating to safety and security of adult entertainers,” would, among other provisions, create a “blacklist” of strip club patrons who are known to be abusive toward performers. The bill would also “provide a panic button to each entertainer who performs in the establishment, at no cost to the entertainer.” The performer would activate the “panic button” any time she sees “an ongoing crime, harassment, or other emergency” take place in her presence; for example, if a customer who hires a VIP room in a club becomes violent or abusive toward a performer.  The performer would have the protected right under the new law to immediately stop working and leave the area where the offense is taking place. Seattle-based sex worker and activist Savannah Sly told The Stranger newspaper that local strippers began to organize and come up with the grassroots legislation after the federal shutdown of classified ad site Backpage in April, followed just days later by enactment of the FOSTA/SESTA law. "The unintended consequence of that is that there are displaced sex workers and clients who are looking for a place to connect," Sly said in testimony to Washington’s State Senate Labor and Commerce Committee this week. "I think that clients are coming into clubs with mismatched expectations. Maybe they’re looking for a different kind of provider in the clubs. What we’re seeing is an uptick in violence across the sex trade since the passing of these bills, largely because it further criminalizes communication.” The new bill would also establish mandatory “know your rights” training for strippers, because, according to Sly, the “bad actors” among club clientele know that strippers are not likely to report illegal acts against them to the police. “Sometimes we’re discouraged from calling the police when we’re working for management, and due to stigma we may be unlikely to tell the people closest to us because they may not know that we are sex workers on the side or for our job,” she  told the committee. Senator Rebecca Saldaña, a co-sponsor of the bill, said she feels “hopeful” the bill will pass the committee and the full state legislature, because “it is about improving the safety of workers whose voices are often not heard in [the state capitol] Olympia,” according to The Stranger. Photo By Gogirl18/Wikimedia Commons