Should prostitution be considered a job like any other, whose practitioners could be empowered by workplace protections if it were made legal? Or is it inherently harmful β a form of violence predicated on racial, gender, and income inequality from which women should be set free? Female empowerment through sex work has become a surprising liberal rallying cry amplified worldwide by billionaire George Soros , whose Open Society Foundations funds organizations that promote it.
She has embraced the argument that sex work is the only work available to some marginalized people β particularly transgender women of color β and that they would be less vulnerable if they could better advocate for themselves and report crimes committed against them.
That so-called Equality Model β also known as partial decriminalization or the Nordic model β calls for eliminating criminal charges only for sex workers but continuing to prosecute pimps and buyers who take advantage of them. The sex workers themselves would have access to services to help them leave the business.
Pimps and brothel owners would not be subject to prosecution under full decriminalization. The ground between the two alternatives is vast and contentious, as Pressley is about to find out. Her announcement surprised antiprostitution activists who had gathered for an international summit in Roxbury to begin strategizing to combat the decriminalization campaigns they anticipate.
Advertisement Pressley had previously taken the opposite stance. In , she co-wrote a Boston Globe op-ed demanding that sex buyers be held accountable. But she is also advocating for women who are willing participants in the sex trade, likening it to her advocacy for other workforces rendered invisible because of societal biases β such as food service workers or housekeeping staff.
