SWOP Behind Bars Advocacy from the Margins

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: When Feminism Stops Asking Who Pays the Price

Feminist support for the Nordic Model is often rooted in clear, articulated goals: reducing violence, limiting exploitation, and challenging gendered power imbalances. These goals are not in dispute. The problem arises when alignment with those goals is treated as evidence that a policy works.

Not Your Mama’s Feminism: The Nordic Model’s Feminist Sales Pitch

The Nordic Model is often introduced to feminist audiences as a kind of political relief valve. Not full criminalization, they say. Not decriminalization either - but a principled compromise. A way to oppose exploitation without “punishing women.” A policy rooted in gender equality, sold as modern, humane, and feminist.
It sounds reasonable. That’s the pitch.
But like most good sales pitches, it relies on what’s emphasized - and what’s quietly left out.

Beyond the Policy

I write this as a sex worker, a parent, and someone shaped by systemic harm, such as criminalization and stigma, and committed to community accountability, which informs my work. Harm reduction, consent-based frameworks, and non-carceral approaches to anti-trafficking and mutual aid guide my perspective. I recognize that experiences of sex work, coercion, and survival exist on a spectrum, and I write with respect for those who identify as sex workers, survivors, both, or neither. This piece reflects my perspective and practice, not a universal narrative.

On the Super Bowl, Safety and Solidarity the Super Bowl, Safety and Solidarity

Repost from January 2020

Not Your Mama’s Feminism: From Budgets to Beliefs - How Money Shapes Feminist Anti-Trafficking Politics

If you’ve ever found yourself listening to the exact phrases echo through feminist anti-trafficking spaces - conference panels, grant reports, press releases - and wondered why they never seem to change, even as evidence piles up that they cause harm, the answer isn’t complicated. It’s not ignorance. It’s not a lack of research. It’s funding.

Follow The Money: The Economics of a Human Trafficking Sting - The Taxpayer Spreadsheet

A trafficking sting is as much a political product as a law-enforcement action. It delivers a simple, media-ready narrative: villains, heroes, and a moral arc that ends at a podium. That story moves easily through city councils, county commissions, statehouses, and campaign mailers because it allows elected officials to look decisive without investing in what actually reduces vulnerability - housing, healthcare, labor protections, or immigration relief. “Rescue” becomes a stand-in for policy, and optics replace outcomes.

On the Super Bowl, Safety and Solidarity

Every year, around this time, the airwaves in whatever city is hosting the Super Bowl are flooded with public services announcements about sex trafficking. Billboards go up. Police officers receive special training. Media asks organizations that work to reduce trafficking to comment on the “biggest sex trafficking event of the  year.”
There is no evidence that the actual volume of sex trafficking increases as a result of the Super Bowl. More importantly, we collectively try to make the point that the hype often leads to a damaging response - arresting people who are directly selling sex. 

Follow The Money: The Economics of a “Human Trafficking” Sting - The Human Toll

As we close out Human Trafficking Awareness Month, it is critical to center the people most impacted by the systems we claim are meant to protect them. Over the past three weeks, we traced how trafficking stings drain law enforcement budgets, strain courts, and feed a nonprofit rescue economy. This week, we arrive at the heart of the issue - the human cost. We follow what a sting means for the person arrested: the fees, the records, the instability, the trauma, and the long-term consequences that never appear in a government press release.