Beth Greenfield

To mark the International Day of the Woman on March 8 and Women’s History Month, Yahoo Lifestyle is exploring notions of feminism and the women’s movement through a diverse series of profiles — from transgender activist Ashlee Marie Preston to conservative campus leader Karin Agness Lips — that aim to reach across many aisles. 

Lorelei Lee, a California-based adult-film star, has a bone to pick with the media about its handling of the Stormy Daniels affair.

“It is literally every day I hear someone else use ‘porn star’ as a pejorative, or say how disgraceful it is that the president had an affair with a porn star, that this reflects badly on our country,” Lee, a longtime writer and sex-worker activist, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I saw someone write that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the United States, which is amazing to me — like, look around you!”

What’s more, says Lee, “Stormy Daniels is suing the president — a person who has created so many oppressive, horrifying policies. People should be celebrating that. People should be backing her up. She is suing him for the right to speak freely. She is offering to give him back money he paid her. I do not understand why people are not holding her up as a hero of the opposition.”

Instead, the way the unfolding story has been handled in the media, Lee laments, “means that sex workers are hearing jokes about how we aren’t full people, about how we are a punch line. So my experience of this whole thing is just a constant reminder that we’re dehumanized every day.”

It’s what has fueled the fire within Lee, 37, who has worked in various facets of the sex industry since she was 19, but who has filled much of her time lately with activist work.

In January, she and fellow sex workers showed up en masse at the Women’s March Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas to make sure their voices were not left out of the feminist space; Lee held up a sign that read, “Stop making sex workers scapegoats for the patriarchy,” and stood at an information table to chat with curious and oft-confused passersby about the issue of sex workers’ rights.

“I felt as welcome as in any mainstream space,” she recounts. “But there were a lot of people there who really didn’t understand who we were or what we were representing. I had someone come up to me at the table and look at our ‘Sex Work is Work’ T-shirts and say, ‘Oh, that’s so sad,’ and I said, ‘What’s sad?’ and she said, ‘Sex slavery.’” Lee went on to explain that she was with a group of consensual sex workers who oppose any form of non-consent and exploitation.

“It took her a few minutes, and she was definitely very defensive, and said, ‘Oh, we’ve had a misunderstanding,’” Lee says with a laugh. “That is the understatement of the century. But for me, being in those spaces and having the opportunity to directly confront that misunderstanding is, I think, the most productive work that you can do sometimes.”

@Regranned from @maitressem – Just two sex workers planning world domination. With this woman by my side it feels like I can do anything. #hexthepatriarchy @womensmarch @womensmarchnv @missloreleilee – #regrann

A post shared by Lorelei Lee (@missloreleilee) on Jan 20, 2018 at 9:36pm PST

Since then, she’s been largely consumed with fighting misunderstanding on another front — by vociferously opposing a pair of proposed bills in the House and Senate, FOSTA and SESTA (Fight/Stop Online Sex Trafficking Act), respectively. Each seeks to weaken legal protections that currently protect website owners and operators from criminal and civil liability for hosting content posted by third-party users, and they “conflate consensual sex work and trafficking,” she says.

If the bills reach their goal of being combined and codified, Lee explains, they will not only fail to stop trafficking, but will threaten vital safety measures for sex workers: the ability to screen clients online rather than in person, the ability to share information on violent or disrespectful clients on what are known as “bad date” lists, and the ability to share information about exploitive club owners or clients.

“Sex workers don’t get protection from police, and we frequently don’t have familial resources or other forms of social support that other people might turn to in times of crisis,” Lee says. “What we have is each other, so our ability to share information online includes allowing us to post to these platforms,” and the law changes will mean “censoring this information sharing that is vital to sex workers’ safety.”

Many of the groups involved do not understand the impact or the possible violence that would likely come from the passage of the bills, she says — including celebrities who have lent their voices to the pro-SESTA/FOSTA cause, such as Seth Meyers and Amy Schumer. Others simply want to end the sex trade entirely, she believes.

#paws4pros #dogsfordecriminalization #benicetosexworkers

A post shared by Lorelei Lee (@missloreleilee) on Feb 18, 2018 at 5:28am PST

The whole situation, she understands, is confusing for people — why an intelligent, self-possessed woman like Lee, and like so many others, would do sex work. And what much of the confusion comes down to — around her personal choices, the pending legislation, the Women’s March interaction, and so much more— is people not understanding that sex trafficking/slavery and consensual adult sex work are different, Lee says.

“The difference is so simple, and the difference is one word: consent,” she says. “But I think one of the reasons people have such a hard time understanding it is because people have a really hard time understanding consent in our culture, which is something that as a nation we’ve been grappling with.”

Lee breaks it down, acknowledging the camp that believes there’s no such thing as consensual sex work, because of the “economic coercion” factor.

“They say the choice to do sex work is inherently compromised because of financial incentive — and I’m willing to say that all labor is exploitative under capitalism, I have no disagreement with that,” she says. “But I also think it’s extremely important to recognize that poor people still have agency. Having spent most of my life as a poor, working person, it is deeply offensive to me for someone to tell me that my ability to choose what I do with my body is compromised by not having money.

That argument — about whether sex work can ever be inherently consensual — is what has caused conflict for many in the feminist movement about whether or not to embrace sex workers over the years, including in the planning of recent Women’s March events.

Other issues that get to Lee lately include: the #MeToo movement bypassing sex workers (“but that’s a longer conversation,” she says), and, on a positive note, the fact that Time’s Up organizers did reach out to her recently to see how those in her field could be included, which is a “big step,” she says.

But Lee bristles at the question she says she’s most often asked (including by this writer): “How is sex work feminist?” She calls it a “misconstruing of the question.”

As she explains it: “I am a feminist. I am also a sex worker. Sex work in itself isn’t anything — it isn’t a political ideology, it’s work, and it happens in all different contexts… I think it’s really important to break that down, because as a sex worker, you get asked over and over again, ‘Is sex work feminist or ant-feminist’ or ‘Are you in coalition with the patriarchy?’ And that can be really damaging, because it’s neither. You can be a feminist and you can believe in gender equality and also be a sex worker who works under exploitative conditions. You’ve got to pay your bills.”

Workers should not be held responsible for the politics of their employers, Lee adds, although there are ways to harness things within one’s power. “So working in exploitative conditions,” she says. “A lot of sex workers have come together and worked concertedly among themselves to try and improve those conditions — and that’s a feminist action.”

Lee’s thoughts have been hard won by many years in the sex trade — a career which has taken various shapes, from stripping and being a professional dominatrix to directing and acting in pornography (including, many times, in what she calls “beautiful films that showed a version of sexuality that you don’t see in mainstream film or, really, anywhere…”).

“It’s complicated to answer the question about why I started doing sex work, because there are multiple ways to tell the story,” she explains. “I was poor, I grew up on public assistance, and that is a huge part of why I started.” Other factors: She had a boyfriend who sent her on her first shoot; she was a “young queer person” with her first crush on a woman, who was an erotic dancer, who told Lee she felt “transformed and powerful onstage.” Plus, she needed money, particularly when it came time to put herself through college at New York University (a payment plan that briefly made Lee tabloid fodder).

“People always ask if it’s empowering or disempowering, and you can’t separate that from the fact that having money is empowering in a capitalist culture,” she says, noting that she has zero college debt. “Being able to pay your bills is empowering.”

All along, she has made it her business to not only stand up for equality, but to write about her work (in beautiful prose) and to speak out about it — including in a couple of documentaries.

“I’ve experienced feelings of isolation and powerlessness and vulnerability and faced so much stigma… and then this thing that started to make my life better was finding other sex workers who were amazing people, finding solidarity,” she says. “I think if I can do anything to give back to that community, I will have made my life worthwhile.”

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Of the many, many impactful statements made onstage at the Women’s March Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas on Sunday, one stood out for the uniqueness of its voice in the largely mainstream political context: “I am a mother, I am a grandmother, and I am a sex worker.”

The statement was made by Cris Sardinia, head of Desiree Alliance, a national coalition of sex workers and health professionals working toward harm reduction, advocacy, and education. She was the only one of 30-plus onstage speakers to focus on the rights of prostitutes, adult-film stars, strippers, and other sex workers as an issue.

But even as a lone voice in the day’s lineup, she symbolized a powerful shift — as did the noticeable presence of many sex-worker rights activists, who turned out more forcefully than for last year’s main Women’s March event. That was due, said many, to a more targeted welcome effort on the part of event organizers. They aimed to right a perceived wrong last year, as publicized by Janet Mock, over briefly watering down and then removing a sentence embracing sex workers from its mission statement, before reinstating it under pressure.

Still, the issue remains a touchy one among women who equate all prostitution and sex work with sex trafficking; activists, meanwhile, see a difference, and defend their work as a freedom-of-choice issue.

“I want you to see the sex worker rights movement as part of the solution and not the problem,” Sardinia said to great applause from the stands of the Sam Boyd Stadium. She took the stage near the end of a four-hour lineup of speakers, when the sea of 20,000 women in requisite pink pussy hats had begun to thin out, most of the day’s clever, anti-Trump and pro-woman signs cast aside after a long, chilly afternoon.

“We are a strong and fierce community made up of every color, every race, every identity, every shape, every economy, every religion, and so much more,” Sardinia continued, before declaring, “I’m a sex worker. And I have the right to be here.”

It’s unlikely that most women in the crowd caught her reference to the unwelcome feeling had by many sex workers regarding last year’s Women’s March events. But it certainly resonated with those in the business.

“I think last year [Women’s March organizers] were less on the same page about sex workers,” Lux Lives, a Las Vegas-based pornographic film actress with faded lavender hair who held a sign reading “Sex worker wisdom can change the world,” told Yahoo Lifestyle. “They made it clear they wanted us here this year.”

It’s why she had come to Power to the Polls with her partner, Casey V, to assert her rights, along with a loosely knit group of about 20 others in the sex business. Many others were scattered throughout the crowd, including Amber Batts, who had traveled all the way from Alaska to represent SWOP Behind Bars, a support community for incarcerated sex workers. “I think, finally, sex workers are being afforded the opportunity to be heard,” she told Yahoo Lifestyle.

That was particularly true at the local level, according to Deborah Harris, Women’s March coordinator for Nevada — a state that has legal, strictly regulated brothels. “We wanted to make sure sex workers are represented,” she told Yahoo Lifestyle in the days leading up to Power to the Polls. “We want to center our efforts on the most marginalized. And they deserve to be understood and respected.”

Sex workers were indeed just one of the many marginalized groups who found a welcoming space at Sunday’s rally — others included black women, indigenous women, Latina women, poor women, immigrant women, migrant workers, domestic workers, sex-trafficked women and girls, disabled women, Muslim women, abused women, incarcerated women, and LGBT women.

The issue of sex workers and their rights is a particularly complex and hot-button issue, though, particularly within feminist circles. That’s largely because many equate all pornography, prostitution, and other forms of sex work with human trafficking, or the capture of women and children who are coerced into the trade, or sold into it against their will.

But sex worker rights activists dispute that all forms of sex work are equal, arguing that they too want to fight trafficking — and that the most effective way to do so is through the decriminalization of sex work, which would theoretically empower coerced sex workers to come forward to authorities without fear of arrest. They also argue that granting women full autonomy over their bodily choices is an essential freedom — no different than the right to use contraceptives or have an abortion (a belief countered by some feminists, who see sex work as inherently nonconsensual because of money throwing off the power balance).

Amnesty International favors the decriminalization of sex work — which “does not mean the removal of laws that criminalize exploitation, human trafficking or violence against sex workers. These laws must remain and can and should be strengthened,” its website explains. “It does mean the removal of laws and policies criminalizing or penalizing sex work.”

The inclusion of sex workers’ rights by this year’s Women’s March was particularly noteworthy to those in the business — especially after last year’s behind-the-scenes controversy was brought to light by author and activist Janet Mock in a January 2017 Tumblr post. In it, she explained that she had helped march organizers write the mission statement, but that the line she wrote, about sex workers, had been removed, repeatedly altered, and eventually reinstated, due to internal conflicts.

“I helped draft the vision and I wrote the line ‘…and we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements,’” Mock explained in her Tumblr post. “It is not a statement that is controversial to me because as a trans woman of color who grew up in low-income communities and who advocates, resists, dreams and writes alongside these communities, I know that underground economies are essential parts of the lived realities of women and folk. I know sex work to be work. It’s not something I need to tiptoe around. It’s not a radical statement. It’s a fact.”

She went on: “I reject the continual erasure of sex workers from our feminisms because we continue to conflate sex work with the brutal reality of coercion and trafficking. I reject the policing within and outside women’s movements that shames, scapegoats, rejects, erases and shuns sex workers… There are no throwaway people.”

A Women’s March national spokesperson, Sophie Ellman-Golan, acknowledges last year’s controversy, telling Yahoo Lifestyle, “We’re grateful for the sex workers who continue to hold us accountable and push us to be more inclusive. We aren’t fully there yet — we still have a lot of trust to rebuild — but we are making progress. There is always more work to do.”

“The intentional inclusion of sex workers in the program and the planning process was a combined effort,” Ellman-Golan continues. “The moment we decided on Las Vegas [known for its Sin City offerings], members of our national team discussed the need to include sex workers on the host committee.” The Nevada team was on the same page, she says, inviting groups like the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project and Desiree Alliance, although not all local-level organizers were in agreement on the issue.

“There’s still an enormous amount of work to do, and to do it, we need to have sex workers at the table,” she says. “That means building a table where all sex workers feel safe and welcomed, and I think we are still in the process of building that table.”

This year, the Women’s March national mission includes the following language: “…we stand in full solidarity with the sex workers’ rights movement. We recognize that exploitation for sex and labor in all forms is a violation of human rights.”

Also signaling change was the fact that some sex-worker activists operated an informational table at the event, right alongside other organizations such as the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, and Planned Parenthood. And at points throughout the day, women holding sex-worker themed signs and red umbrellas — the international symbol for sex-worker rights — were visible to the entire stadium, as they’d been onstage with other activists as a sort of backdrop for various speakers.

“It was a really beautiful moment to see all those red umbrellas on stage, with a national platform,” Ellman-Golan says.

Madeline Marlowe, of Las Vegas, was among those positioned onstage. “Obviously the stigma of what we do runs very, very deep,” said Marlowe, who is a porn actor and director, as well as a professional dominatrix, who started out in the industry as a webcam model. “But we need decriminalization. It’s important that people start to recognize sex work as work. There’s been all this talk about sexual violence in Hollywood, but we’re still not including sex workers in that narrative. We need to have space, like in any job, to report abuse. But thanks to mainstream feminism promoting the stigma over the years, police just say, ‘Well, isn’t that part of the job?’ Ending violence against women starts with ending violence against sex workers.”

Dee Severe, who had traveled to the rally from Los Angeles, where she directs adult films, told Yahoo Lifestyle she was there because “sex workers are among the most stigmatized, demonized people in the world, and it’s time to be decriminalized.”

Roxy Renee of Las Vegas, who works as a fetish model, said she had come to let people know that “sex workers’ rights are women’s rights.” She added, “We’re all fighting for the ability to make our own decisions.”

While most of the sex workers who spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle on Sunday expressed a feeling of being well received, some said they were left with mixed feelings.

Valerie Stunning, a stripper in Las Vegas who blogs about her experiences and maintains an impressive Instagram following, left the event right after an appearance by Cher, carrying her “Stigma increases violence” sign and walking towards her car with fellow strippers Kelsey Griffith, also of Las Vegas, and Giselle Marie, of New York City. Stunning said she had felt repeatedly disappointed throughout the day when speakers would run down the list all the marginalized groups they supported — from immigrants and transgender women to women of all colors and religions. “They would not say ‘sex workers’,” she noticed.

Still, she said, “It’s really important that we keep coming back. The official statement from Women’s March was validating… It’s empowering when you feel like you’re being heard.”

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