Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, sluts? Welcome back to thy queendom. Come. I am your host, Queen Lo. I am so excited to be back on the mic after a very busy summer of putting bitches on their knees.
I actually just got back last night from a trip to New York where I did just that. And maybe I'll. Maybe I'll even do a podcast episode about it.
But today I am so excited about this conversation. This is not the type of episode that I typically do. However, it's really fucking important. We are two weeks away from the most important election of our entire lifetime. And I know people say that every time, but it's super fucking true this time. And while I care about so many issues that are important in this election, today we're going to talk about why this election is so important for this industry. For sex workers. And not just for us sex workers, but for people who like to enjoy sex workers, people who watch porn, people who go online, whatever. Like the freedom to choose how you experience pleasure and what we get to do in our bedrooms and what we get to do with each other and on our own. If you like fucking getting on your knees, for me, this election is super fucking important. So if you don't even listen to the podcast episode, if you just realize that you're not registered to vote, if you haven't done your fucking research, then put it on pause. Go do that. It's so important. And to talk about this, I brought on my friend Savannah Sly, who is a fellow sex worker. She's an advocate. She's doing all sorts of bad ass things for people in this industry. And I'm going to tell you a lot more about her when we get started. So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you listen and do your research and get your asses out to fucking vote.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Dreams can come from nightmares too. The queen will take over you. Dreams can come from nightmares too. The queendom will take over you.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: All right, welcome back to thy queendom. Come. I'm so excited about today's episode and today's guest. Mostly because I fucking love being able to come on here and talk about kinky, bizarre, wild shit. I've always loved being able to do that. I love being a sex worker. I love the freedom to be a sex worker and I love the freedom that being a sex worker has provided me. And I know that I'm only here today and that I'm only able to do what I'm doing in the way that I'm doing it because of the people who came before me. Mostly fucking women.
It's because people have come together and fought for this freedom that we have. And today's guest is somebody who I see is just another one of these incredible giants in this world who's doing so much meaningful work. Savannah Salai. She is the founder of New Moon Network, which is a network that operates as a fund. It's like a bridge between philanthropists and investors who want to do good things and the grassroots movements, the actual conversations, the people who are doing the good things and need the resources, which is such an important.
I can't overstate the importance of that. Savannah is a sex worker herself and an activist. And I actually love how on her website says it perfectly. I've supported my. Myself as an erotic professional for my entire adult life. I have met, spoken, and worked with hundreds of sex workers. I never aspired to be an activist. It just feels necessary, and I think that's so fucking powerful. You're also. She's an educator, so welcome, Savannah. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: L. It's great to be here. And wow, what an introduction that was. Felt really good to hear. And thank you. And we both stand on some amazing, glittery, strong, sexy shoulders. Crazy for sex workers rights, among many other movements that sex workers rights is connected to. And it's an honor to be here today to talk with you.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Thank you. So I'm so glad you're here. And you're so right. And we were talking before we started that sex workers rights and sex workers are alarm bells to creeping human rights violations. And that's such a beautiful way to put it. Before we got on, I was talking to my partner about how sex workers are at the beginning of fucking everything. Not just that we were at the beginning of fucking. The reason the Internet exists is because of sex workers. Sex workers have existed in the margins of society for fucking ever. And because of that, we've had to innovate and be on the forefront of it and constantly fighting what's coming at us and being at the beginning of what's coming next. Because sex has always and will always be such a deep part of us as humans. But the reason I wanted Savannah to come here and talk today is because you, along with another good friend of mine, ours, Carly David, who is the founder of PS Group, which is a marketing agency for and by sex workers. They actually did my website. They're amazing. But YouTube badasses decided to partner with Rock the Vote. And you created epa, which is Erotic Professionals and Allies United.
And you guys have essentially been working your asses off to gather together sex workers, understanding that we are a fucking voting bloc. Like, we are a huge portion of the population, bigger now than ever. Because anyone who sold a fucking foot picture on OnlyFans is a sex worker. And you can't throw a rock and not hit a sex worker these days. And so you guys have really used that to try to ban people together. And so I want you to tell me about epa, why you started it, why you think it's important, and what people can do to fucking get involved.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Sure. Well, thanks again for having me here. And thanks everybody for listening. I've really enjoyed your podcast Low. So, yes, Carly, David and I, amongst others, there have been multiple people and professionals and businesses that have contributed to the creation of Erotic Professionals and Allies United, or EPA United. And the first project we've taken on with this new concept is Rocking the Vote for the Adult Industry.
It's a really important election, elections on everybody's minds. And it actually wasn't our idea. There was another sex worker advocate who's a little shy and she wants to not, you know, we're going to sing her praise without, you know, being spot. But she was interested in trying to quantify our community and our movement and our allies and our fans and all the workers through something like voter mobilization. Because every time somebody registers to vote or requests an absentee ballot or even just pledges to vote using these voter registration tools, we get a tally mark that somebody did that. And so if people use those tools through a voter mobilization website like EPA United, that's really trying to speak to the adult industry, all the workers, the fans and the allies than anybody who uses those tools through the website. It's a tally mark. And the idea is to start quantifying how many people care about adult industry workers and adult industry issues, it kind of answers itself.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: But why is that important? Like, why is it important to gather this data? Why do we need this?
[00:08:24] Speaker C: Well, I have done quite a bit of advocating in the legislature in the past for sex work policies and other laws around, like data privacy and stuff. And when I was talking to lawmakers frequently, one of the first questions they would ask me, they'd say, oh, yeah, it's nice to hear about your organization. How many people are in that organization? How many people do they represent? And what they're wanting to know is, how many of these people are my constituents? Do I need to listen to this group?
Yes.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: And so, like, is this important or not?
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Right. So when you walk into those meetings and you say, hey, 100 people registered to vote through our coalition in your district. We'd love to talk to you about this issue. Then you're showing them. These are your constituents. These are people who you need to think about when you're being re elected. These are the people you're serving.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: This is a reason you should care. It comes down. The numbers never lie.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Some I. Sometimes they do, but Fair enough, actually.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: Where you get the numbers not to be.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: It depends on. No, no, no, no. I actually like that it. They can lie because it depends on where you get them and it depends on how many you're not getting. So I think that's a hundred percent a fair pushback. I think what I mean is like when you take the numbers and put them in front of someone's face and when you show that this is, these are here, these, this number exists.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: People want data. Lawmakers want to know how many people care about a given issue. And also when people register for these tools on EPA United or sign up for the newsletter, then that becomes a growing contact list where we can send out alerts about upcoming legislation in a specific state or, you know, nationwide. So yeah, we started EPA United with all that in mind. And it's been a, it's been quite a ride. It has been amazing to see how many people have come out interested in the project, seeing its merit and helping to circulate it and engage with it and also contribute to it. We've had a lot of pro bono contributions. For instance, Mojo host donated the website hosting, which was really cool. Awesome. Yeah. So it's been a pleasure to work on. But yes, we decided to do it a month and a half before the elections. So short time frame.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: I thought that was especially interesting. I loved it when Carly messaged me about what you guys were doing and I was like, girl like you, you like working like a diamond. Like you like being worked like a diamond. Like, I knew she was going crazy getting it done. And the website looks amazing. The website is epauunited.org Carly has done.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: An amazing job on the website. It's beautiful, it's functional. The back end is clean and efficient and you know, she really put a lot into it and it was our first time working together, so it's been a real pleasure.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: So what are some of the resources on the site specifically that you want people to go check out and use? Like how, how should people use it?
[00:11:28] Speaker C: Well, if you're not registered to vote, you should definitely go do that. So go to epauunited.org and click the Rock the Vote button and you'll see a short menu of things that you can do on this website, including checking your voter status. Maybe if you've moved somewhere, you haven't registered in your new state and you need to do that so you can do that on the website. If you're going to be traveling during the elections, you can request an absentee ballot. And then also if you have voting altogether, you're like, yeah, I vote all the time. This is, you know, I know how to do this. Then you can pledge to vote. And that is really important and really helpful for starting to show our strength in numbers. Because when you do that, we get that tally mark. And that's a great thing for anybody to do. Erotic service providers or sex workers, people who adore them, their admirers and fans and clients, and then all of our friends and family and allies. The more people we show who care about us as workers and as people and this issue, the more we can open those doors and get a seat at the table to advocate for laws that help us rather than harm us.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's like something you said about allies and clients and fans and the people who adore us and the people who just love us in general. I think one of the things that I really wanted to focus on here in this conversation is the allies part of epa. Sex workers are familiar with a lot of most of them. A lot of them are familiar with the struggles and the shit that we face every day to do ordinary things that people in other professions simply don't have to do. But why should our allies give a shit? Like, how does this affect people who aren't sex workers or don't have a. Don't even have. Don't even know. Maybe a sex worker personally. Maybe they just watch porn. Like, why is it us fighting for these things? Why is it important for literally everyone? Why should they give a shit?
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Great question. Well, if people are listening to this podcast, I hope they give a shit, because this is the queendom.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Come, do you care about me or not?
[00:13:32] Speaker C: But for everyone else, first of all, odds are good that you do know somebody who technically qualifies as a sex worker. The pandemic alone made more clandestine sex workers than any other event in history. That's my personal opinion.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: People were at home and they didn't have access to their regular jobs and they still needed to make ends meet. So a lot of people turned to online sex work, generating adult content, maybe selling nudes or those trying to sell feet pics or Maybe couples at home doing live sex shows, trying to do the fandom thing, phone sex, whatever. For instance, a piece of data that I found was that in May of 2020, when the pandemic was at the very beginning, totally set in, globally, aware of the pandemic May of 2020, hypothetically, between 7 and 8,000 people per day that month were signing up to sell content on Only Fans, which is just one platform out of many. A lot of people have heard of Only Fans. So only Fans alone, and there's a lot of other websites like Only Fans. That's just one of the bigger ones. Seven, eight to eight thousand people a day. So that's tens of thousands of people on one platform during the pandemic. Now, those people may not have made any money. It's harder than a lot of people think to make a living online doing erotic content. It's like any other business. Kind of got to build it up.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Oh, no. It's my favorite thing ever when people are like, I'm so done with my job. I'm going to go sell feet pics online. I'm like, okay, yeah, you go do that.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: It's hard. And a lot of people don't realize that, but a lot of people tried it. They may not have made any money, but now there is a digital paper trail of them having had an adult Only Fans account. And so we're talking potentially hundreds of thousands of people from the pandemic alone who now carry a type of scarlet letter that can result in discrimination that can really throw a person's life off track. You could lose your regular job. It could threaten the custody you have of your children in a contentious, you know, divorce or custody battle. It could threaten your housing if your landlord sees an Only Fans or hears that you've been filming or doing content in your apartment. People have been evicted for that.
It can affect what countries you can travel to, let alone the sort of stigma or social ostracization that can come from being a known sex worker. And sex worker might be kind of a strong phrase for some of this because some people have only fans, and maybe they haven't taken their clothes off or it's all bikini stuff. And it's like, I have kind of a big red umbrella in my definition of sex work.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Me as well. Yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: A lot of people don't consider themselves sex workers who have done things that I would consider to be sex workers.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: A lot of people. There's that debate on Twitter all the time. Like, you know, there's girls who come over and they're like, I just take money from men. Like, I'm not a sex worker. And it's like, okay, but I mean, they're kind of getting. Getting off to giving it to you, so you kind of are. But, like, these are not things I need to fucking argue about a lot of gray area.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: So. And that's a reason that people should care, because this is a lot of people. And it also gets into. There is gray area. So it's like when you're not online and you're talking about somebody who has dates in exchange for gifts or dinner or travel. Anyways, I feel like when we start policing sex work or what happens to sex work is indicative of might. What might happen to a broader segment of the community in time. You were saying earlier at the beginning of the podcast Low that sex workers have been on the forefront of many things and that we're standing on, you know, shoulders of people who have come before us who have had to advocate for our rights.
Sex workers tend to have very few rights or social respect in our culture in the United States and many others around the world. So things like open discrimination are considered socially acceptable as well as violence. Sex workers who get assaulted or even murdered have not been taken seriously by law enforcement or the media before because sex workers are considered pariahs. And that should concern the general public because depending on our government and who's in charge and their beliefs and their values, that the population that is now sex workers could start to ripple out to queer people, right?
Or just kinky people or people who don't practice monogamy or sluts.
Totally the prescribed way. It ripples out. And so if you protect marginalized groups of people, odds are good that the rest of society will also have access to its human rights.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's absolutely it. It's like, why should some guy in sitting in Kentucky give a shit about a bunch of sex workers and porn stars and strippers and whores, whatever. And it's like, do you enjoy your fucking bodily autonomy? Like, do you enjoy being able to go onto pornhub and wank your dick without that being public knowledge? Or without having to fucking put your ID in and without having to be tracked? Like, I have been in this fucking business long enough and you have too. And so many. All sex workers have that. We know more than anyone that there is no normal when it comes to sex. People are into weird shit. People like to, you know, weird quote like quotes around it like, what's not fucking normal? What's not typical? Given to Us in the mass media, what we grew up with, and people are into all sorts of different things. And the desire to be sexual and the desire to feel pleasure, as long as you're not hurting anyone else or yourself and everyone involved, it is consensual. Like, we should be allowed to do that. Like, sexual freedom is freedom. Like, it is the freedom to be sexual, how we want the freedom to do with our bodies. What we want is something that just completely goes beyond sex work. And it should fucking touch every person out there, the ability to just be free. And when we think about this election, and I know they say this every election cycle, that this is the most important election of our lifetime, but I can say that it certainly feels. The weight of this feels so monumental, the weight of the future of where we're going as a country. Why do you think. I mean, you guys started EPA a month and a half before the election. You don't do something like that, work as hard as you guys did to get this shit going if you didn't feel kind of the same, that this election was so fucking important. And I'm wondering if you can just kind of tell me why you think that is.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Like, the election is on everybody's minds. And one interesting thing about starting EPEA United that I've learned is that we're not the only ones who are having this idea. I've never seen the adult industry mobilize like it is now, around voting specifically and educating on things like Project 2025. And before we go into things like that, I want to say that EPA United is nonpartisan. Sex workers and their clients and their allies are not a monolith. And they possess many political viewpoints and opinions and perspectives on the world and society. But I have my own opinions, and I know who I'm voting for is a really interesting election. And I see two roads diverging, just two different paths. And if Trump gets elected, seeing continued rollbacks to what you can wear, who you can be, what you can call yourself, who you can love, what you can do with your body, what you can't do with your body, all those things are at stake if Trump gets elected. And it's been very clearly published in something called Project 2025, which is a playbook of a rollout of different departmental changes and policy changes and personnel changes that are going to happen if Trump is elected. There's forces behind him, foundations, teams, people, funders who would support something like Project 2025, which is, I would call it ultra conservative, radical conservative. So totally not Just banning porn, but criminalizing it.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Criminalizing it.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: So here's a reason to care about sex workers. Sex workers create porn and their fans watch that porn. And a lot of us love porn. And we're living in a magical time now where we can just go online and find this.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: It's 2024. Like, this is the future. Do you guys not fucking like it?
[00:22:24] Speaker C: Like, it's pretty special. And all that could go away very quickly and very easily and with really extreme consequences, like being arrested for watching porn or having porn at your house. We don't want to go back to that. We don't want to want that to be our reality.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: I think a lot of people at this point, I mean, we were talking about sex workers, were Talking about Project 2025 over a year ago. Like, and I have not. I did not start hearing it in the mainstream. I did not start hearing, like, people outside of sex work talk about it until just a couple of months ago. Since then, Donald Trump has come out adamantly that he has nothing to do with it, that this is not. He doesn't know this and that. And I think it's important. And I, you know, I have a lot of family. I have a lot of Republican family. I. The thing that's commonly said is, like, he said he's not going to support that. Like, he said he's not supporting that. He said it's not going to be done. And I think what's important for people to understand is, like, the people who wrote the document in a Trump administration, these people have fucking power. These people have say, so these people get funding from the government. Trump doesn't have to sit there and say, we're banning porn. For states to start doing crazy shit to track people's fucking porn use. Like, it doesn't work like that. Like, it's the administration that's being put in place.
[00:23:41] Speaker C: They're already trying to do it. And they are doing it in numerous states through things like age verification laws, which sound good on face value. Like, age verification laws, they promote it as a way of protecting young people and minors kids from.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Listen, nobody wants kids on fucking porn sites less than fucking sex workers. Like, literally, we don't want to have children on our fucking sites.
We want to be at the table to have a conversation of how to stop that from happening. However, what we've seen with these age verification laws, which essentially are requiring people to put in IDs to go somewhere like Pornhub. Like, you listeners tell me, are you gonna put your ID into pornhub? Like, you have got to be kidding me.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: And what we're seeing in states where these laws pass and websites like pornhub pull their services, they just stop doing business in those states. So it's like a back door to banning porn because nobody, very few people are going to upload their ID to access porn online.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: It's a back door, which is all they need.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: People are just downloading VPNs, right? VPN use skyrockets in these states. So it's sort of like feel good science. And it's a way of getting companies to stop doing business because they don't want the legal liability.
But a lot of people, and a lot of people won't access porn. There's plenty of people who probably don't know about VPNs, but enough people figure it out and kit enough teenagers, I'm sure, figure it out that whoever wants to access porn, who has a computer and enough, you know. Ambition.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Yeah, a little ambition.
No, it's so true. It just seems like if protecting the kids was really the goal, there would be better ways of doing it.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: If protecting kids was the goal lawmakers and the people promoting these bills and introducing them would be working with the adult industry to find.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:25:32] Speaker C: As opposed to trying to oppose everything the adult industry recommends and paint them as the villains here for creating porn in the first place.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I think that the people who are the loudest about keeping sex workers in the dark are the people who benefit from it being in the dark. I mean, every day it's a new fucking story of some like severe anti LGBT person who was just so, like against it and hateful. The guy who did the Sound of Freedom, like the Sound of Freedom, that fucking movie that just reported like, sorry, but like conservative. The Christian anti trafficking movements, they just flock to it. And that fucking guy has sexual assault, like charges against him. And it's like the people who are the fucking loudest in a lot of these departments are the ones who it time has shown over and over again, are the ones that are benefiting from keeping this stuff in the dark because they need to keep their own shit in the dark. They're projecting their own, like inner demons, the shit that they deal with. They're projecting it onto all sorts other people. One of the reasons that I get so fired up about this shit is because I have clients as a dom. I have subs who come to me and ask, you know, call me all these derogatory terms, you know, like, force me to suck dick, call me all these terrible Words like, make me do this, make me do this. And they want me to essentially force them, quote, unquote, to suck cock so that they don't a have to like, accept any accountability or that they want. They don't have to accept that they want to do that. But they also want me to call them all these terrible names and say all this horrific shit to them. Because what do you think that they're doing outside of the bedroom? Like, that's literally. They're calling queer people by slurs and they're saying racist fucking shit to people. And then they come in the closet and they jack off to it. They sexualize to it. And I see it way too fucking much to not see. Like, we're kind of talking about. Honestly, the. You mentioned the Trump client archetype. Like, it kind of makes me think of that. I see a lot of these men out here, politicians, and they just remind me of my clients, my bigoted, my non clients, the ones I fucking say to, like, I'll show you the door. Like, go to therapy. Like, figure your out. This is not the place to spew hate. Because I think the people that do that, they just take it when it. They just are able to masturbate and get off to this. Such a deep hate inside of them. And then they take that out into the world. And I feel like I see it out in the world. Like, I see. I can just see through it just like so many sex workers, I think can these days. It's like, so you ask yourself, like, why do these people benefit from keeping this in the dark? Why wouldn't they talk to sex workers? Why wouldn't they bring the adult industry in? Why would they not consult the people who know this the best? Like, we are the experts here. Like, why would they not do that?
[00:28:34] Speaker C: It's all about power. And I believe that if you really zoom out, the oppression of sex workers is about the control of women's bodies and not just women's bodies. Women aren't the only sex workers, but a lot of control over women's bodies and control over desire. Desire.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Snaps.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Desire is a powerful compulsion. And you can be out of control when you desire something very much. If you desire somebody, if a man desires you and you can have parameters or specifications, requirements for him to access you and to meet his desire, well, then a, that's not as easy. Why wouldn't he just take it? He wants to just take it sometimes to take it. Not all men do. And some men are like, yes, they will bring you the things they will follow the rules and then everybody can have a great time. But I think that more abusive people who want to abuse power and hoard power tend to try and diminish the power of people who have inherent innate power over them. And sex workers, people who have a lot of power, have power over a lot of men who want to be kind of peacocking in society as a leader or as a rescuer or as a wise man or the successful businessman when he can be brought to his knees by his desire. So we have to keep sex workers criminalized because also sex workers know a lot about these men. We know what, we know their desires. And sometimes their desire is to self talk or to be dressed up in a little cute outfit and spanked on the butt or what have you. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think the dichotomy is hot, but it kind of depending on the world you walk in, if you're a conservative politician, that's endangering to your power, nobody can know that. And I think that's also why sex workers are targets for violence. A lot is we, we are confidants. We have a lot of very sensitive information on people and people are very vulnerable to what they want from us.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Oh, damn. That was like a piece of spoken word. That felt like a poem, truly. I mean, and it's so fucking true. It like control people's desire, control their, their pleasure, like, and pleasure, it's our ability to create, like our ability to like know ourself, our confidence to, to feel good, our ability to go do that in the world when that is completely like shat on and controlled and.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: If your desires maybe contradict how you think of yourself or. So I. Thinking of Trump as a client archetype. I used to have a client who reminded me so much of Trump before Trump was even on the political scene. This was over a decade ago.
And I remember meeting this man and like within five minutes of meeting him, I was like, wow, this guy's really like that, that B grade celebrity, pseudo celebrity Trump. He was so obstreperous and blunt and ugly with his words and so full of himself and strange, majorly egotistical. It was kind of like American Psycho. It was like American Psycho and Trump. It was really strange. But then seeing Trump rise to power has been interesting because that was the only client that I, it's not the only client I've had to fire. It's. I have been very fortunate to have the ability to filter my clients. I've been a sex worker for over 20 years, and I just got pretty good at filter. Finding the right clients, attracting the right clients. And there has been very few instances where I'm like, I really need to cut things off with somebody. Yeah, this guy was definitely one of those people. It was dangerous.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: Dangerous. And he didn't take no for an answer when I tried. Did not take no. Just reinforced all my. Yeah. Reaction to him. And so then seeing Trump rise to power, and we know Trump, like, also. First of all, thank you, Stormy Daniels. If we could just take a moment to thank Stormy Daniels and appreciate.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: She is outrageous. She is. She'll go down in our history books. Like, I think she's amazing, and I cannot imagine the fucking golden brass vagina that that woman has. You know, they say, like, brass balls. No, fuck balls. Balls are weak. Like, she just has steel vagina.
[00:33:05] Speaker C: She's really brave. Really, really brave.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Fucking brave. I just. I watched her, like, as she was testifying. I could not, like, take my eyes away because it just felt so close to home. And so many women have been in so many similar situations and.
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Don't.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Can't speak. Would people listen if they did? Like, it's. She really stepped up for all of us, and it's so powerful. And I. Fuck. I send her good vibes every day, man.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: And check this out. She's one of the only people to have a case that stuck to Trump. He's been convicted many times of many things. But Eugene Carroll and Stormy Daniels, two women who had something that stuck to him, and not a lot has stuck. He's still going. He feels like a steamroller. And I feel that with Stormy's case, it's. It demonstrates not only how much we know about these men. She had very intimate details that she openly shared about, like, his penis and all this stuff. Humiliating things, which, you know, drives him crazy.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Crazy. I loved that part.
Sex workers know what fucking buttons to push.
I was also. I was so impressed with the way that. And I think it just goes to show, like, being in this industry, and I thought she was a beautiful example of it. Like, if she was, I'm sure she was nervous as hell getting up there. I'm sure it's scary as fuck every day that she's dealt with this shit, but she knows how to fucking show up. Like, she knows how to.
She knows how to respond to people who are belittling to her. Because sex workers, we're all pretty familiar with how it feels for someone to be like, oh. Or to question our career in our lives as if it's not worthy, as if we don't deserve fucking just rights or basic human decency, or like we're some troubled person that has to be here and needs a captain save a ho type of situation. Like we are so familiar with people looking at us with these eyes that I felt like she was able to get up there and respond and speak in a way that a lot of people wouldn't. Like she was able to be light, she was able to, like she just swallowed and spoke like it was beautiful.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: She can give people a fucking tongue lashing. I love her Twitter just decapitating people when they try and insult her.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: It's incredible.
[00:35:35] Speaker C: She's really strong and I have so much admiration for her. And I also try and remember what a burden this is and how terrifying it must be. And she has a family and you have a whole movement of crazy.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: I think some of the scariest fucking people alive to be compared your guts.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: And want to take you down.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: And I have family. Like I literally, like I said, I'm from the conservative South. Like I have family on that side of things. And what's crazy is I like am constantly, when I do visit family and I'm in these situations, I see like the outright just like strong hate and I'm like, wow. But then a lot of people, like in my family specifically, I'm like, these people are like loving and kind, they really are, but they just don't have and they're just not receiving information. Like they're not, they're getting the trickle down information and they're not like informed in the same way. And so I don't think every person voting for Trump is, is evil. I think there are a lot of act, there's a lot of evil in that movement, I think. But at the end of the day, I do think a lot of people are very, just dangerously misinformed and misled and manipulated. Like a lot of people I feel are victims.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: One of my best friends who I've known since I was 18 is a big Trump supporter and we knew each other for so long and never talked politics. And then eventually, just in the past few years did we start broaching the subject. And we realized that we had really different perspectives on things, but we were so close that we knew that politics wasn't going to be a wedge that came between us. So now what I do is when I visit her, I spend the night at her house and we'll have a drink and we'll flip through all the different news stations and we'll talk about what we're seeing and what we think about it. And we really do have a lot of different perspectives. But what we agree on is that we need more ability to have conversations like that. And we both agree that things have gotten extreme. There's extreme left and extreme right, and, you know, and sometimes policies can feel like extreme left or extreme right. And we talked about just. We talk about compromise. We talk about stopping to recognize your common ground and your common values, and also to talk about where you get your news sources and to not necessarily shut each other down. To try and remain respectful even when we really disagree or think that the other person's. The information they're getting is a bunch of bullshit. Even when we think that, we just try and respect each other and be like, well, I love you and I know you can't. Not everybody can do that with each other. We have a long history. But we do need that. And so when I see people, I'm talking about a fringe of people who are really, really activated, and they're seeing other people as the cause of so many problems. There's a lot of scapegoating and a lot of anger being directed at individuals, especially individuals who might have any kind of sway in the course of an election. So sex workers are scapegoats?
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:40] Speaker C: Another reason that we're criminalized. So just back to Stormy and Trump. So Trump is just a typical shitty client. So many sex workers have had a Trump. I had a Trump, and I had to fire his ass. And now one of them is president. Probably others have been president.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Oh, how? You have to believe it.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe. I don't know as much about that situation, but Stormy posed a threat to Trump's power, going public with the scandal. This is one reason that sex workers are criminalized, that sex is criminalized, that women's bodies are controlled, that queerness is vilified and criminalized is because somebody like Trump, who we know is a quintessential shitty client, has desires, and he wants to sleep with a beautiful porn star like Stormy Daniels. And they meet at some golf tournament, I think it was. And from what I read, it sounds like they were talking about getting her on his show. And then sex ensued, which to me sounds like, okay, you're going to do this for me. I am Stormy Daniels. You're going to put me on your show, and in return, we will have sex. That's what I read into reading that. Maybe that's not the case. I am not Stormy. I'm not in her Shoes. But that's what I gleaned reading that. And so Trump has a desire, and he had to trick her by offering her something of value. A. Which is diminishing to his ego. That he would need to give a woman something and that she just wouldn't throw herself on him. And then they have sex, but then he never puts her on the show is also my understanding. So he takes that back. He doesn't. He doesn't pay.
This is why I have a big, wide, red umbrella for sex work. It's like sex can be exchanged for money or goods of other things of value. So stormy, going public with this, showing that Trump had desire, that he had sex with her for this reason, he never fulfilled his end of the bargain. And she's a porn star, which comes with its own stigma. There's also the issue of like. And I've always wondered about this. It's like, why can't powerful people be associated with sexually powerful people? And it's all about, I think, desire and it being seen as weakness and seeing transaction as weakness. Having to give something up, having to compromise, not just getting it all. Not just having people give you everything.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: They have, which is so interesting. God, that's a total wormhole. We could absolutely, like, spin forever on. Because it's. It is so interesting that, like, sex is the most powerful. It's like sex and money. Like, people think about sex and money.
[00:41:15] Speaker C: Sex work is sex and money.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: And literally sex work is sex and money. And I. But I think what you said earlier about, like, being too fucking powerful, like, I think that speaks on it so much because we already, as sex workers, have so much power because of the way that these powerful men, like, I. And I like saying that, like, these men who are bosses during the day, like, people have to, like, hold their tongue with this guy, and he's on his fucking knees with his mouth with my foot shoved down his throat. Like, that is. I mean, that is an extreme amount of power. And I think that they can't. They. When they step out of that space, when they have to present to the world, like, they can never present themselves as desiring that or weak or different or not following that traditional being exactly what they're supposed to be within the normal narrative narrative. And I also think, like, religiosity. I think the real, like, religious, the. Mixed with the conservative movement. I grew up in the. In the Bible Belt and the shame around sex and desire. And I mean, they're still living in the fucking 50s in a lot of ways, when it Comes to women and their roles there. I think that the men in power have a fucking reason to keep it that way.
[00:42:33] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: And I think they also get off. I was talking to a client about this recently. I was like, do you think you get off at the fact that it is taboo like that if this part of you was just openly accepted and you didn't have to like hide and feel all this? Because even though shame is a deep feeling, like it can also. It is a feeling, it's a strong feeling. And sometimes people just want to feel something that like strong and they want. It's almost like to feel ashamed of it in these moments when they're getting hard to the idea of what they like because it's like they. The taboo ness of it. And I. So I work with my clients a lot. I'm like, there's a way for this to be hot and for this to be exciting and for you to get off to this. But for you as a person to leave this room and not feel so much shame or not feel so much guilt, like the two things can. Can coexist.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: It is interesting to consider how engaging with sex work, the charge behind it, the rush could change for some people if it was more socially acceptable because you wouldn't get the thrill of doing something secret or doing something a little dirty or taboo or really wrong if it's. If it goes against your social conditioning. So it could lose some of its edge. But what I've learned as a dominatrix is that there's plenty of edge to be had within the arenas and playing, pushing and pulling with different dynamics. I love tease and denial.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: And there's so much more fun to be had actually like, again to the power thing. It's like the people who are. Who don't want sex workers to have rights again, clearly benefit from it being that that way. Because if you have pure intentions, if somebody wants to have a pure beautiful interaction, which there are so many interactions with clients, we've all had them with clients that are beautiful. I love deeply some of my clients and we have great relationships, friendships. There are so many good people. There are so many good people, so many good clients out there that want an honest interaction, who are fighting with us, who want us to have rights, who want themselves to be able to have that interaction without the government and without all these issues. It's the people who are fucking working in the shadows, the people who are actually doing shady shit, the people who are actually going to places, whether there's minors or people who are not consenting where it is not a consensual trade of sex. Like having it all be in the shadows makes it easier for those people to act. Us having rights makes it more difficult for them.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: There's something we talk about in sex workers rights about bringing sex work out into the open light of day where, yes, sure, maybe it could lose some of its edge or its allure if it wasn't such a thrilling, secretive, fringe society thing. But when we do that, what we're saying is let sex workers advertise online, let there be strip clubs, let people make porn. And I'm not saying there doesn't have to be any structure around that. I'm not opposed to structure personally. But let it exist and let people access it, because then you can talk about it, you can communicate about what's going on, you can educate around healthy ways of engaging, you can have public health monitoring around STDs and STIs and. And also if people are in trouble, they might have a better chance of being seen and recognized by their community if they're in an abusive relationship. That's where they're being coerced into sex work. And so it's really a public safety thing. And when we, when we encounter laws that, for instance, disallow sex workers from advertising online, well, it doesn't mean that sex work just stops.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: It's not going away ever.
[00:46:17] Speaker C: No, we don't just hang up our heels and go work somewhere else.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: It's pushed to the shadows, but it's just pushed onto the darknet. It's pushed into the places that are less regulated and not safe yet.
[00:46:29] Speaker C: There was a ongoing trend of website shutdowns, advertising website shutdowns that I was aware of from around 2014 up until SESTA FOSTA, which passed in 2018. It was four years and at a pretty brisk pace. Federal law enforcement was collaborating with local law enforcement to shut down different websites where sex workers would meet clients. So some of these might be local community forums, or they could be regional. Like there was one on the whole i5 corridor on the west coast called My Red Book. And so my Red Book was one of the earlier ones to get shut down. And I was in touch with activists in California at the time. And it was a crisis when My Red Book got seized because a lot of people were advertising it on it every day to try and find work, try and find clients. And the cool thing about My Red Book was you didn't need to pay to advertise. It was very accessible for a lot of different people who were accessing sex work so that they could make money that day. Maybe they were working, living from gig to gig. And so when that website went away a, it was scary, it was like seized and all over the media and then there's like police logos all over where the web website used to be and everybody's freaked out. But if you try to log in to go work because you need to pay for your motel that day, or you need to buy food or you need to get gas or anything like that, the place where you found work is no longer there. And so I was talking to activists at a place called Swap Sacramento Sex Workers outreach project. And they said that their hotline, their local phone was ringing off the hook with people in a panic asking, where's the website? Where's my red book? What am I going to do? Rent is coming up. Where am I going to advertise? And Swap Sacramento reported that a considerable number of people started doing street based sex work, Working outside and hailing down cars, sometimes for the first time, because they were in a. It caused such instability in their lives and they were already economically unstable, maybe housing unstable, some of them. And so it made people far, far less safe. Because being able to advertise online, you can get a vibe check from somebody when they email you, you can take your time, maybe you can research them a little bit and you can filter and that, that can literally save lives.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's like, and that's the thing I always put when these conversations, it's like, well, sex work shouldn't exist. Even if you don't think sex work should exist, even if you are actually truly 100% against sex work as a form of work, even if that's the case, do you not care about people being safe? Like, would you actually rather people go out on the streets? Would you rather people not have a safe place to go do this simply because you don't agree with it?
[00:49:07] Speaker C: Like, this is an example of bringing sex work out into the light. When sex workers got online and we were on the forefront of, we're on the forefront of all technological innovations because sex sells and we're entrepreneurs.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: So always been that way since the beginning of time. That's the other thing. I'm like, this is never going away, it's just going to reshape.
[00:49:25] Speaker C: Exactly. So sex workers going online in the early aughts enabled them to start advertising for themselves. A lot of sex workers became very independent and autonomous in their business practice because they could go and post an ad and Take their own pictures, and eventually take your own pictures on your cell phone and just do it all from your phone. So that decreases your reliance on other people, other people who might try and exploit you for the money that you can make them. And also it increases safety for screening clients. But also when it's online, there used to be a website called Back that people might remember. And Back Page got shut down in 2018 during a big wave of Internet censorship through two bills called Sesta and Fosta. Sesta and Foster were bills both aimed at stopping sex trafficking online. And at the same time, when those two bills passed, Backpage got taken down. It was this big one, two punch to online sex work advertising. And so overnight, sex workers all around the nation and in some parts of the world lost these online places to advertise. So what happened in Sacramento that I was describing happened all over the country. Country. And the impacts of that are destabilization. People are having a hard time finding clients. We could go. That's a whole thing. Yeah, a lot of things happened, but one that I thought was really interesting and that a lot of people don't know is that there were a bunch of private detectives, undercover officers, and different members of law enforcement who used Back Page as their primary place to try and identify and locate missing people. And the thing with having an online advertising site is it might sound scary to some people or like a meat market. But the cool thing is you can go and look at the photos and you can look at the people, and if somebody looks underage or if they look like somebody who's missing, you can call the number or you can write them an email and you can try and arrange to meet them. I mean, what an easy. And a lot of law enforcement would do that. They would use Back as a tool to do that. And so when you take sex work out of the light of day and you put it into the shadows, when you force it underground, you're actually hamstringing law enforcement from potentially identifying people who need help. And then people are more vulnerable to nefarious actors. There are people out there who want to make money off of sex workers, and they will really prioritize trying to control sex workers. Again, that whole power thing, different kind of desire for money, desire for money, controlling and manipulating people through abusive relationships that have a commercial angle.
So if you care about sex trafficking and violence against women and girls and children in general, then you should care about sex workers rights, because sex workers are advocating for safer conditions to do our business. Right.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: Like, we want to exist here safely. And I think that's something that most people outside of sex work don't understand. They, they're like, oh, it's anti trafficking. Like, of course you want, why would you not want to be anti trafficking? But when the, the reality is that a lot of the anti trafficking efforts that have been, that have been pushed forward, that have gone through have actually made it completely more unsafe for everyone. We want to be sex workers. No, there's nobody that wants to be more empowered in this business than us. Like, we want to be able to exist here safely. So it's confusing when it's like, why are we not more involved in the conversations to actually make it safer versus pushing forth bills that do nothing but harm everybody.
[00:52:44] Speaker C: And so this is just a circle back to, you know, one of the original points we talked about earlier and why we started EPA United is we are trying to help the general public, our allies, our friends, our families, or people who just are learning about sex work as a topic. A reason to care about this issue and the people in the adult industry is because it does ripple out to broader society. It could. What happens to sex workers with surveillance and censorship and how we can control our bodies might ripple out to your privacy and what you can say on and offline and what you can do with your body. So canaries in the coal mine. Yeah, that's when we really care about what happens to sex workers.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: I mean, even like, even banking, like most people don't realize that I've known so many sex workers who just have their bank accounts fucking shut down or who can't get mortgages, so they end up having to get a mortgage in their partner's name who ends up being fucking abusive and a piece of shit. Like, where does that end? If our bank accounts, if they can just come in and shut down our shit because they don't like what we do, where does that end? Again, we are at the forefront of this experiencing something that I don't, I think a lot of people don't think is possible. Like, most people go to work, wake up every day and don't worry about their account being shut the fuck down based on an adult site or sending them a deposit and the bank flagging it, whatever the fuck, you know, like these are, like you said, it ripples out to society. It's oftentimes a warning sign. And so kind of to wrap it up here then, I also, I did want to mention too, the importance of. It's not just a presidential election that's happening like There are local elections happening where you live, and those matter just as much. The important.
[00:54:32] Speaker C: Sometimes they matter more if you care about who's sheriff in your town, if you care about how your tax dollars are spent locally, if you care about who the judge is. All these things. I mean, paying attention to your local elections.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: Totally. I mean, does the sheriff. Does the sheriff have a history of spending a ton of money on ridiculous sex worker stings and locking up sex workers? Are they fucking focused on actually your money?
[00:54:59] Speaker C: I'm sure that everybody remembers the call to defund the police that was happening. George. George Floyd. Racial justice uprisings. Some of my colleagues in sex work and I have narrowed it down to, at the very least, defund vice. Vice isn't doing anything for anybody, creating problems.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's where I thought you were going when you were talking about the police and stuff, being involved in Back Page. Because I've heard just so many horror stories of undercover police officers fucking meeting a sex worker and sometimes actually having sex with them or doing things with them and then afterwards saying, oh, hope you're arrested. And it's. I mean, it's such a crazy abuse of power and it's so intrusive and violating. And yeah, I'm happy that they were using it to do something good at once, but unfortunately these days I just.
[00:55:50] Speaker C: Hear so much like, pass on the police as like, yeah, no, because that's.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Where I thought you were going with it. I mean, I remember Vegas, super bowl this year, like a ton of women, a ton of sex workers were caught up in stings. And this is what people need to understand. Like, you're not doing anything. You're not. You're not protecting the children. You're not saving traffic victims. This is a woman who on her, on her own accord, her consenting, consensually showed up to a work appointment to take care of herself. No one was forcing or coursing her to be there. Like, you're not actually, you're not doing. That's why, again, local elections matter. Like our. Who are we putting into office? Who are we giving the power to make these type of decisions? So in closing, thank you. This has been so great. I feel like we could go on forever. I am so happy we were able to. To chat. And I want you to tell the people a. Where to find you, but also just what to do next. Some steps they can take.
[00:56:54] Speaker C: First of all, thank you, Lo. We went in a lot of different directions and I enjoyed every step of the journey. I would love to keep talking with you. There's a lot more we could discuss. And thank you everybody listening at home. My name is Savannah Sly, and if you were interested in anything we talked about tonight, please go and check out epau.org that is our voter mobilization website. If you are a sex worker, or if you just love and adore sex workers, or if you are an ally to or a friend of a sex worker, please go to EPAunited.org and pledge to vote. And while you're there, you can check your voter status just to make sure that you don't have any problems at the polls when you go to vote on November 5th. And I can be found on Twitter at savannahsly and this has been a delight. Thank you so much.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. My subs and my. My subs specifically better have heard that and better. Better be following those instructions. I feel like we have so much more to talk about. I can't wait to have you back on one day. Thank everybody for listening. Get your asses out there and vote again. EPA United is nonpartisan. We just want you to go out there, do the research, get informed and vote. Vote, vote, vote, vote. See you next week, guys.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: What you waiting for?
She's got what you need While you over there at the door Nightmares are dreams you just need to leave the queen has all that you should need Just say that queen begum that will be done Come right in, close the door just wait for what she's got in store Come right in, close the door just wait for what she got in store Dreams can come from nightmares too the queendom will take over you Dreams can come from nightmares too the queendom will take over you.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: Go and get them.
[00:59:01] Speaker C: Love.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: Thy queendom. Come is a production of TQC, LLC. Music by Guillermo Jamat Jr. And LDK. All stories and audio used with permission. Names and details have been changed to protect the sluts involved.
Oh, damn. That was like a piece of spoken word. That felt like a poem. Truly.
