On Sunday, February 2, 2014, Women With a Vision’s Executive Director Deon Haywood appeared on msnbc’s Melissa Harris Perry Show on a panel entitled, “Sex, Money, and the Super Bowl,” alongside guests Dave Zirin, Sports Editor at The Nation, Joy Reid, Managing Editor of TheGrio.com, and Yamiche Alcindor, National Reporter at USA Today.
WWAV was honored to be apart of this discussion, and to have the opportunity to talk about the differences between sex work and sex trafficking, and the mass criminalization of sex workers during events like the Super Bowl.
As Deon explained to viewers, consensual sex workers making choices around their economic realities is not the same as sex trafficking. Deon spoke about how social myths and mass criminalization around events like the Super Bowl result in greater targeting of poor women. Local law enforcement agencies don’t make the distinction between what is consensual sex work and what is sex trafficking, and they end up targeting all sex workers, arresting poor women and transgender women at high rates instead of actual sex traffickers.
As Women With a Vision has witnessed, this mass criminalization results in more problems, locking already marginalized women out of social services, jobs, and opportunities to move from poverty. It puts women at greater risk for HIV/AIDS and for having violence done to them. The very women meant to be “protected” are the ones that end up being criminalized and targeted.
Listen to MHP’s segments from Super Bowl Sunday:

All of us at WWAV continue to be grateful for your support as we fight to create a world that recognizes and values the power of the women and LGBTQ people that we stand alongside.