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As if the deck wasn’t already stacked against sex workers, the advent of FOSTA-SESTA made already what was a tricky maze to navigate an almost insolvable one. After two years of enactment, it’s clear that this set of legislation was a mistake–not only because it exacerbated the very problems it sought to solve, but the groups it had an obligation to improve the lives of have only had it worse since.
Lillitha, a sex worker, watched as avenues for promoting sex work were getting shut down in real time. “It definitely got harder, things got taken down every once in a while, but I remember after [FOSTA-SESTA] got enacted, it went under my radar for a minute until one of my other friends was talking about it,” she says. “But then it clicked into me because about a month after that happened, I had my Instagram deleted for soliciting sex and prostitution. […] It’s made advertising for the most part, especially if you’re online, a lot harder.”
That online sex work was going to be heavily affected was a forgone conclusion–what wasn’t immediately obvious is how that transcended into offline work as well. “I do a lot of cosplay in anime conventions because I do [it] for camming, and I have to be very careful about how…
