When Sex work can decolonize
I’ve been thinking about the feedback loop between colonization, sex work, and sex trafficking. After moving to Puerto Rico two years ago, it’s been hard not to count the ways that colonization breeds an environment where sex work is unsafe:
Title 60 tax cuts offer “the rich get richer” incentives mainly to white Americans moving to Puerto Rico, who give very little to the island in return. Men and straight couples then fetishize Puerto Rican workers by demanding services at lower “local prices”, driving down the average market cost of services. Furthermore, in a colonial project sixteen times poorer than the poorest state in the US, these clients’ wealth makes them above the law, and they know it. Workers, mainly poor femmes of color, are left with little recourse when they are robbed, mistreated, or exploited. This dynamic mirrors that seen on American Reservations where Tribal Police don’t have jurisdiction to arrest non-native abusers, many of which are on their lands to drill for oil. Native women experience disproportionately higher rates of violence and exploitation, partly because non-native Americans can largely do what they want on land that they, in fact, raped and pillaged for.
US colonial projects, by nature, receive less freedom and funding than constitutional states do. Puerto Rico only receives 40% of the federal funding that US states receive for everything from education to social services and policing. Although I’m not a huge proponent of the police, without strong social services, or the ability to investigate human trafficking and femicides, violence against women is a huge problem on the island. Similarly, tribal lands received a whopping 3% of the federal funding going to states in fiscal year 2024. Ostensibly, it’s only getting worse in 2025.
Religious stigma is another colonial driver of unsafe sex work and sex trafficking, and colonized lands are rife with it–meaning that sex is taboo, therefor paying for or getting paid for sex is unspoken. Unlike what I’ve known in the US, there are only the whisperings of sex worker collectives, sex worker organizing, or local client forums in Puerto Rico. Religious stigma’s stronghold is due in part to a majority of Gen X and Millennial Puerto Ricans having moved to the States for better opportunities. The generation gap on the island means that web-based technologies are less commonly used and that Boomer ideologies are woven into the culture. Christian religion was forced on tribes across the Caribbean and Americas as “an opiate of the masses” – a way to acculturate native peoples into unquestioning obedience. Along with native people’s understandable distrust of the colonizer and the colonizer’s medicine, religion undoubtedly plays a role in many public health issues plaguing tribal lands.
The line from colonization to sex work and trafficking are clear, but can that line be a circle? Can sex worker organizing and harm reduction in the sex trades also decolonize?
Sex work is one of the only professions in the world where women make more than men. As caretakers, that money is largely redistributed by sex workers into childcare, elder care, and community care. When Indigenous and Latina sex workers come together to dissolve stigma, create community-wide safety protocols, resource each other and the land they work on–they are returning to the ways of their ancestors; they are practicing sex worker mutual aid. They are decolonizing.
The only time I advocate to legalize rather than decriminalize sex work is to bring resources to poor colonial projects like Puerto Rico. Post Hurricane Maria, the 2017 natural disaster that devastated the island, a governor-formed economic committee put forth that legalizing sex work and marijuana had the potential to reverse the island’s debt. Instead, an Obama-formed fiscal control board cut healthcare funding and raised the price of utilities. De hecho, I’m glad that Puerto Rico’s corrupt government wasn’t given the right to further regulate people’s bodies; however, with the movement to keep Generation Z on the island, the political tide is turning. The Independence Party and their candidate Juan Dalmau won an unprecedented 33% and second place in last November’s elections (probably more when factoring in rampant voter fraud). I hope that La Alianza’s platform for economic stability and sovereignty can include legalized sex work under the oversight of a Puerto Rican sex worker-led health and rights committee from start to finish.
Pero, we can’t get there without harm reduction. Participating in the sex trade within currently colonized communities is like being in the Wild West. There are very few best practices for both sellers and buyers. Harm reduction is essential for helping people stay safe, maintain autonomy within their work, and stay healthy enough to keep the mutual aid cycle going. Puerto Rican organizations like Hermanx De La Calle, Entre Putxs, Michigan’s Bimose Ode, as well as Minnesota’s Southside Harm Reduction offer Indigenous and Latinx-led harm reduction services to colonized femmes and sex workers. Let’s further promote and invest in their work to prevent sex trafficking and create safer sex working conditions. Together, Indigenous and Latinx sex workers can decolonize.
Photo by Huck Reyes
