Last night, federal agents seized longtime Bay Area sex work advertising network MyRedBook, arresting the editors and disabling the site in the process as part of an ongoing sex work sting.
Longtime Bay Area based escort/massage advertising website MyRedBook seized by FBI. http://t.co/OuTLq7y478pic.twitter.com/aPv03szoSe
— Melissa Gira Grant (@melissagira) June 25, 2014
The Sex Workers Outreach Project for the Bay Area issued an immediate response:
We are very alarmed by the seizure of Myredbook. Many Bay Area sex workers have been able to improve their working conditions by using Myredbook as the site provided a private, discreet venue for negotiations that otherwise often happen in a public venues or on the street. Now that the only free local online female sex worker ad hosting site is gone, where will people go to work? We are very concerned for those who may be forced into more dangerous working conditions at this time.
Today we also lost extensive online forums for a community of sex workers to keep each other safe, screen clients, and blacklist predators. Myredbook also hosted resource guides for sex workers who were struggling and created a venue for community counseling for those in need. Many local outreach organizations used this forum to connect with vulnerable sex workers.
Friends of the Toast Melissa Gira Grant and Charlotte Shane pointed out on Twitter how seizures like this one intimidate and endanger sex workers:
Shutting down ad websites — especially free ones — puts stress on sex workers, limits their options, compromises their safety & control.
— Melissa Gira Grant (@melissagira) June 25, 2014
Our government is hunting us with a religious zeal, and they have abundant support in doing so.
— Charlotte Shane (@CharlotteNB) June 25, 2014
Sex workers! Here is a general Know Your Rights Guide to law enforcement encounters. Please RT: http://t.co/DzTcZyByKy
— SandyBottoms (@MsSandyBottoms) June 26, 2014
For anyone interested and/or affected by this seizure, there’s going to be a SWOP Bay Area meeting on Thursday, June 26th.
Tags: government seizure, news, sex work, sex workers’ rights
Thanks for reporting on this and for linking to SWOP!
Between this and SCOTUS and my anticipation re: Hobby Lobby:
TO THE SEA~~
I’ll send up the toast signal when I find a suitable island.
Oh shit, I totally forgot that the Hobby Lobby judgement is going to be coming down soon. Make it a big island.
PLEASE let the toast signal be Dirtbag Nurse smoking a cigarette while taking a dump!
Between this and SCOTUS and my anticipation re: Hobby Lobby:
TO THE SEA~~
I'll send up the toast signal when I find a suitable island.
Ugh this is so fucked up and there is way more important shit in the Bay Area for the FBI to do. This just feels like when a cop pulls you over for some BS reasons because he needs to fill a quota, except this puts people’s livelihoods at risk.
From twitter, writer @avflox says
“the adult directory @erosguide is offering discounts to new users to help sex workers displaced by the FBI seizure of MyRedBook.”
thx Mallory
thx Mallory
Yeesh. Thanks for covering this :/
While I agree with some of the concerns expressed by the sex workers as an individual who lives in an apartment directly below the apartment in one of the buildings where this was going on, I don't think the FBI or police department were wrong to crack down. In the last half year, I had a near constant stream of unfamiliar men accidentally knocking on my door at random times, sometimes late at night because they exited the elevator off at the wrong floor. Numerous strange men going in and out of the building and roaming the halls at all hours. In the elevators and lobby I'd run into clearly underage women who didn't know their way around the building and did not speak much English and seemed terrified if I asked if I could help them or inquired what they were doing in the building. All this along with the servicing of clients right above me all day (when I was home) and through most of the night. So, you know, perspective is key here.