A university professor told a self-described ‘sex worker activist’ at the Socialism 2023 Conference in Chicago Sept. 2 to create a mass movement to ensure the rights of child sex workers. “A mass movement has a kind of persuasive value,” said Jules Gill-Peterson, a Johns Hopkins University history professor, according to audio captured by undercover journalist Karlyn Borysenko.
Gill-Peterson continued, “If you’re part of a project trying to think about the young people’s role in the sex industry … one of the ways you might feel like you’re going to be able to lend time and energy to that effort is if it doesn’t feel like you could be hung up to dry alone for it. Right?” Gill-Peterson had responded to a question from Chanel, who introduced herself as a sex worker activist “working at the intersection of migrants, justice, capitalism, and sex work,” during the question-and-answer section of The Politics of Childhood panel. Gills-Peterson and Sophie Lewis, author of “Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation,” served as panelists of this session.
“We’ve been dealing with the child sex panic, you know, the child sex trafficking conspiracy theories since the late 90s,” Chanel began, according to the audio. “I had never until this panel been like, ‘What about young people in the sex industry a spart of a children’s liberation vision?’ There’s just like a utopia I had never really thought of before because the world feels so separated and the issue of youth and sex work is so incredibly loaded.” Chanel said she wanted to hear from people thinking about a movement for the ‘liberation of children’ that includes “highly marginalized kids on the street’” and “people selling sex to survive … foster care systems.” “Are we just like walking into too much trouble to try to even address that when talking about the rights of children?” Chanel asked, according to the audio. Chanel said she did not think she would ask her question if the event was being livestreamed. “But young people in the sex industry deserve and need rights at minimum actual liberation and justice,” she said. Borysenko, the journalist who captured the audio, told Campus Reform it seemed like the audience accepted that children should be sex workers and that their ‘rights’ to solicit sex should be protected. Prior to the recording, there was conversation about abolishing the age of consent, she said.
“Socialists do not believe that children are the ‘private property’ of their parents,” she told Campus Reform. “They believe children are little adults that can make all their own decisions.” The context of the at clip is that there had already been a full hour-long discussion of liberating children from their parents.
“We’ve been dealing with the child sex panic, you know, the child sex trafficking conspiracy theories since the late 90s,” Chanel began, according to the audio. “I had never until this panel been like, ‘What about young people in the sex industry a spart of a children’s liberation vision?’ There’s just like a utopia I had never really thought of before because the world feels so separated and the issue of youth and sex work is so incredibly loaded.” Chanel said she wanted to hear from people thinking about a movement for the ‘liberation of children’ that includes “highly marginalized kids on the street’” and “people selling sex to survive … foster care systems.”
