Sex Work in Queens: The Uphill Battle for Decriminalization
On a clear night in November 2017, Yang Song was facing arrest. Yang, a 38-year-old Chinese immigrant working in a Flushing massage parlor, supported herself and her family through sex work. That night, she was trapped by an undercover officer in a sting operation. A tactical team was banging on her door.
The police raid was organized in response to an anonymous prostitution complaint earlier that week. Yang, who went by street name “Sissi,” had been arrested for prostitution the same year and was enrolled in court-mandated counseling sessions. In 2016, Yang reported being sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a man who flashed a law enforcement badge. The case was closed when she couldn’t identify the perpetrator in a lineup.
Yang was ambushed. Confronted with impending arrest in a system that failed to help her before, she threw herself off a fourth-floor ledge. She fell 30 feet from a Flushing apartment building. Unconscious, she was taken to the hospital. At 8:04.p.m, she was pronounced dead.
A year later, the Queens DA investigation into her case concluded that there had been no police wrongdoing.
Song Yang’s death reinvigorated the sex work decriminalization movement in Queens. Incidences of harassment and the abuse of power by authorities are far from uncommon in cases involving sex workers, however reporting violence or dehumanizing treatment rarely yields arrests.
Queens consistently ranks first in New York City’s prostitution arrest numbers, followed by Brooklyn and the Bronx. According to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Queens made up almost a fifth of the state’s arrests for prostitution in 2018, which is down from 2011, when Queens represented close to half of such arrests. Half of Queens’ 2.3 million population consists of immigrants, even more are People of Color, and Queens is home to one of the largest populations of transgender and nonbinary folk in the country. It is these vulnerable populations that are over-represented in the sex work industry, and therefore disproportionately affected by the laws and discussions surrounding the trade. Queens has been polarized by the national battle for the decriminalization of sex work for over a decade. While Decrim-advocates argue that the oppressive presence of law enforcement poses a danger to the safety and financial security of sex workers, the movement is opposed by those who believe decriminalization would only expand an inherently precarious industry.
Within Queens, Jackson Heights, Corona and East Elmhurst account for the largest proportion of sex work arrests. Roosevelt Avenue, dubbed the “Old Times Square” for its $2 dance clubs, unlicensed bars and drug deal hotspots, runs through Jackson Heights and into Flushing, and is a hub for illicit massage parlors and brothels that facilitate sex work.
Since 2010, political figures such as the late Sen. Jose Peralta of the 13th district, who represented Roosevelt Avenue and its surrounding areas, pushed to discourage prostitution and ‘clean up the streets.’ With initiatives like enforcing license rules for bars, increasing fines for clubs that violate cabaret rules, and outlawing the distribution of sex-work-related flyers, political representatives have attempted to curb the prevalence of sex work. However, since 2016, pro-sex-work progressives have swept what was once Peralta’s district.
Jessica Ramos, the current senator of the 13th district (Elmhurst, Corona, Jackson Heights) is a warrior for the full decriminalization of sex work. In 2019, a decriminalization bill was drafted by the sex worker advocacy organization Decrim NY, and garnered support by Ramos and other progressives across the state. Spearheaded by Ramos, the Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act is historic in its aim to decriminalize the trading of sex between consenting adults without imposing on any standing laws on sex trafficking and coercion.
Despite growing traction for the decriminalization effort in the New York state, Ramos’ decriminalization bill is still stalled by governor Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to review the legislation.
Ramos, like her progressive colleagues, have advocated sex work as an issue of livelihood and human rights, rather than criminal behavior. Between 2012 and 2015, a staggering 85 percent of the subjects of “loitering for prostitution” arrests were Black or Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities experience higher levels of policing than their cis and straight peers. A Columbia study of gender and law concluded that young lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals are up to ten times more likely to be incarcerated in juvenile detention for prostitution charges than their straight counterparts. The risk of criminalization and arrest is amplified for those whose identity intersects a racial and sexual minority.
New York City has the largest non-binary population in the country, with an estimated 50,000 transgender people concentrated in Manhattan and Queens. Elmhurst and Jackson Heights are focal centers for the transgender community and arguably the largest transgender hub in the world. Transgender folk are overrepresented in the sex work industry: a 2015 US Transgender survey revealed that 19 percent of all transgender people and 47 percent of Black transgender respondents engaged in sex work at some point in their lives. Several factors explain this statistic — transgender folk are far more likely than their non-transgender counterparts to experience homelessness and housing insecurity, a lack of access to basic healthcare, unemployment and poverty, thus, sex work can be critical in ensuring their livelihood.
Foreign-born immigrants, particularly from Asia, also bear the brunt of the criminalization of the sex work industry in Queens. 49 percent the Asian population in New York City is concentrated in Queens, and five neighborhoods in the borough have Asian majorities, including Yang Song’s home of Flushing.
Yang Song worked in what the NYPD calls the ‘illicit massage business.’ Authorities have determined that Flushing is the epicenter of an underground national network of massage parlors that offer illegal sexual services. These parlors largely employ Chinese, Korean and Thai women. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of Asian-identified people charged with unlicensed massaging and prostitution increased by 2,700 percent. Often, these arrests follow sting operations, like the one that took Song Yang’s life.
Because sex work disproportionately affects racial minorities, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community, Ramos is adamant that Queens must protect the safety and stability of those in the trade, rather than push their populations further toward the outskirts of society. “We have failed in creating economic opportunities. The fact of the matter is, we need to ensure that there’s work for everybody. Ultimately, if people choose to engage in sex work, they need to be able to do it in a safe way,” said Jessica Ramos in an interview with The Cut.
Queens district attorney Melina Katz, elected in 2019, ran a complicated campaign regarding sex work. Throughout her campaign, she made promises to LGBTQ+ political clubs about backing the complete decriminalization of sex work, which she disregarded upon her election. In May last year, she announced the launch of the Human Trafficking Bureau, which would “aggressively” target all buyers of sex work services. Criminalizing buyers rather than workers is referred to as the ‘Nordic model,’ and directly counters the decriminalization model. Decriminalization aims to comprehensively legitimize sex work without legalizing it, which would imply government regulation and taxation. While the Decrim-model strives to remove the presence of law enforcement from sex work as an occupation, the Nordic model aims to prosecutes customers, cutting off a key facilitator of the industry.
The ‘national awakening’ that has marked the months of 2020 spurred long overdue revelations on the systems of oppression that have pervaded the lives of minorities for centuries; that this mistreatment is magnified tenfold in sex work so often eludes the headlines in mainstream media. Jared Trujillo, a public defender, Decrim-advocate, former sex worker, and President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, which is heavily involved in the decriminalization effort in Queens, fundamentally disagrees with Katz’s approach to sex work. “They tried sex work prohibition in the 1920s, thinking that criminalizing a behavior would make it go away, and yet, it just created an undercurrent and drove the industry further underground,” says Trujillo. “There are no half-measures, there’s no such thing as ‘partial decriminalization’, you’re still marginalizing the worker in a harmful way.” Targeting buyers of sex work has historically made customers less willing to provide personal information and more likely to engage in violent behavior toward sex workers. Additionally, the Nordic model gives sex workers less bargaining power, less client choice and forces increased dependence on potentially exploitative managers.
Trujillo recognizes that Queens is home to a number of influential progressive pro-sex-work representatives, like Ramos. Nonetheless, he is far more occupied with the reality that right now, decriminalization is out of reach because of the policy-decisions of DA Katz and other more moderate politicians like gov. Cuomo, who avoid a stance on sex work altogether. “If Queens is at the forefront of anything, it is that Melinda Katz misrepresented what she stood for,” says Trujillo.
Preceding the judicial fight for sex workers has been the far older and more enduring ideological battle around sex work. Sex work is opposed by the conservative camp on religious and moral grounds, as well as liberal feminist groups due to its stigma as a degradative and violent trade. Conservatives have long argued that engaging in the business is principally sinful for both buyers and providers.
Jesus Gonzales, a conservative republican candidate for senator in the 13th district, objects to Jessica Ramos’ championing for the sex work community. “Sex work is a choice, and if people are choosing to enter that work, there are going to be repercussions because it is and should remain illegal,” says Gonzales. To him, keeping sex workers within the confines of the law is necessary to protect women and children from entering a fundamentally dangerous business. He strongly opposes the decriminalization movement, classifying the sex trade as one that contributes to the objectification and abuse of women. Gonzales does not see decriminalization as different from legalization, or even endorsement. Decriminalizing the trade would attract more participants in both demand and supply.
Gonzales’ campaign goals are to incentivize more job opportunities through small businesses investment in Queens. Whether this initiative would necessarily provide better options for transgender Women of Color and undocumented sex workers is unclear. Gonzales maintains that the successful decriminalization of sex work is “impossible and unrealistic.” In November, Gonzales lost to his Democratic opponent Jessica Ramos by a landslide.
Gonzales is not alone in his moral position on sex work, as some liberal women’s rights activists take a similar stance. Some feminist organizations have long argued that sex work expands an enterprise that preys on the most vulnerable populations in a community and actively debases women. This reasoning is not entirely unfounded, as sex workers are at much higher risk of systematically experiencing harassment as a result of their work. The likeliness that sex workers experience workplace violence falls between 45 to 75 percent on average, found researchers in 2013. The same study also revealed, however, that in areas with higher levels of policing, criminalization and regulation, the risk of physical and sexual violence is increased.
Genevieve Gluck, 36, is a feminist activist known as @WomenReadWomen online, and supports Melinda Katz’s model for criminalizing the buyers of sex services. She does not use the term ‘sex work,’ labeling the trade as ‘sex slavery’ instead. To Gluck, sex work is essentially men “paying to rape,” and the Nordic model is the only one that would successfully address the core problem: men’s desires. “When women and girls are exploited, punish the exploiters. Provide help,” says Gluck. Full decriminalization is a nonsensical concept to her, and she disagrees most with the generation of young pro-sex-work activists in New York City. “The new Decrim generation has a fatal blind spot due to their privilege: they don’t, or won’t, understand the absolute horrors of the sex industry and would rather make the issue about their own desire to profit.”
Like other sex work abolitionists and conservatives like Gonzales, Gluck maintains that sex work upholds a patriarchal view of sexuality as something to be commodified and exploited. Sex work reinforces the subjugation of women and the idea that women can be ‘bought’ and ‘sold’ for male gratification. This argument posits that there is no such thing as empowerment or choice in the sex industry; there is no difference between sex work by choice and sex work by coercion.
What is certain about the debate surrounding sex work in Queens is that both sides are uncompromising. Decriminalization supporters see their fight as one for the safety of the marginalized and vulnerable communities that are so concentrated in Queens. Backers of the Nordic model and anti-sex-work advocates are convinced of a moral high-ground and believe that all participants in sex work are being exploited and degraded.
Trujillo recognizes that while the notion of legitimized sex work was once a fringe idea, it isn’t anymore. He is optimistic that with continued education, outreach and activism around equity for sex workers, decriminalization will edge further into the mainstream, starting in Queens. For now, the Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act is still stalled, and Katz remains resolute about the implementation of the Nordic model in Queens, but with more progressive politicians speaking out in support of sex work every year, the pressure is on.
