CHICAGO — The Democratic Party released on Sunday its official platform for the 2024 presidential election, omitting language from the 2020 platform that stated a commitment to “protect the lives of sex workers.”
Both the 2020 and the 2024 platforms contain sections titled “Ending Violence Against Women,” in which Democrats commit to “ending sexual assault, domestic abuse and other violence against women.”
The 2020 platform voted by the convention that nominated President Joe Biden, however, included the following passage: “We recognize that sex workers, who are disproportionately women of color and transgender women, face especially high rates of sexual assault and violence, and we will work with states and localities to protect the lives of sex workers.”
The 2024 version released over the weekend, expected to be approved at the Democratic National Convention currently taking place in Chicago, omits the statement recognizing sex workers and committing to protect their lives.
As XBIZ reported, Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has been widely criticized by both sex worker and adult industry activists and organizations for her vocal support of, and prosecution of cases under, the controversial FOSTA-SESTA legislation.
In a 2019 interview, Harris claimed to support decriminalization of sex work, but described her approach in terms that contradict that claim and instead closely match the criminalizing Nordic Model.
The Nordic Model technically decriminalizes the selling of sexual services by sex workers, but ramps up penalties and enforcement focus for any third party profiting off of the sex worker — categorized as pimping — and for buyers of sexual services. Its goal is to end sex work in all forms and “rescue” sex workers, whom it considers as invariably exploited.
In the 2019 interview, Harris stated that as San Francisco district attorney, she advocated “to stop arresting these prostitutes and instead go after the johns, and the pimps.”
This conflation of “johns” — a tellingly outdated word for those who pay for sexual services — and “pimps” — which in practice includes anyone who helps a sex worker in any way, regardless of coercion — is a common strategy of both outright prohibitionists and the supporters of the “Nordic Model” of sex work, which in practice drives sex work underground, forcing sex workers to operate in a shadowy, hazardous environment.