5. Survival Sex

Explicit content warning

11/07/18 • 31 min

Sold In America

Noor meets Laya, a trans woman of color who became a sex worker after she was shut out from her family and job. It’s called survival sex -- sex work done purely to survive. What makes sex work dangerous for people like Laya is that she can’t report violent buyers to the police without fear of being arrested. Now, she’s trying to get a new law passed by the Washington, D.C. city council to decriminalize the buying and selling of sex. Is this the solution Noor has been searching for, or just a band-aid?

You can hear ad-free episodes of Sold in America only on Stitcher Premium. For a free month of premium, go to stitcherpremium.com and use promo code 'AMERICA'.

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4. Bunnies at Work

Nevada is the land of legalized prostitution. At the Bunny Ranch brothel, Noor explores a model of sex entirely as a business – just like any other. She meets a highly paid prostitute who plans to leave the ranch with hundreds of thousands in savings. The infamous pimp who runs the place argues that if you're selling sex for money in America and you're not doing it legally in a brothel, you're a criminal. But Noor learns that only a select few can meet the standards for working in the brothel.

You can hear ad-free episodes of Sold in America only on Stitcher Premium. For a free month of premium, go tostitcherpremium.com and use promo code 'AMERICA'.

This episode is sponsored by Casper Mattresses (www.casper.com/NOOR code: NOOR).

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6. Shutting Down the Online Marketplace

A huge portion of the sex trade takes place online. Huge websites like Backpage and Craigslist used to offer a place where sex workers posted ads for their services. But these websites were also seen as a breeding ground for illegal trafficking. That’s why Congress passed legislation this year to hold websites accountable for posts related to prostitution. Politicians from both parties voted to pass a bill cracking down on online sex trade -- because how could you not want to help sex trafficking victims? The bill is called FOSTA/SESTA. But many sex workers see it differently. Noor heads to Capitol Hill for the first ever sex work lobby day and finds out that the people this law was meant to protect were never consulted before it passed -- and now say it's made their lives far more dangerous.

You can hear ad-free episodes of Sold in America only on Stitcher Premium. For a free month of premium, go to stitcherpremium.com and use promo code 'AMERICA'.