Los Angeles, CA — Adult service directory Slixa is working to raise awareness in the sex worker community with an insightful and informative new blog post: “How To Keep Your Accounts From Getting Frozen in This Icy Time.”
In this time of FOSTA/SESTA, the threat of a potential banking freeze is higher than ever. Slixa has written at length before about how there are no 2020 presidential candidates who support sex workers, but here’s a new spin: There are now candidates who are looking to punch service providers in the pocketbook.
Slixa’s opinion piece goes into great detail on what sex workers go through as they, over the years, have found first-hand that services such as Venmo, PayPal and GoFundMe will not allow money exchange on their platforms and/or will cancel established accounts.
While the exclusion from payment platforms isn’t necessarily current news, a new bill making its way through the ranks is.
H.R.2219 (115th Congress), called the “End Banking for Human Traffickers Act,” is backed by Elizabeth Warren and Marco Rubio. The legislation would:
Require the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports to include a nation-by-nation analysis of whether each foreign country has a mechanism to prevent financial transactions from people accused or suspected of human trafficking.
Add the Secretary of the Treasury to the list of top government officials on the President’s Interagency Task Force To Monitor and Combat Trafficking, to add more of a financial oversight element.
Direct the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to include in its responsibilities “combating illicit financing relating to severe forms of trafficking in persons.”
As consensual sex work is conflated with coercive sex trafficking in the minds of many, including politicians and voters, you can see how this legislation is of concern.
There are ways for workers to protect their assets, and Slixa outlines some of these tactics in their post. Most importantly though, it’s important for voters to pay attention to what their candidates support, as well as how their endeavors may support them — or, in this case, decidedly may not.
Learn more about Slixa at Slixa.com and via twitter.com/Slixa.
