WORDS and ILLUSTRATION by PENELOPE DARIO
In the final stretch of 2024 we are looking back on what has been a tumultuous 12 months and bracing ourselves for the approaching horizon of an uncertain 2025. Regardless of where we stand on the many ideological spectrums that are dividing us more each day, we the people of the adult entertainment industry are united in our fight for sustainable survival.
While sex working histories and networks span the globe, the laws that govern the US and their effect on the global economy of sex were made painfully evident by the passing of FOSTA/SESTA in 2018 and the subsequent shutdown of Backpage.com. That was the beginning of a tidal shift that came to threaten the liberties granted to independent service providers by the development of the internet. But this industry prides itself on our collective and individual resilience (albeit sometimes begrudgingly) so we banded together and found new, more autonomous ways to operate through the development of sex worker-owned advertising sites like Tryst.link, starting mutual aid funds, and connecting with other working girls in person and identifying the pain points we need to address collectively.
When the pandemic hit, those of us who could, stayed home and hit the sheets while independent creator sites boomed and ushered in a new wave of adult creators online—many of whom may have never considered this line of work. Whether it was COVID-19 related economic instability or heard mentality, flesh peddling was suddenly en-vogue and the topic of sex work became a mainstream buzzword. Clickbait headlines touted seven figure incomes for account holders and introduced the embellished idea that anyone could just go online, post some feet pics, and retire in their mid-twenties. Now everyone wants a slice of this pie, and it's not just college girls and single moms, its corporations and companies—large and small.
Booms of this magnitude are bound to inspire backlash…
Under section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1934, the United States protects communications platforms from being held liable for information provided by third party users. With the development of the world wide web, section 230 was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to include “interactive computer services” thereby granting immunity to websites for their user generated content. Yet in 2020, after successfully passing FOSTA/SESTA, congress decided to take things up a notch and proposed a bill to amend section 230 called the EARN IT ACT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act). This would undermine end-to-end encryption and push companies to monitor private messages risking the privacy of anyone on an internet platform with US based users—affecting most of the world. EARN IT has still not been passed since its introduction, but it hasn’t died either.
This year 11 states implemented age verification laws on adult websites, an initiative that to many civilians may seem like a response to the effects of sexual material on the minds of minors—a phenomena that was impossible to ignore after Billie Eilish’s public condemnation of pornography and her personal account of how premature exposure affected her. Which begs the question, why is the role of responsible parenting absent in this discussion? Why is sexuality treated so differently than the rest of the 18 or 21+ products and services on the market? Laws are for adults, and children should be governed by their parents, who have a legal responsibility to protect them from harm. If a child drinks a bottle of toxic household cleaning products with a warning label, parental neglect is put into question, bleach doesn't suddenly become outlawed.
Any sex worker worth their salt will tell you they don't want minors accessing their explicit content any more than the most conservative politician. But age verification laws are our modern government’s call back to the time of obscenity laws, when trans representation, abortion access and sex worker rights were but a pipe dream for our predecessors. What seems like a quick fix to a contentious problem regarding nuclear family values carries big risks in its implementation. Surprise, surprise.
Age-restricted websites now have to use verification software run by third parties, which have already experienced major data breaches that leaked the information of thousands of people—legal names, home address, ID numbers, and email addresses linked to their wanking preferences. The world’s leading porn site, PornHub.com, has opted out of participating in this kind of cyber predicament bondage and simply blocked their own site from IP addresses in these states and is focusing on funding the development of more rational methods to achieve the ultimate shared goal of keeping porn away from kids.
FOSTA/SESTA was passed thanks to campaign messaging that promised to protect children from sex trafficking, which rather than stopping the internet's facilitation of trafficking, actually made it harder to find victims and bring real perpetrators to justice. What it did achieve was putting countless sex workers back on the streets in record numbers after losing their means of advertising. And while sex workers bore the brunt of this legislation, age-restriction threatens the safety of any civilian with “deviant” sexual interests in conservative states. Everyone's privacy is at risk with legislation like the EARN IT act. While there may be many well informed civilians out there, you’d be hard pressed to find a sex worker who is unaware of these laws and hasn't already blown the whistle.
We are the canaries in the coal mine and the objectives for our activism are more far reaching than our own community.
I’m sure you’ve heard this before but it bears repeating: Be wary of any political message that uses “save the kids” in their copy. No one can argue that children should be protected and therefore it's almost always a red herring intended to divert attention from the real intention of infringing on the civil liberties of consenting adults.
While these laws are troublesome to say the least, they look like after school detention in comparison to their big brother, Project 2025, which feels more like an attempt to expel us from society at large and turn a gray market pitch black.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Excerpt from Project 2025’s Foreword distributed by The Heritage Foundation
Whelp, that's a mouthful.
To what extent they will be successful in the execution of this agenda is uncertain, but our chances of resisting the impending doom on our identities, lifestyles, and livelihoods lie in our efforts to form a united front. Petit Mort was created to strengthen the interdependence of porn stars, strippers, escorts, cam models, phone sex operators, massage parlor workers, and content creators who for too long have been siloed either completely alone or in small clandestine circles of their respective niches.
It's easy for the masses to support a governing body in squashing our existence when our stories are often told by the likes of people with unconscious bias or out-right savior complexes. Even in the world of fiction, our archetype becomes the brunt of every joke or cautionary tale. It is in some ways futile to rage against the machine and demand our rights when the mainstream has done such a formidable job in flattening our multidimensional humanity. In order to cast votes in our favor, civilians must first recognize us as people and relate to us as such, and dare we say, vice-versa.
Breaking down these barriers requires us to have our own mouthpiece, an alternative institution that can welcome the ‘huddled masses’ of anyone who feels they’re being shadowbanned or deleted from popular discourse, political organizing, storytelling, image-making—because we know more than anyone, that its those in the margins who make and inspire culture. Petit Mort is calling for all of us to continue to band together, as we have throughout history to set the record straight. Since 2021, our goal has been to build a platform dedicated to telling our own stories, and building an archive that makes it clear: we have been here before, we are still here, and once again, despite all the new modes of digital and political restriction and punishment, we aren’t going anywhere. In response to draconian measures like Project 2025, we need to invest in the stories of our past, present and future—and moving into 2025, Petit Mort is more dedicated than ever to unifying and amplifying our voices so we may forge a way forward together.
Petit Mort is not the magazine it once was when we began this journey with you. We’ve grown into a movement. If you feel disillusioned, angry, apathetic, burnt out, overwhelmed, upset or just plain tired by the political climate and the threats to our working conditions—we’re encouraging you to redirect some of your tax dollars away from a government that seeks to abolish our existence and instead towards Petit Mort so we may continue to immortalize and canonize our wisdom, art, and cultural contributions through the stories of the global sex worker community. Together, we can challenge misconceptions, uplift voices, and contribute to a legacy that empowers sex workers and creatives worldwide. Join us.