Susana Gibson’s fight for digital privacy | Maine’s bad sex work law
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Bi-Weekly Sexual Freedom Newsletter Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Top Stories This Week
What’s happening at Woodhull;
Susana Gibson’s fight for digital privacy;
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act;
Maine’s bad sex work law;
Anti-trans bills in New Hampshire;
LGBTQ+ rights in 2024; and
Woodhull’s take on abortion access in Idaho.
It's 2024, and Woodhull is still on the front line fighting the censoring of sex, sexuality, and sexual expression. We’re launching our 2024 education series, The Censoring of Sexual Freedom, with a brilliant panel of three inspiring, knowledgeable, and passionate Free Expression advocates this month. India McKinney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jacqueline Allain of PEN America, and Melodie Garcia of the New Moon Network will join our very own Mandy Salley to discuss pending legislation and forecast the threats to freedom of sexual expression in 2024. ASL will be provided, and registration is free.
Florida continues to lead the nation’s decline in protecting our privacy and free speech, this time wrapping their attack in nonsense about keeping kids safe online. We sent a letter to Florida Senate’s Democratic Leader, Lauren Book, about the proposed Florida State Bill SB 454 this week and let her know how dangerous the bill is and why she should join us in opposing it.
From our letter:
"The bill requires platforms to scan all content directed at child users and imposes penalties on platforms for failing to identify all inappropriate content. The threat of those penalties will incentivize platforms to over-moderate and remove content to avoid liability. Experience has shown that this type of censoring sweeps up factual information about reproductive health, safe sex practices, and discussions in gender- and sexual orientation-affirming communities.”
Woodhull monitors these harmful bills and actively works to defeat them!
Explicit videos rocked her run for office. But this Virginia Democrat isn’t done with politics. (The 19th)
Mel Leonor Barclay interviews Susanna Gibson, a Democratic candidate for a competitive Virginia district who endured the horror of non-consensual recording and redistribution of her live-streamed sex acts with her husband: “Gibson said the episode has given her a newfound sense of mission: advocating for digital privacy and digital consent to protect future women candidates from being attacked with sexually explicit content. [...] State and federal laws, she said, could do more to protect generations who came of age in a digital world by requiring that the person depicted actively consent to the way the sexually explicit material will be disseminated.” Read more.
(Shutterstock/Austen Risolvato/Rewire News Group)
SCOTUS Is Likely to Decide if Abortion Is Health Care (Rewire News Group)
Jessica Mason Pieklo writes about the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act: “After the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Biden administration sent a reminder to federally-funded hospitals that federal law—Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)—requires hospitals to provide stabilizing care (including abortions) to patients in medical emergencies. Conservative attorneys general in states like Texas didn’t like the reminder, since denying abortion care whenever they can is their entire personality. So with a captured federal judiciary as an accomplice, they sued.” Read more.
(Illustration: Lex Villena; Bas Masseus)
Maine’s Bad Prostitution Law Could Be Coming Soon to Your State (Reason)
Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes about Maine’s bad sex work law: “In 2023, Maine became the first U.S. state to partially decriminalize prostitution. It's unlikely to be the last. And sex-worker rights activists are concerned. By criminalizing prostitution customers but not sex workers, Maine's law may seem like a step in the right direction. But it threatens to derail momentum for full decriminalization, while recreating many of full prohibition's harms. It also represents a paternalistic philosophical premise: that sex workers are all victims and their consent to sexual activity is—like a minor's—irrelevant.” Read more.
(Fotosearch/Getty Images)
New Hampshire Democrats Join Republicans in Passing Anti-Trans Bills (Truthout)
Zane McNeill writes about anti-trans bills in New Hampshire: “On January 4, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed two bills attacking LGBTQ rights — one that would permit discrimination against trangender people in public spaces and one that would ban gender-affirming procedures for trans youth. HB 396 would weaken the guarantee of equal protection under the law for LGBTQ people by permitting the state and educational institutions to discriminate against trans people in athletic competitions, state custody or ‘places of intimate privacy,’ while HB 619 would ban transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming procedures.” Read more.
(Anthony Gerace via Getty Images)
What’s At Stake for LGBTQ+ Rights in 2024? (them.)
Nico Lang details what’s at stake for LGBTQ+ rights in 2024: “While no one can be certain what state legislatures are cooking up [this] year, experts say the political calendar has already started to take shape. Erin Reed, an independent journalist who covers anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country, says that observers are beginning to get an understanding of what 2024 holds from Republican bills pre-filed before the next wave of legislative sessions even starts. Missouri Republicans have pre-filed more than 20 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights in advance of the 2024 legislative session, including legislation that would allow teachers to refuse using trans students’ pronouns and shield doctors sued for refusing to provide gender-affirming care.” Read more.
(Jackson Simmer/Unsplash)
Woodhull’s Take: Abortion Access in Idaho (Woodhull’s Sex & Politics Blog)
We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation share our take on abortion access in Idaho: “Idaho is rife with abortion ban laws, each more horrifying than the next. Post-Roe, Idaho’s six-week ban took effect, enforceable through ‘bounty hunter’ lawsuits against doctors. But the six-week ban wasn’t enough; Idaho’s total abortion ban came next. And in 2023, lawmakers created a new crime: ‘abortion trafficking.’ Under the trafficking law, it’s illegal to help a minor within the state to access abortion care.” Read more.
Woodhull Freedom Foundation is the only national human rights organization working full time to protect the fundamental human right to sexual freedom. Our work includes fighting censorship, eliminating discrimination based on gender or sexual identity, or family form, and protecting the right to engage in consensual sexual activity and expression. We do this through advocacy, education, and coalition building.
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