The notion of sex working in body massage parlors has long been part of the media sex work stereotype. And while recent stories about body massage parlors have focused on Florida and their wealthy clients, there have also been several raids and ongoing prosecutions of operators (including conspiracy to commit prostitution-related crimes) in recent months.
While sex workers have tried to revive many of these narratives about the criminalization and policing of the sex industry, raids on body massage parlors often end up in the shadows of more extensive discussions about sex worker rights and human trafficking. In the United States, sex workers are evident in conversations about sex work and human trafficking yet remain almost entirely invisible as active participants in these conversations The death of Yang Song, a migrant worker from China who was saving up to open a shop with her brother, in a police raid at her workplace in 2017 brought further public attention to the issue of police raids on body massage parlors. The family is still fighting for justice, including the return of property confiscated during the raids.
Sex Worker Rights Framework
But in some ways, the sex worker rights debate may be the wrong framework for understanding the experiences and needs of Asian immigrant women in body massage parlors.”Sex worker as an identity, or sex work as a profession or identity, doesn’t seem to apply to many immigrants or migrants,” said the policy and advocacy manager at a group that advocates for Asian communities in New York. “In many cases, the idea of a sex worker identity or what might be identified as sex work or sex trafficking is not given much weight and is almost put on the back burner.” an organizer for a group that focuses on
Body massage parlor workers
In United States immigrant communities, says the experience is simply one of the most accessible employment opportunities for immigrant workers. “For Chinese immigrants, this is one of the paths taken by people who come to this country without qualifications. You can make more money working in a because workers often move on when one place does poorly.” And that’s where they heard something even more was going on. However, not all body massage parlors fall into the realm of sex work, and the connection is tenuous. Some body massage parlor employees offer extra fees, but this varies from salon to salon and Employee to Employee. work in the same space. Very often, they make a purely economic decision,” Tasaki says. For many body massage parlor workers, the issue is workers’ rights, not sex worker rights. “It’s not about being recognized as a sex worker; it’s about improving working conditions, having less contact with police, being safe from immigration issues. That’s the language that most of the community is interested in.”
Body massage
However, it does seek to directly address these intersections of labor, immigration, sex work, and racial justice. It is active in the coalition of more than 30 New York-based organizations that fight for sex work in the state and pursue various goals.
The fight at the state level is certainly not over.
Apart from criminalizing sex trafficking, all but four states regulate body massage therapy (without upgrades) through costly licenses that may require hours of unpaid labor in addition to courses. The burden can be impossible for newly arrived immigrants without thousands of dollars of discretionary capital, an established base, or for whom body massage work is not a long-term commitment. New York State licensing requirements also have a morality clause, meaning that arrests for prostitution can result in the loss of a license.
