Earlier this week, a press release was released on the upcoming production of Sale / Purchase / Date, a film adaptation of a woman’s play by playwright Sarah Jones on sexual exploitation of women, produced by luminaries like Meryl Streep, Rashida Jones and Laverne Cox. After the outrage among sex workers on social media, however, they felt that Jones had co-opted their stories and that Jones and Streep had a history of supporting anti-sex worker causes, Cox abruptly left production on Thursday, declaring on Twitter, “I am no longer involved in any role in Sale / Purchase / Date.“
Produced in 2016, Sale / Purchase / Date is reportedly based on Jones spending three years interviewing sex workers and their clients to develop their characters, including a West Indian woman who reluctantly does sex work to pay for her children’s school fees, and a parody of a white college student graduating in sex work studies that practice pole dancing. The program is generally skeptical about the idea that sex work can serve as a vehicle for empowerment: “I won’t say that I feel liberated, but I will say that I feel paid,” says one character.
In a 2016 interview with Vogue, Jones said that Sale / Purchase / Date was inspired by the “theme of what some people call ‘sex work’ and others call ‘prostitution’”. “Where are these lines that we are drawing and why? And how do we women and the men who love us talk about all this empowerment and feminism? How is it when we talk about sex? “, She said.
When Sale / Purchase / Date initially debuted, was praised by establishments like the New York Times as a timely exploration of the Trump era of issues associated with female exploitation. Some commentators, however, like Los Angeles critic Cate Young, felt that he made “the critical mistake of confusing sex work with sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors – arson topics that flatten the discussion by raising the extreme to sensationalize the mundane, ”Arguing that Jones’ production“ sells sex workers downstream ”.
“Many of the characters are portrayed as one-dimensional and as caricatures,” says sex worker and activist Allie Awesome, who watched a snippet of Sale / Purchase / Date in a TED talk by Jones. “Seeing sex workers and our allies being used as a joke and ridiculed by a TED audience is very disturbing to me.”
The announcement of the film adaptation resulted in more ire. “This is another time when everyone can capitalize on the sex trade – you have a number of people who use sex workers as a scapegoat, catalyst, muse, target – except for people who negotiate sex. This is another moment of erasure by people who are not affected by this conversation, who are exploring a hot topic in hopes of a Golden Globe nomination, ”said Kate D’Adamo, a longtime sex worker rights activist.
Part of the reason why many sex workers’ rights advocates were furious at Sale / Purchase / Date it’s because of the players involved: specifically, Meryl Streep and Rashida Jones, who are listed as producers of the film. Initially, actor and activist Laverne Cox, who was previously an outspoken advocate of decriminalizing sex work and sex workers’ rights, was listed as another producer of the film. In response to the uproar, however, she withdrew her involvement, saying on Twitter: “I’m not in the emotional state right now to deal with the indignation of some about my participation in the project.”
– Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox) January 7, 2021
The anger was motivated in part by the fact that Streep has a history of publicly advocating for anti-sex work causes, such as SESTA / FOSTA, the controversial online anti-sex trafficking legislation of 2017 that sex workers argue has put them in greater risk by removing crucial safeguards like online platforms, which allowed them to examine their clientele.
Jones, who is perhaps best known for his role on the NBC series Parks and recreation, has an even more strained relationship with sex workers and their allies. She is the producer behind You want hot girls, a 2015 documentary, which was turned into a Netflix docuseries in 2017. Both the series and the documentary were heavily criticized by sex workers’ rights advocates for their perception of prejudice against the adult industry and for combining consensual sex work with the trafficking industry. The series has also been criticized for allegedly persuading sex workers to appear in the film under false pretenses.
In the wake of the news about Sale / Purchase / Date, sex workers who have been involved with You want hot girls, and who claimed that the production team exploited them or violated their consent, were outraged that Jones was producing yet another project about the sex industry. “I can’t believe what Rashida is doing other documentary about sex work after all the criticism he received from his other two, ”says Autumn Kay, a sex worker who claimed They want hot girls the team posted footage of her Periscope filming without her consent. “She pretends to like us, but all we are to her is a way to get a ton of views.”
Gia Paige is a sex worker who previously claimed that filmmakers cheated on her by posting her photos on Facebook and part of her legal name, and did not respect her stated desire to avoid discussing her family and personal life in the film. Following the news about Sale / Purchase / Date, she tweeted a warning to other sex workers not to be in the movie. “I spent years tweeting to her to try to warn new sex workers about what she had done, but there will always be people who agree to do so hoping they are different,” she says. Rolling Stone. “I don’t want someone else to go through what I went through after that terrible experience.” (The filmmakers denied that they violated any ethical limits regarding Paige’s inclusion in the series.)
Representatives for Jones, Cox and Streep did not immediately return requests for comment, but Jones had already avoided criticism that You want hot girls presented a biased view of the sex industry, arguing that what is shown in the series “is not everyone’s experience”. “Many people within the industry felt that the film further marginalized and stigmatized sex work, which was not our intention at all,” said Jones earlier. Rolling Stone.
D’Adamo, the sex worker rights activist, says that in this highly stigmatized climate, simply showing one side of the industry without highlighting the voices of those most involved in it is not enough. “I think it’s exploitative to take stories from a community, to present and capitalize on them without giving anything in return, and not to involve or promote people who are impacted by these kinds of things,” she says, adding that celebrities like FKA Twigs provided positive examples of how to give back to marginalized communities, providing money for mutual aid funds for sex workers.
“Now, more than ever, people need to create platforms where sex workers can participate,” adds D’Adamo. “I am literally struggling to organize myself around the law because I cannot use ‘sex worker’ without being flagged. It is irritating that people can take up so much space in a conversation without doing anything to support people who are struggling to simply exist. “