Self-Sovereign Sexuality by Ameen Soleimani & Chelsea Palmer (Devcon4)

today we're here to talk about self sovereign sexuality and sort of are some personal stories from our journey and what we've learned from them and how you know how we've come to some of the conclusions that we've come to and how we think that the etherium community and the sex worker community are more aligned than most people think so I want to start out with just a sort of high-level thing about rationality itself so rationality is about having mental models that are calibrated with reality so it's about asking yourself why do I believe what I believe and then not believing the things that you don't think are true even if you want to so when we started spanked Shan most people thought it was a really bad idea and even at joke and this was like about a year ago in the heyday of like sort of virtue signaling I see oh everybody's shaking each other's hand and you know and I thought it was basically all [ __ ] and and I thought like you know where where is blockchain adoption going to happen first like where does this actually matter like who gives a [ __ ] about this and that's what drove me to realize that you know the adult entertainment community this community that's been routinely discriminated against ostracized from the financial institutions like this is where it starts right because this is this is the people who having a safe place to securely store and transact their funds is actually really important and so I think now you know a year later we had a lot to prove but I think we've done a pretty good job and it's become somewhat accepted that we're decent devs and that we're trying to do good in the world and I hope that as the going gets weirder the community doesn't write us off as crazies and takes a moment to reflect on our logic and draw a sensible conclusions okay so I'm gonna start with a story about a personal experience mm-hmm about about a year ago I was feeling pretty depressed ego depleted pretty low self-esteem I didn't spend a lot of time on tinder because it took you know I was working a lot and it takes a long time and when I tried to hang out with girls I kept like fumbling it up somehow and I was lonely and it was affecting my productivity and ethan been going up a lot so I had more disposable income than I was used to so I spent a few nights checking out the escorts in my area before I finally worked up the courage to text one and it was a lot of like you know me sitting there looking at me like I'm not the type of guy who does this and and then the rational part of me is like how do you know right like yeah why not like how do you know you wouldn't enjoy it all right well you have a point so I talked to an escort set up an appointment and about an hour before I went to go get cash and I realized that I hit my daily limit in the ATM withdrawal and so I reached out and I started texting all my friends to see if anybody could come deliver me cash and nobody could I went to a bunch of other ATMs and eventually had to give up until the escort that like hey sorry I know I made it to our appointment but we only do one and that I would make it up to her but then she got there and after we'd established a rapport I introduced her to the world of crypto and helped her get set up on an exchange and sent her her first ethers and and and she ended up staying the extra hour and so yeah that that was like my first experience and since then I've I've sort of come around to this idea that like you know some one of the slides I really liked in last presentation was a morality is not equal to legality I think we should all keep that in mind okay without further ado cool all right Chelsea take it away so I guess I'll give a little intro on myself because I'm pretty new to spank chain um I was a sex worker for a number of years before I found crypto I really wish I had known about crypto when I was a sex worker it would have been super super useful but the three or so years that I've been a Bitcoin educator I have approached crypto as a technology with the knowledge of the things I went through in the ways that with some weird gray areas I got exploited with implications so I've been coming to this tech for a while with the idea that it could really help people not go through [ __ ] I went through and I was like a lurking fan of spanking and really seeing how they were playing in this space of expanding the Overton Window of what it's acceptable to talk about they were showing that crypto people sex workers and other people kind of on the fringe of things have a huge amount in common so so yeah basically I mean I was like I was like lurking in there discord for a year as a Bitcoin maximalist liking their crypto economics so like that said something like I was like holy [ __ ] this is brilliant on a technical level so yeah we're just gonna go through this kind of summarizes the slides to follow so we're just gonna go through some of the shared concerns of crypto people and sex workers so trust but verify which I found out is a Ronald Reagan original very very clever of the man so we see in crypto you know full nodes we depend upon people running for we depend upon the idea that this decentralized technology can be spun up from scratch by anyone and that you can verify all your own transactions similarly sex workers especially face-to-face sex workers have to verify who they're meeting and in fact that's one of the biggest attack vectors is one of the worst experiences I had was I had blocked someone and he went through the agency I was working with under a completely different name and then I opened the door of a penthouse and was like oh my god it's that guy so technologies that allow us to create layers of protection for ourselves pseudonymous layers ideally are really important to both of us but in both cases we're putting some trust in these systems that were opting into we're putting some trust into the larger cryptocurrency framework we're putting trust into the sex worker client relationship and that goes in both directions yeah one of the other fun things about this is the cold start problem for full nodes like who here has tried to sync parody or get and like who here felt pain yeah so a lot of times you know escorts will require verification from another one so if you've never done before you end up having to share like your LinkedIn or like your work email or something that's a whole thing anyway similarly and I mean title of the talk here self sovereignty is core to both of these communities crypto we don't want anybody to get in the way of how we transact between between ourselves and sex work we don't want anyone to get in the way of how we use our bodies in general these are two of the cutting edge areas in which we're starting to see that we actually can create we can create off-ramps from legacy systems that have restricted us and told us that whatever the dominant morality of the time is in fact the legality privacy this is see this is this is an interesting one because within crypto you know when I first got into Bitcoin I thought it was relatively anonymous I did not understand how easily traceable all the [ __ ] I was doing and so we we've seen like a lot of great presentations from like the Z cash community here and stuff like ZK snarks being integrated with aetherium we've got these tools um I think that in sex work it becomes more complex because reputation is much more important within sex work and networks of you know being able to verify that someone's going to deliver on something that they're going to you who they say they are now it's funny because originally when we were discussing this presentation Amin was pointing out like sex workers using privacy enhancing technologies protonmail stuff like that I was really bad at that and when I got into crypto I was really bad at being a responsible crypto user too so this is actually somewhere where I think creating user facing tools for sex workers that are comprehensible and easy to understand will be a win because like when I I started out as a stripper and I would have like a beer and then start accidentally using my real name because I'm just not used to pretending like I'm like I'm Chelsea I mean made-up name damn it so it is something that's super important for sex work and it's something that literally can endanger your life if you're not good at it yes sex workers are like straight-up cypherpunks like they've got protonmail accounts multiple identities used to dealing with large quantities of cash and uh the the ever familiar wrench problem the xkcd representation of this is the best I know of so it's been brought up in crypto that we create these complex systems oh I don't have my ledger on me and I don't have you know like you can't force my private keys out of me well you can hit me over the head with a wrench until I give you my you know digital assets and the oldest profession in the book has this as the oldest problem in the book for it like that is really in its usually implications like not direct extortion not direct threats of violence but the implication of violence is something that's constantly a threat when what you're providing as a service is literally contained upon your purse like you're providing a service that when you get right down to it someone who's sociopathic and be like oh I could just take this right now this is a vulnerable moment for you so I do feel this is an area where in both directions crypto and sex work can really enhance our understandings of how to move past this so to continue on the safety concerns in crypto we're always you know thinking you know you lose your private key then you lose your coins right and in sex work and you know in general STD prevention is a huge deal if you get AIDS it's game over right it's a very serious and so in both I hope that we're able to develop infrastructure for a safer world personally I don't intend to live in a world where STDs are a thing I recently found out that you can get $100 at home 15-minute result STD kits mailed to you and it takes like two weeks that come from Singapore so I think that we're gonna actually did that and then I stream myself doing it live which would have been really awkward if I tested positive for anything but I was lucky enough I actually I skipped two of the tests so I did the syphilis Hep B Hep C HIV herpes but the gonorrhea and chlamydia are urethral swabs so I didn't stream that live but I I might for science right yeah I mean we can't let our you know prudish nature get in the way of safety so that the other tests were blood tests so I picked all five of my fingers cuz they're all separate blood this could get much better in the next couple of years and if it costs like a hundred dollars for a single unit that I get shipped it could cost like $20 if I bought like 10,000 and then you could imagine that somebody you know comes to your house that's registered to administer this test they come at 12:30 you set up an appointment on an app and then they leave by 1:00 p.m. and you know your results right $50 something like that and generally speaking like I think it's just interesting to imagine in a world where STDs are not a thing like what does the world look like if STDs are not a thing think about it so challenging the status quo it's something that I know we all like to imagine ourselves to be actively doing within this field in crypto it started with rejecting Fiat and I see in the etherium scene one of the things that pulled me slowly out of Bitcoin is that it seems like the economic use cases the only thing most of my friends in Bitcoin care about but I see in the etherium space and I've seen at Def Con like ridiculously ambitious approaches to rejecting nation-state governance to rejecting traditional centralized management of resources etc in sex work there is an imperative to reject the status quo because the status quo rejects us like we're not a lot we're we're allowed to exist on the margins but were afforded no protections and no sympathy when something happens to us so censorship resistance is at the forefront for both of these communities and particularly again the the finance and economic use case is where we see like a foothold in for literally sex workers can be blocked immediately from all traditional banks in North America from all legacy you know payment processing etc so that's an area where even though it's kind of hard for end-users to use some of the tools being built they are so enthusiastic from within this community because there are no other choices really yeah and to be clear like spank chain is you know fully compliant with all the laws in all the countries in which will operate so like if somebody was advertising sex work on spank chain like we would have to remove their account because that's going illegal right but you know you can imagine that for decentralized payment services right then nobody has control we couldn't you know have any impact on it if we wanted to and further like if we do succeed at building decentralized communications infrastructure then that would also be possible so there's a there's also a case for decriminalization of sex work it is illegal in pretty much everywhere and in some places it is legal but then it gets regulated and so then the only people who can do it without getting heckled by the government are the people who get the licenses from the government and then it's sort of a boys club type thing anyway and so we found that the the criminalization of sex work means that sex workers are you know less likely to for example call the police if there's an issue because the police are less likely to side with them or might even imprison them or arrest them for doing sex work in the first place and so this is a really unfortunate consequence of the the criminalization and so if if we're able to succeed at reducing the stigma then you know they'll have more of a voice and and the ability to like use the services as Chelsea was saying so how many people have here have heard of posta and cesta okay so pasta and cesta the hostess stands for fight online sex trafficking act and cesta stands for stop enabling sex traffickers act these past in the House of Representatives and Senate earlier this year I think in this Senate it was like ninety seven to two in the house it was like 400 and like 80 set three - I don't know like three or something like it's like literally the only thing that the Republicans and Democrats agree on that I've liked it at this scale it's kind of mind-boggling and it's partly because like it while it says that it's fighting sex trafficking what it's actually doing is dismantling internet freedoms so sites like back page reddit even they had sections for personas and what fossa incest does is it it says that the websites are accountable for user-generated content right this has been a hallmark of Internet freedom for years and by targeting sex workers they're able to make this difficult enough to oppose right because nobody it's really hard to stand up and be like actually you know I want to oppose the the sex trafficking bill right so that's hard so I'll just say crypto is amazing for sex workers and I like to compare like all of the early adopter performers on our platform are like bitcoiners in 2013/2014 of like they want to tell their mailman about this they're so pumped do they want to tell everyone but I mean there's still a spanking platform is pretty easy to use I was really surprised the first time I used it how like kind of the user interface just make sense you don't have to become a crypto expert but in general we have moving crypto around with getting it into Fiat to pay your bills etc there's confusing UX and UI key management is a nightmare pretty much everything that the the presentation before us was talking about like these are things that are going to be problems for end-users and while performers have like an you know a complete drive to be on board with this you know you we we've got to get customers who can use legacy platforms and they're not gonna get their bank's shutdown necessarily we got to get them on board and one of the things I've seen a number of times and this is why I kept my mouth shut about being a sex worker my entire time as a Bitcoin educator is the assumptions that will be made of oh you're a sex worker and that means this about you and so I think that's the main thing that like as a group we can really do is make sure that we're not making assumptions about the capability of sex workers because all of the ones that I've met in my personal experience have been freaking brilliant and next slide we've got you know like like Brenna sparks had the best quote on this that has been revisited a bunch from eath berlin blockchain offers freedom from a world that doesn't want me like that hit me in the heart and it was like I you know I did not come out of the closet everyone in my personal life face-to-face knew I was a sex worker but I kept my mouth shut about it because I was so terrified that I would be just kind of discarded based upon this one element of what honestly what was really a fiscally responsible decision throughout the period of time that I was able to make it so you know like we got to walk the walk on inclusion inclusion shouldn't just be about quotas it should be about taking each human being who comes into this community for who they are and not making assumptions about them and my my last points on this are that I have seen sex workers have some skills and brilliance --is that we need particularly we're always talking about incentive design like holy crap the sorts of creative campaigns that like ham girls will come up with I remember seeing the like Oh get all of my content for October if you send point zero six six six Eve and it's all like like spooky costumes and stuff like that so there's that and I find that the best understanding of consent comes from the sex work and the kink and fetish sorts of communities because once we acknowledge the transactional nature of sexuality we can have much more real and open conversations about it this is a reality for everyone who gets objectified and it's much weirder to navigate when we pretend it doesn't happen so yeah thank you thank you so much [Music] [Applause] let's do some questions we're gonna maybe two or three questions we're gonna go there there Chelsea we're gonna dye your hair pink they all did it right after I chemically dyed my hair dark blue so it would fall out I feel so left out cuz they look super dope hi thanks your presentation um I learned recently that more than 50% of sex workers are victims of human trafficking so I'm curious about your thoughts on the platform and I think it sounds really great for sex workers who want to be sex workers but most of them probably don't and so I'd be curious to hear your response to that yeah this is this is a really important piece to me um and it's why I'm out as a sex worker who is a voluntary participant who had choices I feel that the own I feel it's a really really difficult problem to attack especially because I experienced firsthand that there are sociopaths who specifically want a non-consent experience and trafficking will never be will never be ended as long as that exists however my hope is that by reducing stigma overall and by those of us who are voluntary participants in the industry speaking on behalf of others like basically someone who has been trafficked and then feels that even if they've got a way out they'll always be judged and it's assumed that you know like they're ruined or something like that that gives no exit path to exit for them so I feel it's a really difficult problem and certainly when we can't solve right now but I feel reducing stigma overall is the best thing I personally can contribute to that and it is a huge priority for me I'd also call into question the accuracy of that metric I don't think it's 50% I'd be curious to know where you got it yeah I it might be geographical do you know if that's like more centered in Canada 50% 5-0 in Canada that's interesting to me so like you know if you look at like the seeking arrangement stats there's like 1.2 million students in the United States that are part of that I doubt they're trafficked I think they're just trying to pay off student loans but like yeah we can talk more after clearly nobody here is a fan of sex trafficking right like that's not what we're trying to accomplish where we acknowledge that sex trafficking makes this harder because the more that you know if we remove barriers to sex work we might make the lives of sex traffickers easier all right if we could accomplish this and make sex trafficking harder with for example more emphasis on the identity part of it maybe needing to like verify yourself as you know consensual and voluntary then we might be able to make headway but I'd have to think more about how to actually do that yeah I mean Sheila thank you very much that's very very great what you guys doing and I was opening and thank you for educating us so my question is what's the the biggest challenge you have today is like what's the things that if you could resolve or if it could change will make everything much easier for you so I think part of this I mean there's there's a lot of aspects of like what is the biggest problem right so if we're talking about in the context of like you know embracing this movement then I think it's actually a numbers game like I think the more people who have positive respectful interactions with sex workers as peers and performers as well then the more people will realize that like this is you know not this like crazy dirty terrible thing or it doesn't have to be and so as that grows and and and that the you know that they're real people right and as that happens I think that everybody's minds will change so the hardest thing about getting from here to there is like we all have to change our minds about it right if we if we have biases if we have preconceptions and it's pretty hard to change a bunch of people's minds right it like bitcoins been out for 10 years now all right and like everybody here probably thought it was a joke or a scam the first time they saw it if I can just add add also like bringing a background to the self sovereignty thing I think the limitations of nation-states trying to regulate in order to protect is actually the biggest barrier I see and that's why I jumped on board super hype is because like I come from Canada and when they criminalize living off the avails of prostitution they were trying to criminalize pimping but they made it so that that extends to a landlord who knows that they're they're you know they're renting to a prostitute can go to jail so it took all protective mechanisms out people can't be security guards for prostitutes etc so I do feel the more we can have self sovereign tools and platforms and especially online platforms where you can be your own boss you can be pseudonymous and you can make your own choices I think that's the bit that's the biggest thing we gotta pursue yeah and the regulation so far like haven't actually worked right like the folks that Cessna that put more prostitutes on the street and that's what's been reported by like police all over the country and and they're you know end up targeting people for facilitating prostitution for like handing out condoms at like clinics to people who are known prostitutes which doesn't make any sense we're gonna do one final question let me see if there's anybody in the back that wants it just because thank you for the talk I was wondering over let's say over the next year how and we individually or as community help you guys and help spank chain if we're not if we're not either users or service writers on the platform well I would say really the I I'm biased but the the cultural inclusivity part is is huge for me because there are just kind of like like immediate snap judgments of like oh what's this is this replicating you know patriarchal objectification etc so I would say like like welcoming in we're we by onboarding all these performers we're onboarding them to the crypto community so they're gonna be around they're gonna be chilling they're gonna be like dropping memes and stuff so just be inclusive and recognize that like they're super brilliant honestly and like they need to be part of this and help us shape this yeah be respectful don't make that turgor jokes stuff like that like when you talk about it you know talk about it as if you at any other job