Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 222 with Savannah Sly of New Moon Network

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Savannah Sly of New Moon Network. We’ve doubled our affiliate payouts at ASB Cash. Now when you refer sellers or buyers to us, you’ll receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. Check out ASB Cash for more details and to sign up. And we’re proud to announce our latest project, thewaronporn.com. You’ll find articles from industry websites as well as mainstream publications. It’s designed to raise awareness of our industry’s plight in the war on porn and the numerous attacks on our industry. You’ll find all that and more at thewaronporn.com. Now time for our property of the week that’s for sale at Adult Site Broker. We’re proud to introduce one of the largest tube and cam networks in the world. They just started monetizing one of their largest tube sites. It’s already bringing in over 100,000 euros a month. With its growth, the site could easily become the next X videos. In the last month, the tube network had close to 200 million visitors. The company started with a site that created content as a video production company. That site now has almost 18 terabytes of original content. At the same time, they started the webcam section with the porn stars. This site has a members area where people can buy videos and use webcam credits. The company soon grew and tube sites were launched for different countries along with translations. The network has grown from the original site with 80 tubes and 6 cam sites. Despite already being one of the largest networks in the world, there’s still plenty of room to grow since there’s no ad spend. All traffic is either organic or type in. This is a smart buy for an existing network with traffic or for someone willing to invest money in marketing. Only 7.8 million euros. Now time for this week’s interview. I guess today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Savannah Sly of New Moon Network. Savannah thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Great to be here Bruce, thanks for having me. It’s great to have you. Savannah is the founder and co-director of New Moon Network, a non-profit striving to strengthen the movement for sex worker rights through funding, technical assistance and leadership development. She currently serves on the board of Woodhall Freedom Foundation, you know all about them. The only organization in the US dedicated to defending sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. She also serves on the global steering committee of the sex work donor collaborative. She’s been advocating for the rights and welfare of people in the sex trade since 2013. Speaking from lived and studied experience, she articulates the impacts of criminalization, surveillance, discrimination and stigma on sex workers and uplifts holistic solutions to mitigate sex trade exploitation. She’s played a powerful convening role as a coalition organizer for ACLU’s Tech Equity Coalition and numerous grassroots sex worker initiatives including the old pro project, Swap Seattle and the sex workers outreach project USA where she’s a former board president. Her commentary is published in Brookings, Teen Vogue and Psychology Today. New Moon Network provides support to sex worker and survivor led organizations in the US working to advance the rights and welfare of people with lived experience in the sex trade. As an intermediary fund, New Moon channels financial resources into the movement for sex worker rights and aids grassroots leaders in grant writing, accessing fiscal sponsorship and budgeting. As advisors, the team at New Moon consults with corporations, foundations and high net worth individuals to identify projects and opportunities poise for impact. Since its inception in 2022, New Moon has brokered investments of $1.5 million into 50 plus sex worker led organizations in the US. Understanding will take more than money to advance sex worker rights. New Moon collaborates with organizations such as Woodhole Freedom Foundation to offer leadership development programming and peer learning opportunities. I got through that. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. It wasn’t easy. Savannah, how did New Moon get started in the first place? Well thanks for having me, a fan of your podcast and yeah, happy to be here. New Moon got started when I was approached by a family foundation that wishes to remain anonymous. This family foundation had historically been funding environmental efforts to mitigate climate change. But as they saw climate change advancing, they turned their attention and their resources to addressing mass migration with a focus on the welfare of women and girls. While they were doing this, they happened to be at a summer home in Florida, not far from Jupiter where Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots football team, was busted in a alleged sex trafficking sting and they paid close attention. Yes, we all remember that big scandal. So they were paying close attention to this because the headlines were suggesting that women who had migrated to the US were being exploited and this was in their issue area. But then as they followed the case, they found that there was no sex trafficking happening and that in fact these women were now up for deportation and they got pretty upset about this and they started doing a little digging and they discovered the phrase sex work and that these women were likely engaged in some form of sex work. And long story short, we started talking and they asked me, who’s funding the movement for sex workers rights? And I explained that it’s largely self-funded and that there are a couple of foundations that do offer grants but that it’s pretty minimal. And so they offered some seed funding to help get us started so we could try our hands at philanthropy which is an incredible opportunity that we are deeply thankful for. Yeah, absolutely. So it was almost by happenstance, I guess the whole thing happened. It feels kind of faded. Yes. Fantastic. What are your goals at New Moon? Our goals are to talk to traditional philanthropic organizations like foundations and also high net worth individuals to help them connect the dots kind of like this family foundation did. I was really proud of them for connecting the dots between environmentalism, mass migration, the welfare of women and girls and the rights or lack thereof of sex workers. So we would like to help other concerned philanthropists connect the dots between reproductive rights, privacy, freedom of speech, immigration reform, disability justice, LGBTQ, you name it. We know that pretty much every major issue of our day does connect to sex work in some way in that sex workers are on the forefront of various human rights violations. So we spend a lot of time in these spaces talking to philanthropists but then we’re also interested in supporting sex worker and survivor leadership in the movement for sex worker rights to help them be not isolated, networked with each other, feeling more effective in their work and feeling like they are part of a movement. Sure. So, one thing just came to mind when you’ve talked about all those things and connecting the dots among all those issues, where does Project 2025 come into this? I think it’s got sex workers rights and the imperative need for it all over it. I mean, Project 2025 is it’s all it’s completely anti sex. It’s completely anti gender. They want to blast us back to the medieval ages and take away a lot of hard fought rights around our ability to have sexual expression to defy oppressive gender roles to choose our whether we have children or not. So reproductive rights, gender rights, they’re all at the forefront of Project 2025 and sex workers are definitely getting together and talking about this. Also sex workers are deeply connected to LGBTQ rights spaces and HIV AIDS prevention and response. And those are two issue areas that are going to see dramatic funding cuts if we get a Trump administration and Project 2025. So we’re all on the chopping block, but sex workers again represent so many different ways in which we are on the chopping block. And you know what’s amazing about the whole thing is and it’s just kind of starting and we’re talking in July this whole run in September. We’re just kind of starting to talk or hear about Project 2025 in the mainstream. Trump did a post the other day where he said he had no idea what it was. And of course, that’s not true. Of course, who knows with Trump, he might not have any idea. You know, there’s a lot of things he doesn’t have an idea about, but that he’ll be he’ll be responsible for like, he’s certainly not an expert on naming judges, but he certainly screwed the country and free speech with the with the court that he’s helped install. So I mean, how important is awareness among the public of Project 2025 and how it’ll impact everyone? I think it’s critical and anyone who isn’t paying attention has been living under a rock or has their head in the sand. You know, I work a lot with people, adult industry professionals, you know, sex workers and entertainers. And a lot of them are pretty politically engaged and paying attention because their livelihoods are threatened at every turn all the time, even under, you know, democratic presidents and administrations. So but then there’s a lot of us that are apolitical and prefer to just, you know, go about our business and our day. And I think if anyone was it’s like we already had a Trump administration and it was awful. It was awful. And they did a lot of Project 2025 type things like removing information from, you know, governmental websites about LGBTQ rights and trying to erase different parts of, you know, civil rights history. And then of course the Supreme Court just disappointments and also just trying to like seize and maintain power. So this is just more of the same and anyone who’s not taking it seriously isn’t, you know, I just I don’t understand how people couldn’t. But this is something that sex workers are starting to talk about in their communities. I’m starting to hear it on sex worker podcasts and in peer learning groups. And people are just trying to figure out what to do when it hits the fan. I think people are feeling a little pessimistic. But sex workers tend to be harm reductionists, meaning that, you know, if you’re going to you’re going to do an activity that requires some risk, you know, there’s definitely risk involved. How can you mitigate that risk? And a lot of sex workers aren’t terribly fond of Democrats and they’re definitely not fond of Republicans usually. And so we’re talking about it as a form of harm reduction to vote for the lesser of two evils if that’s how you see it. They’re having those conversations and we’re certainly trying to support those conversations and happening. Well, to be aware, you have to read and a good portion of the public doesn’t do that. So that’s the problem. True. But they do talk. People talk and that’s something we try and foster is just people getting on Zoom and talking with each other or when we can get together in person. That’s precious in person time. So having these conversations, however we can have them is important. Absolutely. How is your work at New Moon connected with your board position at Wood Hall? Well, I’ve been a big fan of Wood Hall for a long, long time and it’s an honor to get to work with them closely. So when New Moon started, I had to sort of shop around for a fiscal sponsor. Given my prior experience at different sex worker led nonprofits. I knew about the pros and cons of starting your own 501c3 and I decided that we that wouldn’t be necessary for a New Moon. We just wanted a fiscal sponsor and this might be a shocker to you, Bruce, but not every fiscal sponsor, not every progressive foundation or fund was interested in working with a sex worker rights fund. Shocker. I know. I know. My goodness. Okay. Was that good? I’m surprised, but Wood Hall was interested and they’re so aligned and they’ve really prioritized sex workers rights and censorship issues as what they’re really tackling these days. And so it was a very happy home to be able to be invited into Wood Hall. They are sort of the umbrella legally for New Moon Network and it’s a great collaboration and we share some programming. So being on the board made sense. I would do it anyways just because I love and support Wood Hall’s work. Yeah. Ricky’s great. Ricky’s fantastic. Ricky, Mandy, Larry Walters puts in so much time over there and they just a lot of great minds have contributed to that institution, but they didn’t have any sex worker perspective lived experience on their team. So it made sense to hop on and the shared programming that we collaborate on has been really terrific and very much in alignment with both of the organization’s goals. I didn’t know Larry was involved, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Larry’s, you know, he’s, he’s, he stewards so much good work for the adult industry. And so yeah, went the Cesta Fosta constitutional challenge. He was deeply involved in that and other issues for Wood Hall. So yeah. And that’s another thing. Talk about that horrible law. Talk about it. Yeah. I mean, how bad, how bad is that for sex workers? It was kind of apocalyptic and we knew it was going to be, but I was at Swap Seattle at the time when Fosta passed. Swap Seattle was a local chapter of sex workers outreach project USA and everybody was sounding the alarm bells about Cesta Fosta passing. And then when it did, there was an immediate effect and also we lost back page in the same week, right? So sex workers lost at least 20 of their top websites that they used to advertise on, including back page. And so this means that there’s literally hardly anywhere safe online to get work. And this doesn’t mean you stop being a sex worker. It means you just have to try and find clients in a different way. So we did a survey, Coyote Road Island, which has been around for a long time, ran a survey, I think about 250 people within two weeks of Cesta Fosta passing and losing back page asking how has your income changed in the past two weeks? What bills are you unable to pay? How many dependents do you have? How safe are you now? How has your working conditions changed? And what we found is that people were unable to pay their bills. Most sex workers are breadwinners, as we know. And people were starting to receive outreach for the very first time from essentially pimps. You know, people saying, you know, it’s like when there’s desperation, predators sniff that out and they try and exploit desperation. So a lot of random men reaching out being like, I have a rolodex of clients come work for me. And a lot of people reported that they’d never had outreach like that before. They weren’t interested in working for a third party. But then some really interesting stuff happened. The whole ecosystem of sex work shifted. And when we’re talking about sex work, obviously, this is like a, you know, there’s, there’s multiple modalities, right? There’s escorting prostitution, there’s street based sex work, there’s stripping, you know, camming, filming, all of it. But something we saw that was really interesting was a lot of sex workers in an effort to find safe places to work, all flooded strip clubs. And clients did the same thing. Clients went to strip clubs to try and connect with providers. And this threw off what was already kind of a dysfunctional, you know, work environment and a lot of strip clubs, because a lot of strippers haven’t been able to get labor rights up until very recently. I think because of Cesta Fosta, it threw off the imbalance. Working conditions got really bad in a lot of clubs. And there was mismatched expectations between what a client wanted and what a dancer would provide. And eventually, like long story short, in Washington and Oregon and parts of California, strippers have made significant gains in gaining rights and union representation, which has been something they’ve been working on since like the 60s. That’s awesome. That was, yeah. So it’s interesting to see the cause and effect of these major pieces of legislation. That was an unexpected silver lining. But I think that it cost a lot of suffering and stress and economic hardship and danger for people when Cesta Fosta passed. Yeah. Yeah, it hasn’t stopped. What’s going on in the movement for sex worker rights in the U.S. now and beyond? There’s a lot going on. Sex workers are working at multiple intersections of human rights, social justice, civil rights. And so depending on where you are in the country, you’ll find sex worker groups prioritizing different things. And one thing that is significant is to say that we believe at New Moon that the movement for sex worker rights in the U.S. has grown visibly by 1,000 percent, which since 2015. So this is shortly before Cesta Fosta hits. And we used 2015. That was when I was at Swap USA. So we had a bird’s eye view of the United States. And the board at Swap USA at the time decided to try and count all of the sex worker led organizations that we could find in the U.S., including its own chapters. And we were able to count about 20 sex worker led orgs in the U.S. There might have been more that we didn’t know about. Maybe there was 30. But 20 to 30. And now at New Moon, we maintain a list of 230 groups and growing every day. And we believe that at least a third of these groups have been active in the past year. And that’s a huge jump. That’s a lot of momentum. Tenfold for sure. Tenfold. Yeah. So what this means to us is that sex workers, which are a highly stigmatized workforce, sex workers aren’t usually trying to make themselves visible because there’s so much risk to it. But they’re making themselves visible. They’re organizing. They’re trying to make change in their communities, we believe, because of things like CESTA and FOSTA. It has become so complicated and stressful to try and do business as a sex worker, which I personally think is the whole goal of things like CESTA/FOSTA. They say they’re trying to protect people, but really it just makes people’s lives increasingly unstable. So sex worker groups are coming out of the woodwork and they’re doing, we kind of divide it into direct services and advocacy. Groups tend to specialize in one or the other. So with direct services, you see groups doing outreach to people working in massage parlors or brothels or working on the street and handing out harm reduction supplies or condoms or just trying to build community because we know that isolation is dangerous. We have groups like SWAT Behind Bars offering direct services through their hotline. So people trying to help their communities with tangibles. But then there’s advocacy and groups are trying to change laws usually on the state level, but we’re seeing some really great municipal action. For instance, Ishtar Collective in Vermont has been really active in trying to remove prostitution language from local city codes. So it’s not decriminalized on the state level, but there are very few municipalities now in Vermont that even have prostitution language, which kind of paves the way. It gets people talking about the issue. We’re seeing groups like in New York and California, there was a total repeal on loitering laws so loitering is when you’re standing outside and you either a cop thinks that it looks like you’re going to engage in prostitution or sell drugs just by the way that you’re standing where you’re located, how you’re dressed, who you’re talking to. And those are deeply racist, deeply sexist laws. I personally know people who have been picked up on prostitution loitering just because they were walking in the wrong neighborhood. They happened to be a black woman and they were going to go and pick up some takeout food and they were put in a patty wagon for prostitution loitering. So they’re awful laws and so sex worker groups were able to work in coalition to remove those laws entirely. That’s awesome. Yeah. Sex worker in like so another example I think is really interesting is Flop Chicago in Illinois joined the ACLU and a coalition in suing Palantir, which makes facial recognition software. And as I’m sure many people listening to this podcast know, you know, data privacy, the use of biometrics, privacy online in general is valuable to us. You know, we’re talking about, you know, age verification a lot lately. Privacy is important for people in our industry. And so Swap Chicago was able to successfully sue Palantir for their scraping of facial recognition biometrics from escort ads, which is a huge, huge win. And the only reason that could happen is because Illinois has actual biometric data, privacy protection for its citizens. So we can see that sex workers are operating in a lot of different ways in the movement lately. Yeah. And they’re growing. It’s got a lot of momentum. That’s awesome. How is the movement for sex worker rights relevant to the adult industry? Sex workers are the adult industry, Bruce. So there wouldn’t be an adult industry if not for the people in front of the camera. And I think it’s easy to forget that sometimes. And certainly we are thankful to our collaborators and our business partners who are behind the camera or providing the streaming technology or marketing, what have you. But really at the end of the day, without sex workers, there is no adult industry. So I feel like we’re all up against these anti sex narratives that porn is inherently violent or degrading, that sex work could never be a job that somebody chooses, especially a woman. And we in the adult industry know that that’s not true, but that’s the narrative we’re up against. And it’s a simplistic narrative where there are no sex workers. It’s all just exploited women and children. And so I feel that the movement for sex worker rights is critical to the adult industry’s longevity and success because sex workers are the only ones that can refute that narrative and come out of the woodwork as they have been doing and say, "Hey, we’re not victims in the way you think we are. Sure life can be hard, but we are workers. This is our job and we want to be safe at work and have the right to do it without harassment or arrest." And so we believe at New Moon that by supporting sex workers, we are supporting the entire adult industry in defending against this simplistic negative narrative. Sex workers work. Sex workers work. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because sex work used to be exclusively for in person prostitution and the like. And did that term start being used for adult entertainment? Because I know that there was a shift at one point. You know, I can’t pinpoint that exactly. And that’s a great question. It’s rather recent. It’s the last couple of years. Well, it keeps the big red umbrella keeps expanding and including more people, which I’m fully in favor for because our opposition sees us all as perverts who need to be eradicated. So it might as well link arms and all band together. That’s my opinion. But I remember being as an escort and a dominatrix and doing erotic massage and some fetish filming. In the early aughts around 2008, I was aware of the phrase sex work as a more encompassing term to describe all erotic and sexual labor modalities. So that’s just my personal take. But I can’t pinpoint it further than that. Okay. Yeah, because it’s interesting from time to time I think about that because all of a sudden I see everything we do as sex work, which is fabulous. But I know there was a shift at one point. There’s still a pretty strong division. I feel like a lot of people in the adult industry have heard the phrase sex work and they’re at least comfortable referring to it when talking about their colleagues who maybe do in person work. But there is still a little bit of a stigma, I think, especially with people who mostly are working in front of cameras to not describe themselves as sex workers because maybe they think of it as only being prostitution. Some erotic dancers don’t think of themselves as sex workers. And actually, while I was at Swap USA, some of our local chapters reported the desire to rebrand the name of their local chapter because even escorts didn’t want to associate with the phrase sex work. It’s a useful phrase. It makes it a conversation about labor, but it’s a little blunt, right? Sex work. There’s not a lot of mystique. Sounds like it’s linking you to something criminal. And a lot of people are not comfortable with that. I have wondered if it’s time for a new phrase that is something a little gentler and more encompassing, right? Erotic work or something like that. Erotic laborers. Oh, I like that. I like that. You should trademark that. That’s not my idea. Other people have already made moves on that and I applaud them. Okay. I love it. How’s the movement for sex worker rights funded? Well, that’s a great question, Bruce, and we’ve been learning a lot about that at New Moon. So, basically, the movement for sex workers rights, I would say a lot of it is self-funded. You know, it’s like we talked about these 230 groups that we’re aware of in the US that have kind of popped onto the scene since 2015. A lot of these groups are self-funded. It’s sex workers who are making a good enough income to put money back into their communities. So they’re buying supplies to do outreach or they’re putting gas in the cars so people can go testify at the state house. And then sex workers clients, donating to the coffers of the movement is a great way for clients to be involved. They can literally help be the fuel of the engine that drives the movement. So the smaller groups, a lot of which have budgets of under $10,000, that’s largely self-funded. Now there is traditional foundation funding, and we do have some data on that from 2019 from Human Rights Funders Network. And according to them, in 2019, sex worker rights initiatives received less than 1% of all human rights funding globally from traditional foundations. So that represents about $7 million out of a potential $4 billion. And the unfortunate part about that is that out of the top 10 funders, two of them are no longer in the movement. So Open Society Foundation, which a lot of people might be familiar with as George Soros, the Soros family, their money, they had two foundations that were two of the top 10 contributors globally to the movement for sex workers rights. And they consolidated their global offices in recent years, and they have withdrawn significantly, if not completely, from the movement for sex workers rights and also from LGBTQ+ rights movements. Yes, really? Yeah. And so I’m part of a group called the Sex Work Donor Collaborative, and they recently issued a report studying the impact of that specific withdrawal. And we find that sex worker collectives in Africa and Southeast Asia and parts of Eastern Europe are hardest hit. So we’re still waiting on more current data. We’re expecting 21 and 22 funding data from Human Rights Funders Network to see how things have shifted. But it’s not looking great. But now that is about traditional foundation funding. What it’s not including is private individuals who are making donations. So I think this is the strategy we need to look to now, especially where high net worth individuals who are philanthropists have a personal connection to sex work. Whether they are a client who has benefited greatly from sex worker services, or maybe they’re a past, a former sex worker themselves, or maybe they have a family member or a loved one who is or was a sex worker. And that is money that is hard to quantify because they might want to remain anonymous. They might just be giving to one group. They might just be giving money to one individual sex worker who is then channeling it into other places. So it’s hard to tell how much of that is out there. But by the looks of how the funding is panning out for the organizations doing the work, it does not seem like it’s a tremendous amount of money. Groups are definitely underfunded and struggling, especially in the wake of the Open Society Foundation withdrawal. Yeah. That’s really sad. What does sex worker led groups do with the funding once they have access to it? Well, they do a lot. So I know it can sound like gloom and doom talking about the funding landscape and how there’s not a lot to go around. It’s like 7 million globally for the whole movement in 2019. That’s nothing. That’s hundreds and hundreds of organizations splitting that money. So sex workers, I find that they are incredibly resourceful and that when they get this money, they can do a lot with it. A lot of sex worker rights groups are putting their money into supplies if they’re doing direct services or they’re literally putting gas into cars so that they can get places to testify, to protest, or to just gather and build community, which is extremely powerful. They’re buying hosting and websites. And then once they reach a next tier, I mean, those are usually like the baseline expenses that groups prioritize first. What they usually do next is they will do a form of mutual aid or small stipends for volunteers. Sex workers practice mutual aid robustly, which is to say that they pool resources and then when somebody’s in trouble or having a hard time making rent or if they get assaulted by a client, they will use some of those pooled resources to try and support that person. And this sex workers moved a lot of money in mutual aid, hundreds of thousands of dollars during the pandemic because sex workers couldn’t access government aid. So when they get past their baseline expenses, put gas in the car, buy some condoms to distribute, and they’re usually doing mutual aid or they will start paying small stipends for people doing social media or coordinating their outreach efforts because sex workers are really good at prioritizing and valuing people’s time and labor. So that’s usually what they spend their money on. And then if they reach another tier, if they can apply for some grants and get some multi-year funding, if they can find a client or a sponsor that’s going to help them reach that baseline, then they can start doing things like occasionally sex worker groups will rent a small office or a storage unit so that they can keep these supplies and it’s not just in somebody’s car. They’ll start paying themselves so they can have actual staff and that’s when you see sex worker groups really becoming institutions. They start clinics like HIPPS in DC or St. James Infirmary which just recently closed in the Bay Area. That was a historic sex worker clinic. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it was a great place and it’s really left a vacuum. Yeah, sex workers are constantly prioritizing serving their communities and also advocating for what is right. So beyond providing funding, what does New Moon do to support sex workers who are taking action? Well, we know from experience that just giving a group money and saying, "Here you go, run with it, change the world," isn’t really setting them up for success. Some sex worker groups have people with experience in traditional businesses or nonprofits or campaigns and sometimes they do know how to sustain that kind of windfall. But some groups need some technical assistance around sustainability. So we spend a lot of time with sex worker and survivor leaders talking about budgeting, projections, grant writing, strategy, not burning out. Just looking at their organizational structure and figuring out how they can refine it to make it more sustainable. Also offer some capacity building tools, one of which is, I’m so proud of it, it’s called Spokes Hub and it’s a collaboration with Wood Hall. And essentially it’s an online academy for people with lived experience in the sex trade who want to be advocates. So through Spokes Hub, people can log into Zoom and learn how to talk to the media. They can learn how to talk to their elected officials, how to write an op-ed. And then they can also do deep dives on different aspects of the sex trade. What is it like to be a male sex worker? What’s it like to be a black sex worker? What do we mean when we say sex workers work? So we’re trying to give people hard skills as well as a deeper understanding to be able to advocate for the movement more broadly because it’s an incredibly diverse movement. People from all walks and a ton of different experiences. And also with Spokes Hub, we’re really trying to bring survivors along because the division between sex worker and survivor is toxic and traumatic for everybody involved because a lot of sex workers have experienced some form of trauma in their work because our work is so stigmatized and made dangerous. It doesn’t have to be that way. So we bring survivors in and we try and have these really nuanced conversations so that we can move forward together. And then when people graduate that program, we give them access to a financial awards pool to provide compensation for their future advocacy that they do that is otherwise unpaid. So many sex workers are talking to journalists and classrooms and doing all sorts of stuff for free or at personal expense and also at personal risk. So we try and teach them advocate safety and just give them some recognition and a little compensation to encourage them. That’s fantastic. What is the reception of New Moon been like in the adult industry? I think that people are generally supportive. I don’t know that the adult industry formally like the porn industry recognizes the need to support the movement for sex workers rights. And some people do and some people don’t because I think there’s a lot of people who have been in business in this industry for a long time and they’ve ridden the waves. They’ve been through different waves of censorship and restriction and expansion and I think that they can just keep riding those waves and maybe they can and good for them. But we’re also careening towards a far more restrictive world and I applaud the work that FSC is doing to fight these ridiculous so-called age verification laws. We got Project 2025 and again getting back to that theory that sex workers are the only ones who can stand up to the narrative that this is all exploitation. And so we’re trying to sort of articulate that and also just show up for all the workers. Show up for like because there’s more sex workers than ever now because of the pandemic and everybody got online and took their clothes off. So all those people look at only fans. I found some statistics that in May of 2020, so like pandemic is here and we’re all like inside and wondering what to do. I read that between 7 and 8,000 people per day were signing up to sell content on only fans. That’s one platform and there’s dozens of platforms. That means hundreds of thousands of people even if they didn’t make 10 bucks on those platforms. They only did it for a week. They all have that scarlet letter now that could compromise future jobs, child custody, housing, all traveling. We’re seeing more travel. It’s totally happening. So we’re also there to connect with all the content creators and the models and the entertainers and see where they’re at with things. And I think our main goal with the adult industry is to help them make wise investments if they want to donate to a sex worker-led initiative, which we fully support. We help give them a vetted list. We have over 50 grantees in the US. So these are groups that we’ve gotten a look under the hood. We’ve built relationships. We think that they’re doing good work with their money because we would hate for an adult industry business to make that kind of investment into the movement and not have it pan out or feel like it was a waste or maybe nobody ever gets back to them and they just feel like they got hoodwinked or whatever. That happens sometimes. So we’re here to offer advice to try and elevate the importance of this movement, offer some education and some good information. What’s the role of nonprofits in the adult industry? I think the role of nonprofits in the adult industry is to, A, keep stewarding and fostering a political environment where the adult industry can exist. Hello, FSC. Hello, Woodhull. Groups that are on the front lines of these court battles, these constitutional challenges and trying to stop bad legislation and hopefully propagate good legislation. I love seeing adult industry businesses get involved in that. Mojo host has been very supportive. I saw that. I saw that. So that’s one role. Again, I divide things from advocacy into direct services. So F Free Speech Coalition, Woodhull Foundation, very much advocacy-oriented nonprofits that are of great service to the adult industry and its ability to do business. On the direct services side, the adult industry doesn’t exist without sex workers, without content creators, entertainers, and they, especially in the adult industry, I feel that every modality of sex worker has their own unique burden to bear as far as danger and stigma. And I kind of have the deepest respect in a sense for porn stars because they’re doing the physical labor, right? They’re doing the performance and that is a physical undertaking in itself. But then they’re in front of the judgment of the world. And I think that those comment sections being recognizable, not being able to take it back, the mental health ramifications can be extreme, especially if you have a negative experience. What if you have a not so great experience that’s on camera and now that’s out there and everybody’s, it’s really complicated work. And so groups like Pineapple Support are essential for making sure that our performers, the people who make money for this industry are well. We want people to be well. I mean, A, just to be ethical and because I do believe that a lot of the adult industry is a community that wants to see each other doing well and be healthy and prosperous and succeed. But then also we don’t want to feed into the oppositional narrative that this is just an industry that will just chew you up and spit you out and leave you feeling suicidal. Groups like Swap Behind Bars, who will take a phone call from anybody in any circumstance and do their best to support them. This is a hard job. And so those groups are providing the direct services. So yeah, I think that nonprofits are essential to the health and longevity and prosperity of the adult industry. Absolutely. You answered my next question. So how can adult industry businesses be great partners with nonprofits? Yes. So there’s a little bit to learn here. So nonprofits have to have business sense. They have to handle their money wisely. They need to have achievable goals. But they’re not driven by profit. They have different motivations. The adult industry needs these nonprofits to succeed in order like we were just talking about to have a healthy workforce, to have a healthy political environment. But just starting by recognizing that the motivations are different. And people who get into nonprofit work tend to have different priorities than people who get into a corporation or a business. So starting there, I think to be a good partner to a nonprofit, let’s say you want to make a donation to a nonprofit of $5,000. Recognize that that $5,000 is going to be put to good use generally, but that the people working in that nonprofit are probably under resourced. They probably don’t have all the funding that they need to have all the staff they need to have the space to be able to work with you more deeply on a public collaboration. So keeping the bar low, it’s like, of course you want credit. So if you’re an organization, it’s like, here’s my logo. I’d love some social media shout outs. I’d love a report at the end of this quarter as to what the money did. That might be it for your $5,000 donation, which is a lot of money, right? When you start expecting more engagement, nonprofits will do their best to honor your desires because they’re thankful to have you as a supporter and they want to foster the relationship, but it can be deeply stressful for them and their staff to do that. And it might actually pull them away from the work that you’re donating towards. So just measuring your expectations and remembering that they have a whole different set of priorities and daily tasks than your team at your business. Absolutely. Beyond funding, what does the movement for sex worker rights need to be successful? I think it needs some brilliant minds with some great skills. So if you can’t donate money, donate your skills. If you have bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, brand strategists, strategists in general, a lot of sex worker led initiatives, like sex workers come from all different backgrounds. Some of them have corporate backgrounds, but a lot of them don’t. A lot of them have been entertainers for a long time and they are very savvy in their own regard and they certainly have transferable skills, but maybe those transferable skills haven’t leveled up to the organizational level. Some people are really good at running their own individual, independent contractor business, but with a little bit of mentorship or pro bono help, we can help take them to a new level to working with a team, to having a bigger impact as a collective. So I’m really in favor of just donate your time if you have professional skills. That’s a great way to help level up an organization. So making introductions, thoughtfully sharing different connections, wherever it seems appropriate, being a good listener, listening to a group and hearing about their priorities, it might give you an idea of like, "Oh, they really ought to talk to this person here," or, "Hey, you might have a media Rolodex and you might know of a journalist that might be a great connection for an advocate who has something to say or a bill that they’re pushing." So just listening, offering connections, pro bono work, mentorship, those are all really helpful. Awesome. What priorities do you see emerging for sex workers and the adult industry? So usually my colleagues and I would say decriminalization, just removing criminal penalties for in-person exchanges of prostitution, essentially. But frankly, I think that discrimination protection is the bigger ball of wax to tackle because we have hundreds of thousands of sex workers now, I call them sex workers, but people who have done work online since the pandemic. And they’re not ever going to be at risk for a prostitution charge, but they’re all at risk for different forms of discrimination in banking, housing, child custody, all that stuff. And in parts of Australia, sex workers just received discrimination protection as a broader LGBTQ amendment to their, essentially their protected class laws. It’s amazing and they did it and we need to talk to them and study that and see the landscape is not looking good in the US as far as like getting that done. So maybe it’ll be on a local level, maybe we can start doing it in different institutions. But I think that discrimination protection is the strongest pathway to legitimizing the adult industry and also to making a meaningful change in people’s lives, because so many people are affected by all those different social ills that we just talked about and hundreds of thousands of people. Can you imagine how people’s mental health would be positively impacted if they knew that they had a fighting chance of fighting discrimination? Sure, absolutely. And of course, I think another thing is to be politically active because with the presidential election coming up, it could be pretty dire. So I think people need to tell their friends and their loved ones about what a Republican administration would do. I see a lot of adult entertainers doing that on social media and I’m really proud of them because they have a big platform. And this is actually more of a question for you, Bruce, but how do you think that adult industry businesses feel about their performers getting political? Oh, I think at least to me, I think it’s great. And I don’t think anybody has an issue with it just because of the dangers we face. Yeah, great. That’s great to hear. That’s something I’ve been learning about the adult industry. How welcome is being openly political? That’s something I’ve been learning. So that’s great to hear. Yeah, absolutely. What are you hopeful about when it comes to your mission? I’m hopeful that sex work is out of the box. This thousand percent movement growth, the fact that sex work is a phrase that most people have heard now and are familiar with. To me, it means that we’re at a new level in our movement’s history, a new level of social recognition, a new level of momentum. We’ll see what the coming administration and coming years do to that. I have a feeling if we get a Trump, if we get Project 2025, essentially our movement might go into a type of winter where we can’t get much airtime because I think a lot of attention will be pulled to more fundamental social justice issues like immigration, abortion, LGBTQ rights, just like what happened with the last Trump administration. I’m hopeful that sex workers and their allies and their clients are tenacious, and now we’ve had a little bit of a taste of having a place in society. I’m hopeful that all of these newly minted online performers, online sex workers, are going to have something to say when their rights are compromised or when they experience discrimination. That’s a whole lot of people who could be joining this movement if they do find themselves on the wrong end of somebody’s opinion or the law. Of course, I don’t want anything like that to happen to people, but we notice also seeing sex workers take up space in the political landscape. Can we just have a moment, a round of applause for Stormy Daniels? Thank you, Stormy, for being one of the only people who can stick it to Trump and have something actually affect him, her and Eugene Carroll. Two women standing up to Trump, so proud of Stormy Daniels. I’m forgetting her name right now, but I believe it was in Virginia where there was a woman running for office as a Democrat, and she had been on streammates or something doing live sex shows with her husbands, and the Republicans just jumped on that, and they were trying to slander her and call her a whore and all this stuff. She almost won that race despite having done online sex work. It was with her husband, sure. That’s a big jump, and then we have the, in Jersey, I believe, we have a former erotic dancer who’s been running for office several times in Portland, Oregon. There’s a woman who’s a dancer at Mary’s running for mayor, and it looks like she’s a pretty good shot. Sex workers are starting to try and step into these higher echelons of power, and they’re doing it publicly, which I think is phenomenal. That’s something I’m very hopeful about. That voters are with them, that that woman in Virginia almost won despite having been online naked collecting tokens. That’s a really big deal. Yeah, it really is. Let’s hope there’s more of it. Savannah, I’d like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk, and I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. That would be fabulous. Thanks, Bruce. Thank you. My broker tip today is part six of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about eliminating unneeded expenses. Next, you can trademark your website. Having a trademark instantly protects your brand and makes your site more valuable for when it comes time to sell it. Trademarking your site will cost an average of about $1,500, but should be more than worth the investment when it comes time to sell. Show buyers ways you feel the site can make more money in the future. This includes showing them future plans you may have, traffic trends as well as sales trends. If things are growing and you can show them how to grow them more, they’re likely to be willing to pay more for the site. Do something unique with your site. If you have competitors, figure a way to do it better. Be different in some distinguishable way that makes you better. Your members will notice and spend more money with you. Make your site a place that people want to visit, not just to buy things or view porn. Be creative, not just one of many. Keep thinking outside the box and make positive changes to your site. Think like a buyer when planning or updating your site. Don’t think like a tech. Think like the consumer. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll be speaking with free speech attorney Jeffrey Douglas in part one of our conversation. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. And once again, I’d like to thank my guest Savannah Sly of New Moon Network. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]