A bizarre new alliance is coming after sexual freedoms. We’re ready

Radical feminists and religious groups teamed up against sex work. Now they’re going after broader reproductive freedoms

Regular readers of BTS will be familiar with the stark divide amongst women’s rights organisations on the issue of sex work and trafficking.

Feminist organisations like the Global Alliance against Traffic in Women (GAATW) argue that sex workers’ agency should be respected, and that human trafficking laws should not be misused to abolish sex work or censor sex workers.

Their political opponents argue that sex work is inherently exploitative and should never be treated as legitimate work. These actors, who often identify as ‘radical feminists’, have long-utilised anti-trafficking legislation to push for restrictions on sex work. Fighting “sex trafficking” is also a popular crusade for conservative Christian groups, who view sex work as depraved moral behaviour. Since the 1990s, they too have used the legal framework of trafficking to argue for the abolition of sex work. At times, these two groups have joined forces in an “unlikely alliance” to pursue these ends.

Worryingly, this area of common cause now appears to be growing. We at GAATW have noticed that many organisations from both camps have recently expanded their use of anti-trafficking frameworks to also advocate for the abolition of surrogacy and promote transphobic ideas.

As a result, GAATW has broadened its own fight by forming new alliances with social justice movements beyond trafficking, sex work and migration. This article will explain why and how we have joined up with LGBTI rights and sexual and reproductive health organisations to counter the increasingly organised and well-funded attack on the rights of sex workers and people who act as gestational surrogates.

Broadening the fight

As with sex work, some radical feminists argue that surrogacy arrangements of any kind meet the criteria of human trafficking, seeing it as the commodification of women’s bodies and therefore inherently exploitative. Now conservative Catholic lobby groups are seizing on that to bolster their own anti-surrogacy stances and suggest their position is also feminist.

These conservative religious lobby groups are currently positioning their opposition to sex work and surrogacy as part of a broader ‘anti-gender ideology’, which sets the patriarchal heterosexual family as the norm, and all other forms of family life and sexual and reproductive behaviour as ‘ideology’. Amongst the rights that these groups now bring together under the umbrella term of ‘gender ideology’ are comprehensive sex education, LGBTI rights, and access to abortion and contraception.

Like with sex work and surrogacy, conservative lobby groups have also started to position their opposition to gender ideology as a women’s rights issue, arguing in UN human rights spaces that “the greatest threat to women’s equality and empowerment isn’t from men or patriarchal structures but from gender ideology.”

Transphobic arguments are now being dragged into discussions about sex work, surrogacy and trafficking.

They are emboldened to make these claims by the fact that recently, the concept of being ‘gender critical’ has been used by trans-exclusionary groups that identify with women’s rights to question and attack the rights of trans people. What has been the strangest development for us at GAATW, is that many of these “gender critical feminists” are the same actors who conflate sex work and surrogacy with trafficking. As a result, transphobic arguments are now being dragged into discussions about sex work, surrogacy and trafficking.

For example, in a blog post, C-Fam links two separate statements from women’s rights actors – one which advocates against the rights of people of diverse genders and one which conflates surrogacy with human trafficking. The statements have different signatories, yet C-Fam suggests that the authors are homogenous and connects concerns about surrogacy to “gender ideology”. In doing so, C-Fam suggests that ending the exploitation of women in sex work and surrogacy arrangements is somehow related to, or even dependent on, the denial of transgender rights.

Forming alliances to fight back

These are grim developments, but for GAATW the growing number of shared issues between radical feminists and conservative groups has given us an opportunity to broaden our own alliance with other social justice movements. One of the ways we have worked together is to push back against biased and harmful reports of the current UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, on sex work, surrogacy and “sex-based” violence against women and girls.

Our coalition includes organisations fighting at the UN Human Rights Council for the rights of LGBTI persons, for the rights to abortion and contraception, for the rights of women with disabilities, and for the right of children to access comprehensive sex education, as well as longstanding allies of ours from the sex workers rights’ movement. We have had to build these new alliances to expand our knowledge on these issues. Similarly, as these organisations have seen their causes linked to trafficking by conservative actors, our new allies have been able to learn from us about the politics of the anti-trafficking sector.

Together we prepared inputs that went far beyond GAATW’s usual work. These addressed the historical feminist and LGBTI fight against biological essentialism and socially constructed beliefs about gender. We also analysed the origins of the international human rights framework relating to consent. Alsalem had misused the provisions of the UN Trafficking Protocol that deem “consent” as irrelevant when a victim of trafficking has been threatened, coerced or tricked, to argue that sex workers could never consent to their work. We were able to explain to our new friends how this is an incorrect interpretation of trafficking laws and provide context about the way this has historically been used to criminalise sex work.

In return, our new allies taught us about the dangerous implications of Alsalem’s proposition that some groups of people are unable to consent to certain kinds of sexual activity. We learned how such beliefs have historically allowed human rights violations like forced sterilisations and the criminalisation of consensual sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and amongst adolescents. The attitude that consent is irrelevant in certain contexts is also what has formed the basis of laws which permit marital rape. These are extremely important considerations that, like me, other anti-trafficking organisations applying these provisions of the UN Trafficking Protocol may not have considered before.

The sex workers’ rights movement has long built solidarity across siloes, from the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS to anti-carceral feminism

These alliances have not been one-off collaborations. In response to efforts at the UN and the European Union to conflate surrogacy with human trafficking, GAATW again joined forces with LGBTI and sexual and reproductive health rights organisations. Armed with our collective expertise, we were able to address the full extent of the harms taken by this approach. Whilst GAATW highlighted the harms caused by criminalising surrogacy as trafficking, our colleagues working on sexual and reproductive health rights brought evidence about the impact of restrictions on surrogacy on the right of all women to bodily and reproductive autonomy, as well as the discriminatory nature of surrogacy restrictions on LGBTI families.

Importantly, it is not just civil society organisations who are building solidarity across different human rights causes in response to anti-gender ideology. In August, 46 UN human rights experts with mandates ranging from the right to education to the independence of judges and lawyers, joined forces to oppose attempts to reassert rigid, binary conceptions of sex, arguing that “the integrity and coherence of the international human rights system depends on it.”

One step at a time

We have our allies amongst the sex workers’ rights movement to thank for starting this coalition. The sex workers rights’ movement has long been building solidarity across siloes, from the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS to the labour rights of informal workers to anti-carceral feminism.

It was through GAATW’s membership of the Sex Workers Inclusive Feminist Alliance (SWIFA) that we were first introduced to groups working on LGBTI rights. What began as an email chain started by a SWIFA member discussing a harmful report on “sex-based” rights, turned into a more formal coalition seeking to fight against anti-gender ideology at the UN. As talks from conservative actors turned to surrogacy, our group expanded to include organisations working on assisted reproductive technologies and the rights of the people involved.

Building solidarity across so many diverse silos is not without challenges, especially in relation to issues which have received less attention from the broad spectrum of the human rights movement – like surrogacy. As we worked to develop a shared position on surrogacy, it was clear that whilst the opposition may lump sex work and surrogacy as two sides of the same (evil) coin, in reality these are extremely different practices, and those working within them have very separate demands.

As a result, we had to lean heavily on the expertise of organisations who have worked with people who act as surrogates and thus have a clearer understanding of their aspirations and needs. Doing so in a way which is not extractive is not always easy. There is a fine line between recognising that one individual or organisation has greater expertise and so should take the lead, and not placing an inappropriate burden on an already under-resourced and overworked group of people.

For all of us in our coalition, building solidarity has required work. We have spent many hours, sometimes early morning or late evening, on calls with different organisations around the world to understand the issues they work on and to explain the issues we work on. We take the time to read each other’s work, to suggest strategic approaches to campaigns, and provide introductions and connections to influential policymakers operating in the different silos.

Ultimately, it is worth it. Our work has been made stronger with the support of our new allies, as at the end of the day all these issues – trafficking, sex work, surrogacy, gender identity – are about dignity, bodily autonomy and human rights. As the attacks on these issues by conservative actors are becoming more concerted and more tactical, so must our opposition become stronger, and our coalition – broader.

Text Maya Linstrum-Newman

Published November 24, 2025

Source portal opendemocracy.net