Halsey Says She Supports Sex Workers, and Many Fans ‘Cancel’ Her

CYBERSPACE—After the 24-year-old, Grammy-nominated pop singer Halsey posted a simple hashtag on her Instagram stories page—#supportsexworkers—she suddenly found herself “canceled” by many of her fans online, and was obliged to post a longer statement explaining why she posted the hashtag. “Halsey saying that we need to support sex workers that's a no no for me,” said one fan, responding on Twitter. “Halsey campaigning to support sex workers makes me so fucking sad,” said another. And so on. Halsey, whose given name is Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, has publicly discussed her teenage years, when she says she considered sex work as a way to earn enough money for food. So she responded quickly to the backlash on social media, where somehow her fans interpreted her support for sex workers as support for sex trafficking. “Getting a lot of shit because I posted #supportsexworkers on my story last night,” she wrote on a later Instagram post, as quoted by the NME. “Just to be clear. I DO support sex workers. I support consenting humans in the field. My statement obviously excludes people forced into sex work. It all comes back to autonomy and choice.” Tracy Clark-Flory, a senior writer for the site Jezebel, also jumped in to Halsey’s defense, pointing out that sex workers and sex traffickers are nor the same thing. “Much of the outrage in these cases comes from people who refuse to conceive of sex work as consensual, for any number of reasons,” she wrote. “It is akin to turning every single conversation about sex into a conversation about rape. It is akin to refusing the very existence of consensual sex.” Halsey herself went on to attribute the mass “canceling” at least in part to “cultural differences.” “Is this a cultural difference? I’ve noticed most of the people ‘cancelling’ me and rejecting the idea seem to come from (Latin America). Personally in the states I’m friends with many men and women who work in “sexual” fields and they are empowered by it,” she wrote. The backlash from her fans came just a day after Halsey released her single “Nightmare,” a song she said was dedicated to her fans. “Imagine getting onstage every night and seeing young women sweating mascara tears, lightning in their eyes, throwing elbows and raising fists, screaming till the veins in their necks raise under warm skin, and not being inspired by it. This song is about you, for you,” she wrote. Photo By Joey kl22 / Wikimedia Commons