Janice Griffith

Janice Griffith, an AVN Awards best actress nominee and co-founder of SpankChain, a start-up that aims to make sex work safer via blockchain technology, is no manic pixie porn girl.

- Lina Abascal

Along with her political activism (she promotes the decriminalization of sex work alongside Sex Workers Outreach Project), her vocal opposition to racism in the adult industry (she’s an outspoken critic of marketing that fetishizes nonwhite performers) and her entrepreneurship (in June she launched Fleshlight’s first-ever “medium-toned” toy), her passion remains having sex on camera and being paid for it.

And much of what the 23-year-old New York native does online and off is geared toward protecting her right to do so. That includes her current efforts to resolve the dangers now facing sex workers in the United States following passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. A set of anti-trafficking bills signed into law by the president last April, FOSTASESTA gives officials the right to police websites that host advertisements for sex work, effectively equating illegal sex trafficking with consensual sex for pay.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, released a memo stating that a certain provision of FOSTA may be unconstitutional and that the act “is broader than necessary because it [extends] to situations where there is minimal federal interest, such as to instances in which an individual person uses a cell phone to manage local commercial sex transactions involving consenting adults.” Pro–free speech groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have come out in opposition to the legislation, saying it drastically weakens protections against internet censorship. And by censoring and criminalizing the presence of sex workers, Griffith argues, FOSTA- SESTA removes their ability to vet potential clients, creating more risk within an already marginalized population.