| |  Illustration by Danie Drankwalter | The best time to be single in New York City, or any place where the temperature has the audacity to go below zero, is in the winter. While all my friends devote these unbearably cold times to getting hot, steamy, and sexed with a temporary lover, I prefer to get wine-drunk and antisocial and obsess over my skin. Sex is great, but have you taken a bath in Herbivore Coconut Soak lying in a Joanna Vargas Dawn Sheet Mask with a simmering Byredo Burning Rose candle? About two winters ago, I stumbled into the holy grail secret of poreless, luminous skin: exfoliating, specifically chemical exfoliation. It’s actually the best thing you can do for and to your body in the winter when your skin usually gets dry and flaky. A friend came into town toting a bag full of beauty goodies she didn’t want, and in it was the dream product I didn’t know I needed — M-61’s PowerGlow Peel pads, individual exfoliating pads saturated with glycolic and salicylic acids promising to immediately resurface your skin. A continuous stroke over my forehead, cheeks, chin, and neck, and I was a brand-new woman who had the dead skin cells to prove it — I could see them on the wipe immediately after I used it. Underneath was a new layer of skin: velvety, smooth, plump, and beaming. The products I applied after (a vitamin-C serum, a rose-hip oil, moisturizer, and a sunscreen) seeped into my skin with ease, and after about a month of using the peel pads, I started to see my hyperpigmentation fade into the abyss. This is what people mean when they say beauty comes from the inside out. This is how I know every celebrity who says they just drink lots of water is lying. I needed to know more about exfoliation — I needed to know everything, and what drastic measures I needed to take to afford it all (seriously, skin care can be expensive as hell; don’t let it suck you into feeling obligated to buy everything). I became a skin-care mad woman, limiting interactions to my mail person, my roommates, and my mother (because if not, she’d kill me). How much information could I read before I went to bed? (Caroline Hirons and the Cut’s Ashley Weatherford are my saviors.) What’s the difference between AHA and BHA? (Alpha hydroxy acid, which includes glycolic and lactic acids, works on the skin’s surface and is better for dry skin due to its moisturizing properties, and beta hydroxy acid, which includes salicylic acids, has the ability to penetrate pores, so it works well for oily and acne-prone skin. But together, they make a dynamic duo.) How many products could I try at once? (In hindsight and because I care about you, it’s definitely one at a time.) How often should I be exfoliating? (Start with two times per week.) Can I overdo it? (Yes, please don’t be like me and get excited and over-exfoliate. Take it slow.) And then: Did I really need to go on a date and split the bill when I could just buy more products? How often is this guy washing his pillowcases? Why do my friends want to talk about other stuff? Am I really supposed to lug ten products around in my bag for mediocre sex? Would my friends actually be mad if I flaked on dinner because it’s mask night? Going to Sephora is technically quality time spent, right? Finally: Why would I even leave my house? Why do I even need to see anyone at all? Is overnight shipping really that ridiculous? Some people freak out when you tell them you haven’t seen an episode of Girlfriends, or you didn’t know Jon B was white. Now I freak out when my friends tell me they’ve been on three dates in a week, but they don't exfoliate regularly — or worse, they've never done it. And that freak-out comes with a list full of product recommendations and eternal shame. It’s 2018, and while we can’t erase the dumpster fire that was 2017, we can erase our dead skin cells. It’s like a new year, new you — every week. And other very important people with flawless skin think so, too: Ageless Pharrell has said it. Beyoncé’s dermatologist has said it. So leave your friends and lovers behind, and put your skin first. Go forth and exfoliate. OK, OK, but where do I even start? I hate to answer your question with a question, but, how would you describe your skin? That will help you determine how much your skin can take. Ease into it. Start by adding a BHA (oily, break-out-prone skin) like Paula’s Choice Skin Perfecting 2% BHA Liquid or an AHA (dry skin) like Sunday Riley Good Genes, using it twice a week for at least a month. Right now, I use both about four to five nights a week. I start with the BHA exfoliant, then use an alcohol-free moisturizing toner (Indie Lee CoQ-10 is lovely), finishing with the AHA and continuing my regular nightly routine, which includes a heavy moisturizer and a retinol treatment. You can take it slower just using a cleanser with BHAs and AHAs, like Glytone Self-Foaming Cleanser, to be more like Pharrell. Then, if you want to feel like you’re at a spa without the hefty price tag, once a week, try doing an at-home chemical peel like Drunk Elephant T.L.C. Sukari Babyfacial. Following with a moisturizing mask like Laneige Sleeping Mask. Using some type of chemical exfoliant is going to help all the rest of the skin-care products you put on your face work tremendously better. Look at it this way: You’re one step away from people whispering and wondering if your glow is natural or a really good highlighter. It’s both. What about the rest of my body? This is where my research got to the point of no return. My body can feel like my face. Well, with the right regimen, it can feel smooth and velvety too. Sure, layering up on lotion and body oils can suffice for now, but what’s the point of putting all that moisture on a body full of dead skin cells. And for that, we must (as you already know) exfoliate. I’m not a chemical-exfoliant-only advocate (like I am for the face); there are great options for both chemical and physical exfoliation, like Aesop’s Geranium Leaf Body Scrub and Cane + Austin Retexturizing Body Pads. There’s even AHAs and BHAs in some body lotions, like Cerave’s Renewing SA body lotion. And don’t forget about your lips. Use something like Frank Body’s Lip Scrub Kit. Right now, I’m trying dry-brushing my body, which is a little tedious, but like anything I’ve learned as a skin-care enthusiast, it’ll be worth it. And you’re sure this is better than sex or socializing of any kind? I mean … I just want you to be the best version of yourself, and sometimes drama gets people to pay attention. But at the same time, who really wants to leave their house in the dead of winter? Warmer months are way better for dating and socializing. Don’t settle because it’s a little cold outside. Tahirah Hairston is an associate editor at Lenny who spends all her money on beauty products. | | | | |  Illustration by Katty Huertas | As violent conflict roiled the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Timor-Leste around the turn of the millennium, Christie Warren, a Virginia-based attorney, packed her bags. Warren flew nearly 24 hours from Richmond, Virginia, to Sydney, Australia, and then on to the northern-Australian outpost of Darwin. There, she boarded a United Nations plane north for Dili, Timor-Leste’s capital. She settled into her new living quarters: a cramped container on a barge floating off Dili’s coast, which she shared with a rotating roster of roommates. Each morning, she walked a gangplank to work in Dili’s municipal buildings, where power and running water had yet to be restored. In 1999, the Timorese had launched an uprising for independence from Indonesian rule. The months of bloodshed would decimate an estimated 70 percent of the local population. Some days, Warren helicoptered over armed militias en route to remote provinces. She returned to the barge each evening before sunset, after which fighting and looting tended to escalate onshore. The assignment was a typical one for Warren, who has spent decades traveling — often at the behest of the United Nations — to regions reeling from upheaval. She has worked in more than 55 countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Her job: provide support and advice to local leaders as they seek to bolster legal systems and institutions frayed by conflict. That might mean aiding in implementing new criminal codes, or even helping to draft a new state constitution from scratch. In Timor-Leste, it meant establishing a training program for local judges. “There’s a vacuum that comes immediately after conflict,” Warren tells me. “You have to start thinking about and planning for rule-of-law issues immediately.” A functioning court system where perpetrators are held to account, she says, is a major step toward reestablishing peace. Warren, a Bay Area native, has expressive green-gray eyes and shoulder-length dark-blonde hair. She chuckles often and chats with a warm gregariousness that belies a deep intensity. When she speaks about her work, it’s with a seriousness that makes it easy to imagine her counseling heads of state, or donning a powder-blue bulletproof vest in Iraq, or running marathons and scaling Himalayan peaks—“for fun.” At the core of Warren’s work is her fundamental belief in the power of comparative analysis — of seeking out a wide array of perspectives and possibilities. She doesn’t presume to tell officials, for instance, how to structure their legal or judicial systems. Instead, she presents them with options that have worked well in similar situations elsewhere. In 2007, in Kosovo, for instance, she created a PowerPoint for local officials with several examples of what an effective decentralized government might look like. “I don’t like linear thinking, being locked into one perspective,” she says. “I find it to be kind of elitist. I want to know what the other options are.” In short, Warren is an adviser — not a scribe. And this distinction is a crucial one, she says, particularly given what she characterized as a long, troubling history of Western nations dispatching their own officials to mold constitutions elsewhere to their liking. “There’s a misconception that international advisers parachute in and tell people how to live a better life,” she says. “The whole idea of Western domination is just kind of an ugly part of our history. It’s not the norm anymore.” Warren’s comparative approach has also informed her personal decision-making. She told me she didn’t initially set out to broker world peace. Rather, she found her way to her current work by giving herself permission to imagine — and then investigate — alternative pathways. As an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, Warren was drawn to the field of comparative literature because it encouraged pluralist thinking. In the process, she became fluent in French, Spanish, Latin, and Swedish. She seriously considered pursuing graduate studies in the field and teaching full-time. But on a post-graduation backpacking trip through Europe with her then-boyfriend, she changed her mind. Somewhere between Sweden, France, and Germany, she remembers thinking, Do I want to spend the rest of my life conjugating verbs? Instead, she enrolled in law school at the University of California, Davis, and then worked as a public defender in California, representing defendants who had been charged with a crime and lacked the means to hire a private lawyer. Around that time, she met her husband, Roger Warren, who was then a judge in Sacramento. They married in 1983 and have two grown children. In her nearly seventeen-year criminal-defense practice, she developed special expertise in defending individuals charged with the death penalty, as well as in training other attorneys. Warren says she might have continued on this track if her hobby of choice, high-altitude mountaineering, hadn’t prompted her to consider a far-flung opportunity. In 1994, Warren was preparing to leave for a trek in Nepal when she heard about a new training program for defense attorneys in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the wake of a brutal genocide. On a whim, she sent a fax introducing herself and offering to volunteer, since she planned to be roughly in that part of the world. Some days later came the faxed reply: “Please bring paper, bring pens, bring your friends. We need help.” She went. Though the fighting had ended years earlier, what she found was gut-wrenching: The Cambodian communist party, known as the Khmer Rouge, had systematically targeted those with a formal education — even individuals who wore glasses or had been seen with a book were suspect, Warren says. As a result, few surviving locals had the training to serve as judges to help maintain peace. So Warren worked for a couple of weeks to train judges and prosecutors, many of whom were respected community elders who had been recruited to the cause. This, she realized, was the sort of work she wanted to do. When she returned to California after her volunteer stint, she took a leave of absence (she would later resign) from her job and prepared to return to Cambodia for a longer stretch. Some friends and family members were astounded that she’d trade a comfortable life in Sacramento for the challenges and risks of overseas fieldwork. For Warren, though, it was an easy choice. As a defense attorney, she says, she might have spent several months arguing on the behalf of a single individual. But through advisory work in the developing world, she felt she could have a broader impact and perhaps help entire populations recover from trauma. During her two-year stay in Cambodia, she arranged a long-distance kid swap with her husband, where first her son, and then her daughter, joined her for about a year each and attended grade school in Phnom Penh. In the years and countries since, Warren has made it her mission to keep stepping into the vacuum created by conflict and to offer alternatives for order and peace. Lately, she has been advising on amendments to Ukraine’s constitution aimed in part at restructuring the country’s judicial branch and combating corruption in its ranks. She is also a professor at William and Mary Law School, where she is the founding director of the Center for Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. And she continues to climb mountains with a group of close friends, with whom she’s planning an expedition this summer. “I feel like I’ve accomplished something at the end of a trek,” she says. “It brings me peace.” Lindsay Gellman is a journalist based in New York. You can follow her on Twitter at @lindsaygellman. | | | | |  Illustration by Simone Noronha | Nine years ago, I met Pete Holmes at a comedy show in lower Manhattan. I remember him laughing at this goofy bit I did about my Texan dad pronouncing fajitas “frojitos.” From the stage, I thought, Well, that guy likes my comedy. I was new to stand-up and thankful for the validation, especially from a more seasoned performer. I’m a freshman, and a senior dug my joke! Cool! Months later, we ran into each other at a mutual friend’s holiday party. Full of whiskey and holiday cheer, Pete and I started doing bits like we had been friends for years. At one point in the night, we even called my mom. She had seen him perform a few months before and had enjoyed his set, so the gist of the convo was, “Mom, I’m with that guy from that show. Here, talk to him.” Needless to say, a few weeks later, we started dating. Clicking with a person’s sense of humor works like a drug in that way. When Pete and I met, we doped each other up, so becoming a unit seemed like the logical next step. One struggle we faced in the relationship stemmed from the fact that some of my comedy peers assumed Pete was “helping me” with my career. That’s why when Pete asked me to be on the dais for his 30th-birthday roast, I hesitated to accept. See, the roast took place during Whiplash, arguably the most prestigious show in the city. As a baby comedian, I hadn’t been booked on it yet, and I wasn’t sure this was the best way to break that seal. Sure enough, during the roast, a more veteran comedian on the dais made a joke about how this was the only way I could get booked. It legitimately made me howl with laughter, until one of my peers stood up in the middle of the otherwise-seated audience and started slow-clapping, like, Finally! Someone is calling Jamie out! Bravo! He even locked eyes with me while applauding the joke, to turn the knife in my stomach just a bit more. When Pete recommended me to a show in Brooklyn a few weeks later, I completely lost my shit on him. “Do you know what this looks like? I don’t need you to elevate me! I have to go at my own pace!” He only did it because he believed in me and thought the booker should know who I was, but I didn’t see it that way. I didn’t have enough faith in myself at that point to think, Oh, maybe I am good enough to do the show. I just cared about the Slow-Clapper, his cohorts, and their opinion of me. *** A few months later, Pete and I broke up over the phone. He was in Los Angeles, and I was in Brooklyn, so I couldn’t engage in a cathartic in-person yell-a-thon. I just had to accept it, which meant tearfully schlepping my broke ass through the snow every day to write breakup jokes at a coffee shop. I did not envision a future that included Pete in any real way, except maybe a polite exchange of “hellos” if we happened to be on the same show. Three months passed, and I was thriving, in that way you do when you are newly single and refocused on yourself. I had made it to the semifinals of Last Comic Standing and started touring colleges, and I was ten pounds lighter because um hi, breakup diet of cappuccinos and man-loathing. I felt strong and empowered. My independence had been reclaimed! One day, when I was on my way to perform at a school in Boston, I received an email from Pete. “Ugh, what does he want?” I said, but I opened it, and the contents made my mouth fall to the floor. He explained that Kid Farm, the 19 Kids and Counting parody we had co-created, written, and acted in while we were together, had been ordered as a digital series. Holy fucking shit yesss, I thought. Pete and I weren’t friends and hadn’t spoken in months, but all I cared about as I stood there at Faneuil Hall, with my silver Blackberry in one hand and a carton of fried clams in the other, was the opportunity to make more Kid Farm. When we filmed a month later, it was almost sociopathic how easily Pete and I were able to disconnect from any complicated feelings and plug in to making the show. We didn’t get caught up in stilted small talk because we couldn’t. We were there to supervise, to oversee. It wasn’t about Mommy and Daddy and their issues; it was about our Kid … Farm. Any awkwardness had evaporated, and what was left behind was sacred: a joining of comedic forces. I was no longer in the uncomfortable position of being Somebody’s girlfriend, capital S. I was just a comedian, making comedy with other comedians. *** Through that experience, followed by years of increasingly comfortable dinners and trips to the Grove, Pete and I became good friends. Not friends with a past, just buds. “We’re like Jerry and Elaine,” Pete concluded. It was true. I was dating my then-boyfriend, now-husband, Dan, and Pete was about to meet the love of his life, Val. I was doing comedy full time at this point: writing for TV, shooting the MTV comedy series Girl Code, and starting to headline clubs around the country. We had simply moved on. So when Pete got his talk show on TBS and asked me to write for it, I said, “Yes.” Then, when Crashing came along and he asked me to write for it, I also said, “Yes.” However, while writing on season one, my acting bug bit me hard. When I had first started stand-up, I’d thought comedy purists didn’t want to do anything as frivolous as acting. Even though I had studied it in school, I thought it was embarrassing to admit I had a legit interest in pursuing it. But after moving to Los Angeles, I began auditioning more and taking said auditions seriously, instead of deploying my previous defense mechanism of not memorizing lines because “They’re not going to pick me anyway.” I got callbacks and tested for an NBC pilot, which was flattering, but I yearned for more. Friends with whom I had started stand-up were landing not only recurring parts but lead roles as well, so I worried that I was “slipping behind.” I fantasized about booking, about being the needle that gets plucked from the haystack. Before we began writing season two of Crashing, Pete told me there was likely going to be a story line about a comedy relationship between Pete and another gal stand-up. “Is she based on me?” I wondered. “No, we’re going a different direction,” Pete said. Pete explained that while he didn’t think I was right for the role of Ali Reissen, he would like to find another way for me to be on camera. After a few nights of stress-eating Postmates, I pushed through and went back as a writer, optimistic that another role might arise. Two months later, they started auditions for Ali, and I was shocked when my agent sent me an appointment time. At that juncture, I had been gunning for a smaller part I had written into one of the episodes. Plus, they were auditioning a ton of people, many of whom were established actresses, and I thought, They’ll go with a famous person. That’s what always happens. At the end of May, I was in New York, and I hadn’t heard anything back about my audition, so I assumed that it was a very dead end. I sent my manager an email: “What’s going on with Crashing? Am I done writing? Do I have to buy a plane ticket back to LA? I need to know what to do with the rest of my summer. I have a life, I have a husband … I have a dog!” Just then, I got a text from Pete, who was not in the office that day. “Can we go to dinner when I’m back?” I placed my phone on the desk and nudged it away from me, like a finicky kid pushes peas around on his plate. “Ew.” I texted my manager: “Pete wants to take me to dinner to tell me I didn’t get the part.” I even told my office mate that I didn’t want to — and I quote — “split fucking calamari to talk about how Kirsten Dunst is a better fit.” (I don’t even think she auditioned, but that wasn’t the point.) Blood rushed to my face and I started pacing. Then I sat. Then I paced. Half an hour later, I received what will go down as one of the most pivotal and exciting text messages of my lifetime. Manager: “I think you’re going to enjoy that dinner.” I dropped my phone on the floor and fell to the ground crying, like I was at a tent revival and the preacher had just told me, “You’re saved, child.” I got the part. *** A few days later, the emotional wounds of ’09 crept up on me when I heard through the grapevine that a comedian I knew, upon finding out I had gotten the role, said something to the effect of “Jamie only got the part because she and Pete used to date.” I tried to remain calm, unscathed by this sexist notion. “But … I had to audition like everyone else,” I defended to myself. I called up a friend, who insisted, “You got the part in spite of the fact that you used to date, not because of it.” I knew she was right, but I gave in to my feelings of self-doubt. They whirled around and enveloped me, like a tornado sucking a rickety barn up into its vortex, with a few confused sheep left baaahhh-ing down below. My brain grew weary, until I remembered a helpful You Are a Badass quote: “What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.” I began to focus on, and appreciate, the fact that even though we didn’t work as a couple, Pete and I worked at work. I was about to be an actress on HB-motherfucking-O, telling the story of a determined female stand-up helping a male stand-up navigate the rough waters of comedy. With this shift in perspective, I gathered myself and did what any feminist comedian workhorse would do: I put myself on a train to Philly to go record my comedy album and bought myself a lobster dinner before my first show because, apparently, I eat shellfish at every career milestone. As I poured liquid butter over my giant sea roach, my head cleared, and I thought, Fuck it. I am a badass. Jamie Lee plays Ali Reissen on HBO’s Crashing. Her debut book, Weddiculous: An Unfiltered Guide to Being a Bride, is now available. | | | | |  Illustration by Tara Chávez | Claire*, like so many fourteen-year-old girls, loved going to the mall. One day, a vaguely handsome older man approached her there. “You’re beautiful. Such defined cheekbones. You could be a model, did you know that?” he said, with a disarming smile. “I’m Scratch. I’m a fashion photographer. Why don’t you stop by my studio tomorrow?” And like so many fourteen-year-old girls would, Claire beamed. She liked him instantly. The next day, Claire arrived at Scratch’s and knocked on the door. Scratch opened the door and Claire entered, noticing that it was a small, cramped apartment. Not a studio. But before this could register, Scratch gave her some underwear. “We need some photos of your body.” Claire changed, feeling self-conscious. Scratch looked at her and began snapping a camera. “Bend over, pout, smile,” he instructed, moving so quickly that Claire didn’t quite know what to think. “OK, we got it!” Scratch shouted after about 30 minutes. “Get changed.” Claire went into the bedroom to change and shut the door. The door then opened and Scratch said, “Let me help you,” and he began removing Claire’s clothing and pushing himself against her. Claire’s hair suddenly stood on end. She was terrified. No one had ever touched her this way. Claire ran from the apartment as fast as she could. She was not certain what she would tell her new foster mother, Jane — she hadn’t been in Jane’s home for very long at all. But when Jane came home from work, Claire burst into tears. Jane immediately called the police. The officer arrived to hear Claire’s story, and he shook his head. “Do you know what these people do?” he asked Claire. “They take your photo, and then they advertise you for sex with men. On Backpage. This is the first step into The Life.” When this case landed on our desk as prosecutors, we began the investigation by searching backpage.com for Scratch’s phone number. We immediately found several posts advertising very young-looking girls for sex. Scratch was a pimp, and he was trafficking children. *** As prosecutors, we were trained on the recruitment and grooming techniques of pimps and traffickers — and how traffickers exploit the most vulnerable populations. Like Scratch, many pimps recruit their victims by telling young girls they are beautiful, that they can be models. These pimps then take their photos and post them online, usually without the child’s permission or knowledge. And in our experience, they all use the same website: backpage.com. For those who are not aware, backpage.com is a classified advertising website (like Craigslist) previously owned by Village Voice Media. In the United States, Backpage is sometimes used to sell mundane things like couches and television sets, but about 80 percent of the company’s revenue is from sex ads — including ads of children. Pimps and traffickers pay for these ads by cash, check, and Bitcoin, which is an anonymous form of payment. The president of Backpage once even encouraged users to use Bitcoin to remain anonymous … and thus remain untraceable. The U.S. Senate found that selling a motorcycle on Backpage required more information and more steps than selling a child. The traffickers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off these young women. Another teenage girl who came to our office, Sheena, had been introduced to a man named Max at a family barbecue. Max began picking Sheena up from school every day, spending hour upon hour with her and asking her to be his girlfriend. Sheena began to see less of her family. Less of her friends. Max was demanding all her time. Sheena thought this was normal for people in love. After about a month, Max brought Sheena to his house, where several girls and a few older guys lived. A house that was far away from Sheena’s home. Just like Scratch had done, Max gave Sheena sexy underwear to put on and began taking photos of her. Within the hour, Sheena was posted for sale on backpage.com. Max had taken Sheena’s phone away, and she had no way to contact anyone for help. That night and for several months after that, Max sold Sheena to strangers for commercial sex. In the process of the prosecution of Max, Backpage records were turned over to us. Max had spent well over a thousand dollars on these advertisements, but it was just a drop in the bucket compared to the money he had made off her body. Max sold Sheena repeatedly, upwards of fifteen times per day; his annual salary from Sheena alone would have been $250,000. How much was Sheena allowed to keep? Nothing. She was, by definition, a slave. *** This crime is escalating with the speed of technology. Between 2010 and 2015, reports of online sex trafficking increased by over 800 percent. Human trafficking is so profitable that it is fast overtaking both drug- and gun-running in terms of revenue. Technology has enabled this crime to move online — Backpage is, technologically, not that different from Seamless or Amazon — where it has mushroomed out of control. The guy who sits in the cubicle next to you at work, who generally wouldn’t have gone down to the “track” at night to find a girl to have sex with, now can order one with the swipe of his phone. Right after lunch. In order to stop the proliferation of sex trafficking on the Internet, websites like Backpage need to be held accountable when they are not just hosting these ads but actually making it easier for pimps and traffickers to profit off the sale of children for sex and go undetected by law enforcement. When they are actually facilitating this crime. And acting as a co-conspirator. Over the past several years, victims of online sex trafficking have filed suit against backpage.com (some of those cases are chronicled in the powerful film I Am Jane Doe) but have been largely unsuccessful. In each of these lawsuits, children and their families, as well as advocates for survivors of human trafficking, have attempted to hold Backpage accountable for facilitating, promoting, and profiting from online sex trafficking. Yet each time a lawsuit was filed by one of these children, Backpage lawyers would argue that there is a law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) — that shields the company from liability. This law, originally drafted in 1996 to protect children from exposure to online pornography, contains a provision that a website that filters content in good faith is not responsible for postings by a third party. This law made sense back then, because the early online bulletin-board companies had no way of knowing who was posting what. However, since 1996, courts have expanded this protection to include the actual criminal conduct of a website. In Doe v. Backpage, several children filed suit against the company, alleging that Backpage was running a criminal operation. The court ruled that even if Backpage had been, in essence, a co-conspirator in this crime, it had to dismiss the case because of Section 230. Translation: the court found that an Internet company profiting from advertisements of underage girls for sex had no liability or responsibility to those children. Right now, the United States Senate is considering a bipartisan bill called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017 (#SESTA) that would narrowly amend the CDA so that websites such as Backpage, which actively facilitate sex trafficking, can be held responsible for their illegal and abusive conduct. SESTA was crafted exceedingly narrowly to target only those intentionally engaged in the crime of trafficking children. You’d think no one would oppose this effort to protect children. And yet opposition persists from big tech, which has been fighting to make sure no online platform bears responsibility for harm. Google-funded groups have worked quietly to defend and support Backpage for years. But in November 2017, advocacy groups were successful, and the Internet Association, which represents big tech, finally came out in support of SESTA. Yet the fight doesn’t end there. Much of Silicon Valley still opposes any amendment to the CDA — which means they don’t want to look bad and publicly oppose SESTA, but they are working behind the scenes to make sure it doesn’t pass. As a result, the House Judiciary Committee introduced an amendment to a bill (the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, or FOSTA) that provides nothing for victims and survivors of sex trafficking, despite the bill’s name. This happened behind closed doors and without the input of survivors, advocacy groups, or the NGO community. This new bill actually hurts victims’ rights to seek justice. And unsurprisingly, it is backed by big tech. Holding Backpage accountable could put an end to the free reign of sex traffickers on the Internet. It is vital that the United States Congress pass SESTA into law. SESTA is universally supported by victims, advocates, NGOs, Facebook, the Internet Association, Fortune 500 companies, and law enforcement. One rogue senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, has, however, placed a hold on SESTA, and we need to help him and others understand its importance. Wyden has cited faulty arguments that the bill would stifle investigations. As former prosecutors, we can tell you that this is not the case. The only way to fight trafficking on the Internet is by holding these websites responsible and fighting the epidemic of sex trafficking online by making it more difficult for buyers of sex. We hope you will join the survivors fighting for this law and call your members of Congress and demand that they support SESTA and hold websites profiting from commercial sexual exploitation accountable. You can contact your members of Congress here: http://p2a.co/1LTNEsS. *All names have been changed and certain facts altered to protect the identities of the survivors. Alexi Ashe Meyers is co-chair of the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition and a staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families. Alexi is a former sex-crimes prosecutor. Rebecca Zipkin is a senior staff attorney at Sanctuary for Families and a former sex-crimes prosecutor. | | | | |  Illustration by Ghazaleh Rastgar | CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19) Happy birthday, Capricorn! I’ve never thought that January is the right time to take down the tree. January is when we need that tinsel and glitter the most — also February, March, and even April before the first buds of spring appear. How can you find ways to make holidays out of the ordinary? Can every day be a little door in a wild advent calendar? AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18) Lewis Carroll, a fellow Aquarian who wrote Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, knew something about rabbit holes. He knew the human potential to go down them, to go to that place in our heads where reality shifts and we buy into whatever fantasies our minds create. This month, be aware of your own unique perception and its ability to color or discolor a situation — use it to your advantage. PISCES
(February 19 to March 20) When you don’t know what to do, you don’t have to pretend to know what to do. It’s better that you do no pretending this month. Instead, revel in the beauty of not knowing. Ask for help both from other humans and also the universe. ARIES
(March 21 to April 19) People in the media are always talking about how we are having “a moment” politically, socially, or otherwise. That may be the consensus among certain talking heads, but really, you can have any kind of moment you want if you set an intention and look for it to surface in the world. TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20) I actually have no idea what is going on with the stars this month. This might make me a shitty astrologer; it also makes me a person who knows that we ultimately lack control of external forces while remaining in control of our intention. This month, let your field of intention be the whole galaxy. GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20) Sometimes it feels like there is so much suffering in the world that we have to just shut down. This is not the month to do that. Stay open this month to painful feelings and experiences, so that you don’t miss out on the joy, mystery, and quiet moments that are often on the flip side of the coin. CANCER
(June 21 to July 22) Have you ever looked at someone and thought that they hated you, only to learn later they had a frown on their face because they were having a shitty day? This is humanity most of the time — and what other people think of you isn’t your business anyway. Let the knowledge that most people are thinking about themselves set you free. LEO
(July 23 to August 22) Nothing has to be a whole month or a whole week or a whole day. What I mean by that is, if you are having a shitty moment, it can be just that: a moment. Then you can start over again at any point. The sun is not man-made, but the units of time that we clump together to superimpose our own narrative on a larger world are fake as fuck. It’s basically a new year any time. VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22) I don’t read horoscopes about love, because as a former horoscope addict who got into astrology to try to control the realm of passion, it always annoyed me when a fellow Virgo was lucky in love and I wasn’t. What I will say on the topic is that if you are looking to the stars to control or manipulate another person, they probably aren’t the right person. LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22) It’s never too late to escape cognitive dissonance. Better to admit you are wrong then cover your ass. If you feel like you aren’t wrong about anything, then that’s another horoscope entirely. But if you see a place where you have made an error, it’s better this month — and all months — not to double down. SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21) There’s never going to be enough outer beauty. After the skin comes the clothes and after the clothes comes the makeup and after the makeup comes the hair, or whichever order your obsessions follow. Outer beauty is great when it’s left in the fun realm, but if you are looking for the infinite, internal beauty is the only way to go. SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21) I don’t know that much about neuroplasticity, but I do know about self-doubt and how negative voices can feel impenetrable. Yet if we create a refusal to listen to a particular thought — a mindwall of sorts — that thought will eventually give up. Some thoughts are easier than others. Try this with one of yours this month. Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House 2016), as well as So Sad Today, a book of essays from Grand Central. | | | | | | | | |
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