The MTA displayed a series of advertisements promoting a “Sex Workers Pop-up” exhibit — breaking their own rules against “sexually oriented” ads and angering sex trafficking survivors who said they’re green-lighting an industry that’s inherently harmful. 
The pastel pink promotions, up since early March on subway lines across the five boroughs, was bankrolled by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and invites commuters to a West Village “exhibit dedicated to the global sex worker movement,” a copy of the ad reads. 
The Post spoke with a sex trafficking survivor who said if she saw those ads while she was trafficked as a young teen in Brooklyn, her situation would’ve felt that much more “hopeless.”
“Even though I was commercially sexually exploited and someone was taking advantage of me, I didn’t know that’s what was happening and I didn’t know that I was being exploited,” said Shaquana Blount, 30, who’s now the business development manager at Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, a non-profit devoted to helping survivors of the commercial sex trade. 
“But you feel it’s your choice and others make you feel that’s your choice.”

Blount, who was trafficked by a pimp from the age of 14 and was in a juvenile detention center when she was first connected to GEMS, said the pop-up and its subway ads show young people the sex trade is a viable career option. 
“People are telling you this is great and it’s your choice and it’s something you’re supposed to be doing… kids should have a little bit more to hope for in life than that,” Blount explained. 

“Why are you bankrolling a movement that is trying to empower pimps and third party exploiters rather than invest in education and economic opportunities?… That is something that I don’t understand.”

On March 2, over a dozen anti-trafficking groups sent a letter asking the MTA to take down the ads and on Wednesday, the agency replied, saying the ad was protected under the First Amendment and didn’t break their rules.
When asked for comment from The Post, the MTA pointed to that response, but later said they allow “ads that primarily provide basic information about exhibits and shows.”
The agency denied the ad was political in nature, and said that it did not promote a sexually oriented business because it is simply an exhibit.
Organizers for the pop-up said the exhibit is “strongly opposed” to human trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
“Evidence shows that the decriminalization of sex work has the greatest potential for reducing the health and safety risks and human rights violations that many sex workers experience,” Sebastian Köhn from Open Society Foundations said in a statement.
“That’s why so many sex workers, as well as international health and human rights organizations like Amnesty International and the World Health Organization, support the decriminalization of sex work.”
The organizers also offered messages of support from a current and a former sex worker.
In a statement, Lelila Raven, a self-described former sex worker, said she entered the sex trade at 15 and even though her experience is “legally defined as sex trafficking,” she believes criminalization is not the answer.
“I know that criminalization won’t make any of us safer. People who trade sex — whether by choice, circumstance, or coercion — need resources, not cages,” Raven said.
The advocates The Post spoke with all endorse “the equality model” — which supports no criminalization for people in the sex trade and only seeks to arrest pimps, buyers and other third-party exploiters.
Additional reporting by David Meyer