Intro (00:00:00):
In this episode, we speak to Justin Euteneier from Epik Project. Justin discusses strategies to combat human trafficking by focusing on disrupting the man through education and engagement with potential sex buyers. He emphasizes the link between pornography and sexual exploitation, stressing the role that societal norms have played in harmful behaviors. The conversation also highlights the importance of engaging men in the fight against trafficking, and how empathy and community-focused approaches drive lasting change. With that, let’s jump into the conversation. We hope you enjoy this episode of Consider Before Consuming.

Fight The New Drug (00:00:54):
Justin, thank you so much for making some time for us today. I’m so excited to get to speak with you and for our listeners to hear this conversation that anyone tuning in is maybe expecting a fairly heavy conversation given the topic they’ve seen we’re talking about. But part of the reason I’m so excited to talk with you is because I think there’s actually so much hope to talk about within, within the work that you do and are doing and kind of the direction we’re headed. So, what led you specifically to this, this cause to your work in fighting human trafficking and exploitation and, and working with Epik Project?

Justin (00:01:33):
Yeah, so it started off somewhere back in about 2011. The founder of Epik Project came to the church I was attending at the time and started talking about sex trafficking and specifically, and I, I had heard a little bit about it, Cambodia, Thailand, sex tourism kind of a thing. I had heard a little bit about it, but he was talking about right here in Portland, Oregon, that he was saying, I believe it was 106 youth that were being sold on the streets of Portland, Oregon. And at the time, I had a months old daughter, my oldest, and I just started having this kind of visceral response to the idea of that being the world that she would be growing up in. And I just immediately connected with that as something that’s important to pay attention to. And I kept paying attention, I kept being curious. And the more I pulled at that thread, just the more involved I got.

Fight The New Drug (00:02:42):
For a lot of our listeners, they’ve heard about causes that are focusing on anti-trafficking efforts or in fighting sexual exploitation. Largely they have not heard about organizations specifically addressing the demand. We have a campaign every July called Stop the Demand, where we focus on kind of a specific portion of demand. But for any of our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about what Epik Project does, what your work focuses on, and why that’s the focus?

Justin (00:03:14):
Yeah. Okay. So just really so there’s a, it’s gonna be hard to tell it in that like really linear fashion. ’cause there’s a whole arc of the evolution of our organization. So back in 2013 what we did is we went to, so what we do is we post decoy ads on known prostitution websites. And when buyers attempt to text or call those ads, the, that comes directly to the technology platform that we’ve built to receive those. And we answer those calls and texts not for the purpose of setting up any kind of case against them, but simply to engage them man to man a a a civilian within your community who wants to talk to that buyer about sex trafficking and, and the choices that they’re making. And so we’ve been doing that since 2013. We call them cyber patrols.

(00:04:14):
It’s kind of what we’re known for. And, but, but we have evolved long since 2013 in terms of the the the tactics that we take to, to end demand. But I think that you’re second half of the question is the most important one, which is why demand, and it’s kind of simple. You, if you, if you listen to people within the anti-trafficking movement, you talk about you know, no demand, no business, right? People can, won’t be sold by traffickers if there’s no demand. It’s, it’s a basic supply and demand economics, as crude as it is to think of it in those terms. If we wanna be effective, we have to see it for what it is. And it’s a, it’s a business model at the end of the day. And so we go after demand for those reasons. But even more importantly than that, if we don’t address demand, we’re never, never going to end sexual exploitation. It will always evolve to meet the demand in whatever form it takes. And so I can’t, I’m, I’m not very patient when it comes to wanting to be effective at things, whether it’s fixing stuff around my house or, you know, sexual exploitation, like I want to do what works and what’s gonna actually end sex trafficking is if we end the demand. So any, any program that does not factor that in is always just going to get better at treating the, the outcomes of trauma and, and pain and disrupted lives.

Fight The New Drug (00:06:07):
Yeah. When you really think about it, it’s an upstream approach, right? We’re addressing the thing that’s causing all of this harm. And we do, of course, need all of the resources that are still addressing downstream issues. But given that it’s an upstream approach, and it seems, you know, effective, as you’ve said, efficient and effective to go all the way upstream, can you talk a little bit about some of the pushback that you get to this approach or why it’s difficult sometimes for individuals to understand this approach?

Justin (00:06:39):
I think the push, I, I’d be very curious to see if the pushback we get is similar to the pushback that you all get. There’s this idea, which I believe is deeply rooted in the normalization of pornography. There’s this idea that it’s just two consenting adults that it’s just moralistic that it’s political, that it’s all a long list of all of the triggering words that you could use. And people just want you to mind your own business. And so, when we first started off doing this work, we were, we were celebrated. And not, and not that it’s about that, but there was this wide recognition of like, oh my gosh, thank goodness men are finally showing up in the issue of sexual exploitation to talk to other men, thank goodness. And we were committed to showing up to help without like taking over or being in charge.

(00:07:46):
Like, we’re here to save today now. Like, yeah, what, what’s not being done? What’s, where can we show where are the gaps? How can we show up, fill those gaps? What do y’all need from us? And we were doing that work, and it was widely welcomed, but now there’s so much movement within the pro-sex narrative within the decriminalization in terms of legislation, we had that on the ballot a couple years ago here in Oregon. It never actually made it to the, the actual election, but it was on the ballot. And it, there’s just this perception that, that commercialized sexualization is totally okay. People are just paying their way through college, leave ’em alone. And if you take away their demand, you’re actually eroding their business. So knock it off

Fight The New Drug (00:08:41):
For anyone listening. I mean, our regular listeners and our followers largely don’t hold those perceptions. But to a degree, you know, some people may be in this fight because they think, you know, I don’t wanna participate in this, but live and let live, you know, people otherwise, two consenting adults was kind of your initial first point. For anyone who thinks that is, is what demand is, can you actually break down what demand, actually is?

Justin (00:09:11):
A disclaimer statement that I make whenever I present about this is that demand is overwhelmingly an expectation from men for women’s bodies. Are there exceptions to that? Absolutely. But overwhelmingly it is the demand from men for women’s bodies for their sexual gratification on terms that they get to define because they have the money.

Fight The New Drug (00:09:40):
You mentioned pornography in this and how pornography’s normalization fuels some of these ideas. But can you speak specifically to how porn fuels the demand for sexual exploitation?

Justin (00:09:51):
Yeah, and I wanna, I wanna be really careful here because this is not my area of expertise. We deal so far. We, we deal with men overwhelmingly that have already taken those steps to now act out in, in real life. Your website is filled with so many good resources of of, of the research that backs all this up. But both personally and within the context of having been training men for a decade, how to engage the demand. I can tell you that pornography is overwhelmingly a part of the every man story. We’ve seen it when we were young. We’ve grown up feeling ashamed by it, which drives us further into it, and we don’t talk about it. So it becomes a secret habit. And when you have a secret shameful, sexualized habit, it just wreaks havoc on your life. And men are not taught, or there, our culture does not communicate to men that when you have painful, shameful things that are in the dark, that there are safe places that you can go to talk about those things and get help.

(00:11:12):
What our culture teaches men to do is go drive fast cars, go get a motorcycle, go buy sex, go get drunk, go to the game, go do all of those things in order to deal with whatever that pain is. And so pornography leads to this shame within men that that causes them to go do destructive things. And, and then they’re still not getting the help. One of the things that I ask sex buyers is, does it work for you? and I leave that intentionally kind of open-ended to see how they respond. And so I, you know, I get some of the usual, you know, the expected of crude responses, but we’ll often get like, well, it kind of works in the moment, but I, I, I, I don’t really feel any better, right? That that’s, that’s how pornography works within us to kind of keep us going. So I know that there’s a lot of science you know, Dr. Hilton does a great job of his, his videos are great. Your website is great. There’s a lot of science behind how pornography leads to demand for commercialized sexual exploitation. But that’s been my experience of, it’s just an integral part of the everyday man’s experience.

Fight The New Drug (00:12:39):
And I mean, you said this isn’t exactly your area of expertise, but I do think you have such a unique window into the role pornography plays, because as you mentioned it’s kind of, it’s kind of this starting piece of the equation, right? I imagine you don’t talk to many, if any sex buyers who haven’t or don’t consume pornography. Would you agree to that?

Justin (00:13:03):
I would agree to that, just kind of based on talking to guys, I, you know, I’d love to see research on that from sex buyers. And in fact, we’re talking with a potential research partner about doing pornography focused research amongst actively purchasing sex buyers. So my gut just says, yeah, of course. It’s the, it’s the most obvious thing on the planet that our hypersexualized, hyper pornography, normalized culture is gonna create more sex buyers.

Fight The New Drug (00:13:38):
Yeah. And we know, I mean, we, anyone we speak to who has a pornography habit that’s escalated, we know from research that it’s an escalating behavior, right? So at some point, what initially kind of gave that high no longer gives that high. And, and you have to seek out more extreme things. And that is typically the cycle of how someone gets to the point where they are then, you know, paying for sex or paying for content online. Not always, but it certainly is something we’ve seen a lot. Can you are primarily, when you’re saying sex buyers, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re primarily speaking about people who are paying for sex in person. But what does this look like with, you know, only fans entering, entering this space and paid content online? For someone who’s maybe engaging in, in paying for sexual content or paying for pornographic content, would you consider them to be a sex buyer based on your work and the experiences that you have?

Justin (00:14:42):
Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s sexualized activity with money involved. And with a real person supplying that. Or, or even if it’s not a real person, even if it’s ai yeah, it’s, it’s still, I would still consider it sex buying, although I do think that there is a, is a perhaps a deeper question related to like the classification of what is and isn’t sex buying. And more about what, what creates the demand that, that I think can be more, more helpful in terms of, ’cause we can often think, I’ve heard this before. Well, I’m not a sex buyer. And what I would say to that, one of the questions that we ask our guys is does the way that we think and behave in the world contribute to the norms that create sex buying? Yeah. And it’s a really challenging question.

(00:15:42):
It’s a very much like, look in the mirror, hard look in the mirror kind of question. And we get mixed results because guys don’t, it, it’s easy to think, I’m not contributing to the problem if I’m not buying sex or if I’m not watching pornography. But in terms of what is generating that demand, it can be contributing to OnlyFans does not absolve you of having contributed to sex trafficking, right? watching pornography does not absolve you to contributing to people being bought and sold on the streets, right? There’s this perpetuation of this narrative that men are driven by sexual conquest. And whenever we feed into that and don’t, don’t look at our lives as being beyond what we can conquer sexually, then we are participating in gen and we are participating in increasing the demand for sexualized content that that is exploitative.

Fight The New Drug (00:16:45):
Yeah. And just to take that a step further, you know, there’s often this idea that because PornHub is a mainstream platform, our OnlyFans is mainstream, that these are, you know, every piece of content on there is consensual and regulated. And, and we know that’s not true, right? So I think it’s important for people to not allow themselves to buy into this idea that we don’t have to question the things we subscribe to, because the very things that are happening with sex trafficking, with sexual exploitation are also happening on these online platforms as well, for paid or free content.

Justin (00:17:24):
This is making me realize I left out something about the opposition that we get in terms of being demand focused, which, ’cause it’s connected to that idea of, well, I’m not contributing to the problem if I’m not buying prostitution on the street. Some of the pushback that we get comes directly from men, and it’s not the kind of pushback that you would think. It, it is that pushback of, I’m not contributing to the problem because I’m not buying sex. That’s more of a self-preservation kind of a thing, right? But it’s, but it’s more of a it’s great work that you’re doing. Keep going. It’s not for me,

Fight The New Drug (00:18:08):
Right?

Justin (00:18:09):
It’s not for me to do. And I bet you come across this all the time, Hey, great work, but there’s no way that I could be involved in that work. It’s too, fill in the blank. And for, for men, it’s too close to home, right? and so it’s not so much pushback, but it’s a huge omission of positive contribution that could be had because it’s, so, again, there is not a cultural expectation of men being involved in, in paying attention to the things that are of this nature.

Fight The New Drug (00:18:48):
And I think also that implies that to do something impactful, you have to sign up for this as your job or, you know, be, be so active. But it really could be something as small as, not that it’s insignificant, but as small as saying, you know, hearing someone making a, a sexualized joke or a rape joke or things that are common in our culture and saying, Hey, actually this is a reason why that’s not okay. You know, it can be as small as making these kind of micro changes in your life and in, and in the lives of people around you that can make a difference.

Justin (00:19:29):
Yeah, a hundred percent. We, we tend to think of demand in three categories, and at least in terms of disruption, if we want to disrupt this demand, we used demand, yeah. We used to be all focused on combat, the sex buyer at the point of purchase. And like I said, there’s an evolution. So now we think of demand as combating the market wherever and however it shows up, but combating culture and, and disrupting ourselves as well, being able to have a personal disruption that says, I’m gonna show up a little differently, right? And then you can, you can start to challenge or you can challenge or you can simply be in another way that makes it less pro less conducive to that kind of comment, how we, how we live and move and be in the world, right? Can have an effect on culture as much as what we fight against to say no more of.

(00:20:34):
and so yes, we, we encourage our guys, and we talk about all the time combating the, the locker room talk, right? How do we do that? What are those stories like you know, how, how nervous we all get to sort of stand out and be labeled in all of these negative ways if you, if you challenge locker room talk, but also to show up to the locker room different ourselves and what we do talk about and what is positive and what you are willing to say, vulnerability you might be willing to express.

Fight The New Drug (00:21:07):
Yeah. And I think someone from the outside looking in at the work epic project does or fight the new drug does, you know, might, might feel defensive or, you know, if someone is a sex buyer or is a porn consumer, or is someone who doesn’t understand porn consumption or, or sex, sex buying. But I think the core of what each of us in our, our organizations are doing is actually a really empathetic approach, right? It starts with the understanding and the idea that the people who are buying sex are consuming pornography, are people and their people who have grown up in a society where everything thrown at them from the time they’re pretty young is encouraging them to behave in a certain way, including engaging with sexualized content, right? So I’m curious to know if, if before we get too much further into this conversation, you can just speak a little bit about to who these people actually are and what are the things that are driving them to bisex? What are the things they’re experiencing in their lives that are leading them to the point where, where this is what they’re seeking out.

Justin (00:22:17):
So this idea of like, who are these men? They’re creating the demand. This is where it starts to get really sticky, right? in, in terms of how do we talk about them, who they actually are, and what will be effective at actually ending to demand? So we have to be really careful, and I always like to start with one of the things that we do at Epik is we hold the tension between the horrific pain that these men are causing and the people who just wanna watch them burn, like I probably would too. Okay? So we hold that tension between the people who just think of them as nothing but a, a, a negative and what is actually gonna work. And so who are these men? Overwhelmingly, we see them as guys who are acting out because they don’t know what to do with the pain in their lives, in the variety of ways that that shows up.

(00:23:18):
Yeah. We have had tens of thousands of conversations with active sex buyers, and the, the data and the stories are clear that yes, there are guys that are just complete misogynistic a-holes, you know, in terms of how they present themselves. And it’s just really important that we think of this as an and, and these, the majority of the men, as Andrea Hines likes to say, she’s a, she’s a researcher and abolitionist out of Edmonton in Canada, that these are hurt and ignorant men, and we have to heal and educate them. We hear stories of job loss, divorce, loneliness, singleness at self-loathing insecurity. We hear we hear stories of betrayal. We hear so many stories, and this is why I ask, did it work? And many of the times they’re like, it worked in the moment, but no, because what I was ultimately looking for was to satisfy my own deep fundamental need to belong.

(00:24:32):
And this is, we use the word belong and belonging over and over and over again in our training, because when we, when we see and hear the thing that feels like it’s gonna activate that sense in us to protect kids, yeah. But we also want to end the demand. So what will actually work? We have to have the stomach to go into that conversation with as much empathy, humility, compassion, and curiosity as possible. Because to take a guy who’s trying to buy sex and thinks a certain way about women, to be able to connect him to who he is, rather than his label as a sex buyer, is how you actually start changing his behavior. I could shame him or scare him out of sex buying tonight, but I could actually start to, I could set him on a trajectory to no longer be a sex buyer if I start to connect him to the thing he’s actually looking for, which is a sense of belonging.

Fight The New Drug (00:25:43):
Yeah. That’s so beautifully said, and I love that you said to think of these things as an and, because I think all of the attributes we’re approaching this situation with empathy, compassion, humility of course, we’re also approaching survivors with those same attributes, right? This is, you know, to approach sex buyers or porn consumers, or anyone, this is such a multifaceted issue, right? Anyone on this side of the issue in this way does not mean we are negating what’s happened on the other side. In fact, it’s because we care so much about what’s happened to these individuals and, and what’s happened on the other side of this, that we want to prevent it from happening to more people, right? So if we can heal, you know, and, and give people a place where they no longer want to buy sex, that’s going to create a much more sustainable change over time, right? And I, I think that’s something that’s hard for a lot of people who aren’t as deeply involved in this work to understand sometimes. But I think it’s such an important piece of understanding why we need everyone in this space and why we need to, to be willing to approach things in, in all of these different ways.

Justin (00:26:56):
Yeah. I, in fact, it is the, so when we first started, one of the things that we, we really insisted on was asking questions before we were even doing cyber patrols, asking questions about, okay, what is the reality of the situation? what’s needed? And, and it was a year or two that we basically sat at the various tables as, as men coming to the anti-trafficking issue, trying to ask questions before we showed up with requests. And in doing so, that, that gave us an a a posture towards those that have been doing this work for decades and decades and decades, which is the survivor advocate community, the domestic violence community and the sexual assault community. And, and what we learned over time is you can’t take people out of a situation and, and then just put them in a new situation that’s better and expect them to immediately adopt it and thrive, right?

(00:27:58):
So we know this from victim advocates, especially that they journey alongside these victims for a long period of time. I don’t know how they do it. I seriously, people say that about me, like, I don’t know how you can talk to sex buyers. I’m like, I don’t know. It’s, it’s not as hard. I don’t know how you can go to a lunch with, with a a 17-year-old girl, tell her how much you value her, give her whatever resources she needs, and know that when she leaves there, she’s gonna go back to her trafficker and she’s gonna be doing all sorts of her horrifically objectifying things. And you, I know you wanna just take her home and let her sleep in a warm bed and let her have a fridge full of food and all that, and you know that it won’t work. So you do it this way. You play the long game. So we have learned from that model to truly be effective. I really want to see an end to the demand. I don’t wanna feel good about myself and how I’m showing up. That’s not the point. Yeah. So let’s do what works, even though it’s really stinking hard.

Fight The New Drug (00:29:05):
Yeah. So much of what you’re speaking to is the the importance of men in this fight. You know we often say the, the majority of perpetrators of sexual violence are men. And so women all day long can take self-defense trainings and can learn how to protect themselves. But so long as we live in a society where, you know, there’s not a shift in the way that men are thinking about this there’s only so much that women can do, right? And so I think this is something that where the majority of sex buyers, as you mentioned, are men. We do need men to be engaging in, in part of this conversation, including the men who are not sex buyers. Right? So, can you speak a little bit about to why it’s so crucial to involve men in this fight against trafficking?

Justin (00:30:00):
Oh, gosh, I don’t even know where to start. It, and you’ll have to help me with where to end , because there’s so much here. I mean, why is it so crucial to engage men in the fight against sex trafficking at, at a, at a basic level, because we are the ones causing harm. We’re, we’re the ones causing harm. Whether we’re watching pornography, actively sex buying, or just passively tolerating a hypersexualized culture, we are the ones creating harm. It’s our responsibility. Maybe, maybe that’s, maybe that’s the best answer. It’s just, it’s just our responsibility. But I, I will go a little further to say we have to involve men because it is, it’s our responsibility. It’s honestly the only way I think we’re gonna truly end the demand. That’s unfair. I just wanna acknowledge that’s super unfair. The victims should be able to say, stop.

(00:31:09):
And that is what should end the demand. And it’s not because you’re dealing with a community of people who are leveraging their entitlement and the cultural norms of objectification free of consequence. So it’s our responsibility. But to go even further I think it has to involve men because this, when, when we reach this, this point in our society when sexual exploitation is no longer, it doesn’t just mean that men are no longer doing a bad thing. That will never, that will never be the end. It will be because men are living more healthy holistic lives full of belonging, connection to the people in their communities where they know who they are and who they are not. And their identity is not wrapped up and what they’re buying, or how much money’s in their bank account, or who they’re having sex with, or what their job title is.

(00:32:12):
It’s not their identity or even who they’re saving. This is a big one. Men as protectors, our identity is not wrapped up in who we’re protecting. One of the, one of the motives for sex buyers, there’s, there’s five primary motive types. And if you really wanna geek out, we can go there. But one of them is, I would love to tell us. Well, one of them is, and then I’ll tell you the other four this idea of the Madonna versus whore mentality, men who see that there are two types of women in the world, mothers, aunties, grandmas, daughters, and whores, and they can com, they’ve bifurcated them in their mind, and they can completely treat them differently. And that’s just a, that’s just a huge example of how men are, I think taught to see the world, right? not nuanced, not not thorough, not emotional, not connected to reality, but just based on their perceived way of getting what they want.

(00:33:28):
And when they can see the world in that black and white way, they can get what they want. In the world of Madonna’s, they can be seen as the provider and protector, and over here they can take what they want, right? And it works for them. And society supports that. So, because you said you wanted to know, the other four areas are, you’re gonna see if I can come with them off the cuff here. What the, the five buyer types. And this is research based out of based out of Europe, but this has been corroborated many, many times both anecdotally and with other research that I’ve read. So seeking companionship or comfort, that’s that girlfriend experience buyer. They’re wanting a different kind of sex. This is somebody who already has a partner, but they are trying to act out some sort of sexualized activity.

(00:34:18):
somebody wanting a feminine or a subservient woman, this is your kind of misogynistic type of buyer. And then we already talked about the dirty who fantasy, the, the, the Madonna versus the, the who and they, or they bifurcate two types of women in the world. And then the final one is sex as a commodity for exchange. And what I like to point out with these types is only one of them is truly about the transaction, the commercial transaction. Four of them are actually connected to ways that they see themselves in relationship to women. So they’re, they’re relational in some way, even though it’s a little hard to think of like a misogynistic man as being relational. Like that is how he is relating to women. And it’s not about the sex, it’s about how he’s relating to the world around him. And when we when we think about buyers outside of just a classic, like just a dirt bag construction worker looking to get laid, like we’re, those are unhelpful myths and, and clarification classifications of what demand is. So we’ve gotta be willing to, to look at it, what it actually is. And it really is about relationships at the end of the day.

Fight The New Drug (00:35:44):
Yeah. And it is so interesting. And again understanding these reasons. It’s not an excuse for the behavior, right? It’s not an excuse for the harm that is created, but it is an explanation. And I think we have to be able to understand what’s causing this, to then be able to say, okay, where, where can we do some healing? Where is, where is the work to be done?

Justin (00:36:07):
I like to tell people that I’m really comfortable with and happy with buyers going to jail or losing their job or their marriage ending. A lot of times that really big. We, we have we have one particular guy within our within our community who’s a former sex buyer whose life blew up in a real big way. And he defines that as the moment that he finally started getting on track. I am all about the consequences for guys holding them accountable to who they are beyond their identity as a sex buyer, is accountability of a form that I believe will actually end the demand, and they should also be held criminally liable for all of the things.

Fight The New Drug (00:36:51):
Well said. Do you have any stories of interactions with buyers that were particularly formative in the work that you do?

Justin (00:37:00):
So we have plenty of stories of buyers who despite our best efforts to try to communicate to them the harms that they’re causing ask them questions they just end up with, and this is a quote from a buyer, whatever, dude, I’m just trying to get laid. So those are formative in the sense of like, grounding us in the reality of what we’re dealing with. Also, formative is I want to tell you a story, not of a time that we engaged a sex buyer using our typical engagement platform. One of the things that we also do is we collaborate with law enforcement. So when they’re doing demand focused things, we will go along and after a buyer has been taken down, arrested, questioned, and processed the, we have our own area of the operation. And they’ll, they’ll walk them over and say, listen, you’re free to go.

(00:38:01):
We are all done here, but the men in this room have experienced talking guys like you, and they’re here to help. And you would think that most of the men would be like, I’m free to go see ya. Yeah. Overwhelmingly they stay and they want to process what just happened to them. Wow. Several months ago we were on a staying here, and when we were speaking to a buyer, he, he couldn’t even sit down pacing the room, really agitated, what am I gonna do now? Was on a lunch break from work you know, engaged starting to worry about all the things that were gonna happen to him. Started talking about like, I know that this is like, not good, you know, I also, I think I drink too much. Like, maybe this is time to get my life, you know, just like, like just all over the map, really agitated.

(00:38:59):
And we asked if we could talk again on Monday. That was a Friday. We asked if we could talk again on Monday and just follow up. How you doing? And he agreed. We set a time, 11 o’clock on Monday we called, he answered. He had just gotten hammered over the weekend, drank himself silly, and woke up after the weekend, determined that this was a turnaround point in his life. And he said, I want you to call me again in a week. I want to, I want to have made steps towards finding a group or something that’s gonna move me in the right direction. We called him again in a week. He answered, he had in fact found a group, and that turned into call me again in a couple weeks, which then turned into text messages in between the occasional phone call.

(00:39:50):
How you doing? he always answered, he always replied. We started hosting some events here that were aimed at generating more engagement amongst men in the community. Not specifically targeting sex buyers, but just having conversations about how we as men show up in the world. He started coming to those. And one of the things that came out of those was this idea of creating a group that meets in my backyard the fourth Monday of every month. And it is intentionally designed not to be like, let’s get real deep. It is also intentionally designed to not be, let’s just sit around and shoot the breeze and talk about sports. It’s, it’s kind of a hybrid. You’re gonna find community here. He has showed up to every single one and has vocalized. I need healthy men in my life, and things are going well with his engagement. Things are going well with work. Things are going well with clean and sober. And we don’t talk very much about sex buying. We just talk about being men. And it’s formative for me in that it was several years ago, I told you we have kind of an evolution of like, we showed up to fight the bad guys, and now we’ve evolved. It’s formative in, in validating our evolution that what we ultimately are looking for is finding ways to connect guys to that deeper need to belong.

Fight The New Drug (00:41:26):
Are there any ways we haven’t spoken about yet, that Epik project is disrupting the demand for sexual exploitation through both male civilian engagement and the buyer engagement platform you’ve developed that we haven’t spoken about that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Justin (00:41:42):
Yeah, I mean, so we have the buyer engagement platform. We also as I just mentioned, we collaborate with law enforcement on going to buyer stings. We also teach at our local John school where we actually talk about the harms of pornography and its connection to sex buying. In, in addition to that, like even further upstream is a newer program that we have called My Friends Are Not For Sale. And that’s when you should really be having my my colleague Ashlyn on here. She graduated from high school a a year and a half ago. And when she was in high school co-founded this program, which is basically youth looking out for youth, noticing the signs of grooming, raising awareness. And as that has evolved she’s now employed with the Epik project and we are trying to spread, my friends are not for sale within high school and middle school communities.

(00:42:43):
And one of the neatest developments from that is the young men that are showing up. So if you wanna talk about ending the demand, you start talking to high school boys and middle school in a, I wanna be really careful to say in very age appropriate ways, right? We don’t, we don’t blast in showing pictures talking about prostitution and sex trafficking but in age appropriate ways, talking, giving, giving young men ways to just talk about how who they are, how guys show up in the world, what they think about relationships, what they think about sex becomes that that’s more of a high school conversation. It just becomes really, really cool. So the stories that, that are coming out of my friends are not for sale is really hopeful and really promising. However, one of the biggest changes that we’re making is shifting a, not shifting away from, but adding to this idea that men showing up to combat the thing, like you all, you call yourselves fighters, right?

(00:43:53):
Mm-Hmm. , yeah. Adding to this idea that we’re here to fight a thing, and one of the ways that we fight a thing is that we grow and who we are. And so we have what’s called the Better Man Story initiative, and it’s a variety of different ways. Rather than us telling you, here’s a volunteer role you can fill to do this specific thing, it’s, it’s cultivating conversations for how men are showing up in the world and finding out, well, who are you? What is your strength? Are you unique? And how will you use that to do things in the world that make our society no longer, that makes our society inhospitable to sexual exploitation? So we’re trying to like broaden our horizon of what it means, because, you know, we hear from law enforcement officers all the time, you can’t arrest your way out of trafficking.

(00:44:55):
And I’ve come to believe and you know, after over a decade of talking to sex buyers at the point of purchase, we can’t cyber patrol our way out of trafficking either. We can’t end demand by talking to individual sex buyers at the point of purchase. I think it’s really critical, right? yeah, I think that the leveraging technology can help what we do at scale, but if we don’t at some point engage men at a, at a relational level to get curious about how are we showing up in the world and what will we do with who we are and the ways that we see men have contributed to harms, that’s where things are really gonna start to shift. I

Fight The New Drug (00:45:41):
Think. I love that. You mentioned technology as technology evolves, obviously sexual exploitation is evolving, but how do you envision this movement against exploitation evolving with that?

Justin (00:45:53):
Oh, such a great question. I, I think that the movement is really hungry for tools that are gonna help take what we’re all trying to do with our blood, sweat, and tears to do at scale. And technology just has the has tremendous capacity to help us scale. And we’ve been using that for, for several years now. We, we’ve been scaling through the power of technology. So now, you know, everybody wants to talk about ai and I, I love talking about ai, but I’ll be very transparent with you that I am I am cautious that the movement be very careful not to fall into the trap that AI is the silver bullet of ending sex trafficking. Yeah. It is not, we cannot end sex trafficking without changing the way men see themselves and others. And you cannot, there is no chat bot, there is no ai, there is no technology that will do that for us.

(00:47:05):
All that we can do is use technology to scale how we do that. Yeah. That’s still relationships. And so we are using so we are using ai to within our, within our work to really hone in the way that we’re talking to buyers, right? So one of the things we’re working on right now is building a language model based on our, you know, decade plus of text transcripts. Yeah. That will be an actual real, real live active buyer language model that I think will be very much more unique than any kind of regular text engagement language model where we can start to pick out those five buyer types that I talked about, what is really the motive here? Yeah. Or we can use AI to establish real time analysis while we’re engaged with buyers that gives us the ability to recognize this buyer is expressing an element of misogyny.

(00:48:14):
This buyer is expressing an element of, of story here. And those can be things that can, that can coach us in terms of how we’re engaging so that we are careful to avoid shaming tactics you know, threatening tactics permissive tactics, whatever it is. So that’s one way that that technology can be really helpful. Where I mentioned this better man story initiative, we’re using technology to build a social network map of men. And it’s, it’s in its infancy. So I wish I, I wish it wasn’t so that I could show you, but using technology to build a map to be able to say, this is the community of men who are learning about the issues, who are leveraging their relationships, right. To do the following things. And it actually shows those categories of what we’re learning, what we’re doing, and what relationship context we’re doing them in. And, you know, as you see with with social network theory, things like smoking cessation or obesity, you know, that’s a, that’s a proven theory that we impact each other based on our relationships, right? People who stop smoking tend to create smoking cessation around them. People who start smoking tend to promote smoking around them. And so we wanted to leverage technology to show that infectiousness of men who are working hard to make our culture no longer hospitable to sexual exploitation.

Fight The New Drug (00:49:55):
Yeah. That’s so impressive and, and exciting because in so many ways you’re, it’s a data collection tool, right? You’re getting all of this information that we can learn in real time. Is the work we’re doing effective, or how should we pivot it slightly to make it more effective? What can we learn from it to make changes to make this even more effective? I think that’s, that’s such an exciting thing to hear within this movement and within this space especially. I can’t wait to see it as you wrap it up.

Justin (00:50:25):
Thank you. Yeah. Well, it’ll, it’ll be an every, it’ll be an organic, ever evolving types of type of thing. And it is not to meant, it is not meant to be a really specific like, linear programmatic thing. ’cause that’s not how societies are, that those aren’t the systems that we all live and move in. Yeah. It’s meant to model after the systems that we actually live and move in. How do we actually inform each other? And it’s, and it is designed, or the intent is to actually capture the tension, right? Of like, there’s so much tension in conversations around masculinity right now. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a hot topic. How do we, how do we talk about how we as men show up in the world with people who would be aligned very different politically, but both wanna see an end to sex trafficking?

(00:51:21):
Yeah. You know, so it’s, it’s capturing those stories, capturing that data, expressing it visually in a way that shows collaboration and alignment and not, like there’s, I feel like there’s a lot of times there’s desire to, Hey, let’s just focus on what we agree on and kind of ignore what we disagree on. I would go the other way. I would say, let’s actually acknowledge that we disagree on these things and find areas where we can talk about them in ways that actually create deeper connection rather than just further divide us. And then, and then we can agree to, to disagree, but we at least know, know where we stand and we’re still aligned on this other issue. And it feels like there’s no alignment any, there’s no collaboration anymore. And that’s, unless there’s like 100% alignment, and that scares me a little bit. I, I still wanna collaborate with people I don’t a hundred percent line up with.

Fight The New Drug (00:52:22):
Yeah. And I think it’s so important, especially in this work, you know, collaboration, as we mentioned earlier, these issues are so multifaceted. They do require people addressing every, every part of these issues. So we have to be able to collaborate and we have to be able to come together to, to create this change and do it in a way that, you know, we are communicating well. We are having these deeper connections. We are addressing these things effectively. So I love to hear that.

Justin (00:52:48):
Yeah. How I’m, I’m curious how you all are seeing collaboration. ’cause you, you, you all have taken a very clear stance of like non legislative, non-political, non-religious. Has that, has that opened or closed doors for collaboration?

Fight The New Drug (00:53:05):
it’s so interesting, you know, fight the new drug is non legislative. That, you know, any legislation already existing to regulate already illegal forms of sexual exploitation. We obviously support efforts taken to support or, you know, prevent harm to children. We obviously support regulation of, of things that are already in place to keep people safe. We obviously support all of those things. Taking a non legislative stance for us, our co-founders back in 2009, at that time, you know, no one was really addressing the topic of pornography with teenagers, which is kind of our, our target focus in a way that was really just only about, hey, this is something we are experiencing together as peers and, and what can we do to no longer experience this? So in focusing on that, we really wanted to, or co-founders wanted to create a space that didn’t have any barriers of entry, right?

(00:54:06):
It wasn’t, well, this is only for people who believe this thing or subscribe to this ideology. It was, let’s remove those barriers and create a space where even if we do disagree, as you’ve just mentioned, , even if we disagree on things, we can all come together. Because this is something that can affect anyone. You know, pornography, the harms of pornography do not discriminate. Anyone can be impacted negatively by pornography regardless of any diversifying factor. So we really believe that anyone should have access to information about the harms of pornography regardless of any diversifying factor as well. And I will just add, you know, one thing in, to say policy is obviously really an important piece of solving these issues. It’s not that we don’t think that’s true, but there are so many other people doing work in those spaces that we don’t need that to be our focus. Our, our focus can be the, the thing that we can do in, in kind of our piece of the puzzle while other people work on other pieces of this issue. So that’s actually why we think collaboration is so important is because no, no one of us can do everything.

Justin (00:55:14):
Yeah. I love that. That is so great to, to like, yes, we value this, we could invest in it, but other people are already investing in it. How can we support them? We’ve, we’ve we’ve taken that similar approach and in fact, it was our good friend Rebecca Bender, who was early on, was coached us really strongly and like, find your lane, stay in your lane, get good at your lane, and if you have to add a new lane, add a new lane, but know your lanes and don’t burn yourself out trying to run in all the lanes. I just, I love that. So that, that would be why, similarly, that is why we rarely we have gotten into, particularly when it when decriminalization came on the Oregon ballot, we got involved legislatively Yeah. But still through trying to activate communities of men to be the voices, you know. So yes, classic call your, call your senators, write letters. But what would it look like if it wasn’t just women who were calling in, you know, saying, you know, the women have been saying forever of like, Hey, please don’t treat my body like it’s an object. What if men were actually saying, Hey, maybe we should stop treating women’s bodies as objects. Yeah. So it’s still within that context of our lane, but yeah, I, I love that you all are collaborative. We take that similar open door approach.

Fight The New Drug (00:56:39):
One thing we always ask, you know, for our listeners or anyone else out there who wants to get involved in these, these addressing these issues, but as we mentioned earlier, sometimes it feels too big and, and too scary. What are ways that you, that Epik project provides or ways that you recommend that people get involved within the context of their own lives and what resources they have available to them that can actually make a difference?

Justin (00:57:08):
I, I get asked this question a lot and sort of the, like, what’s one thing I can do? And I just go back to what my own personal story was, is I stayed serious and my way of staying curious is gonna look different than somebody else’s way. So I was reading, you know, state Department reports, the, the tip reports I was going to I was going to in-person workshops around trafficking and just, I was soaking in information. Yeah, I am, I’m skeptical and by nature. So when somebody tells me that there’s a big scary problem in the world, I’m inclined to be emotionally reactive to that. And then a little bit later go, is that true? What’s their angle? What do they want? Yeah. And so I just, I just dug into information and for, for me personally, I’ll just, I’ll never forget the moment where I, like, I read a, a particular stat or listened to a particular story and finally like realized my brain is full and my heart just burst.

(00:58:26):
It just broke my heart for the reality of it. And that’s when I said, okay, now what, what do we do moving forward? And in my particular case, I was able to stay connected to Tom Perez, the founder of Epik Project, and say, I wanna, you know, what are you doing? I wanna stay connected. So staying curious for whether that’s doing research, like me watching documentaries, going to meetings I mean, just do something simple. Go, go to fight the new drugs website and become a monthly donor. Do do a little thing that that moves you into like, I’m not ignoring this one little thing, no matter how little it is, I’m not ignoring this and let that grow. And for any men listening to this, I would just say, guys, this is our issue. Sexual exploitation is our issue and we’ve gotta own it.

(00:59:27):
And I know it’s either scary or intimidating or gross or all all of the things. I know it can feel like a lot, but it’s our issue. And who among us wouldn’t do something if the, the classic story is one of, if one of our daughters was being sold, right? I’m gonna go the other way. Who among us would not rally up to know as much as we could and do something if we found out that one of our sons was a sex buyer, which among us would just let that be. And if you would let that be, then I just challenge you to consider why. So guys, this is our issue. Start someplace.

Fight The New Drug (01:00:15):
That’s very well said. And this entire conversation has left me filled with hope, knowing that you’re doing the work that you’re doing. But for any of our listeners, maybe still looking for some additional hope, how do you stay hopeful in this work?

Justin (01:00:30):
Ashlyn and all of the other youth from my friends are not for sale, that gives me hope. Watching 70 middle schoolers come to a lunch thing, to, to talk about, you know, being a man and you know, all to talk about this issue in their context, that gives me hope. You know, I, yeah, there’s a lot that it would make it easy to be hopeless. And I do, I wanna say I do have those days, but I’m pulled out of those days by my survivor friends. You know, Alex, who’s a 18-year-old, 19-year-old now, you know with my friends are not for sale. Those things give me hope. And you know what? The fact that talking about masculinity is now even if it’s controversial, it’s at least a topic. Even when people are disagreeing, we’re at least talking about masculinity.

Fight The New Drug (01:01:34):
Well, I couldn’t agree more. And I really do feel so encouraged, and I hope all of our listeners will take some time to look up Epik project, learn more about the work that you are doing. And as you mentioned, stay curious, learn about these issues. Visit your website. See, you know, stay, stay curious about how, if you’re a parent, you could address this topic in an age appropriate way with your youth starting at a young age, right? if you have friends , which hopefully we all do, you can, you can be curious and learn how you can address this with your friends in appropriate ways and easy ways and small ways that do ultimately have a ripple effect and help create this change over time. Is there anything else you wanna share before we wrap up today?

Justin (01:02:24):
You know, I’m just, I’m just having this, and, and I don’t know if this becomes a part of the of the interview or not, but I’m just having this idea of two guys that are friends. You’re talking about friends, two guys that are friends, and they’re used to talking about whatever, they talk about what they did over the weekend, the game, whatever. And all that’s great. All that’s connective tissue, it’s all great. What would it look like for one of those guys to say, man, I heard this thing about sex trafficking and I don’t know, it kind of stuck with me. You ever heard about that? Like, what do you think about that? And it doesn’t have to be a really big, like, Hey, let me get all of my male friends together and tell them why porn is bad, and that sex trafficking is a thing that men have to own.

(01:03:13):
We have to change the way we’ve been living since Len, beginning of time. Like, it just starts with like, man, I heard about this thing and it’s kind of bugging me. I don’t know. You ever thought about that? And if your buddy’s like, I don’t know, it sounds dumb. Like, yeah, I don’t know. And it can just be that plant, that seed start that conversation. So I think I’m really sympathetic to the fact that it’s our work to do as guys. And we haven’t been taught how to have these conversations and so it feels like we have not been set up for success. It’s common within the public media that when men do try and they do it wrong, they get lambasted. Yeah. So I’m, I’m sympathetic to the fact that I’m asking for something big from men and we need to find ways to, I think that’s what I want to add, is we collectively need to find ways to engage men more in a way where they know that there’s value for them to show up. Absolutely. And there’s room for them to make some mistakes.

Fight The New Drug (01:04:24):
Absolutely. I think that’s such a beautiful note to end on. It has been such a delight to get to have this conversation with you, Justin, thank you so much for your time. For any of our listeners wanting to check out your resources, can you please tell them where to go?

Justin (01:04:39):
You can go to epic project.org and it’s Epik with a K and you can find all of our activity there.

Fight The New Drug (01:04:47):
Amazing. And we will be sure to include it links in the show notes as well so that our listeners can find you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Justin (01:04:56):
It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you for all the great questions.

Promo (01:05:05):
Ever wonder what the bigger picture is when it comes to porn? Episode three of our documentary series, brain Heart World called the World Zooms Out to show how porn impact society as a whole from fueling human trafficking to perpetuating violence and exploitation. This episode connects the dots between individual actions and global consequences, making it clear that our choices matter more than we might think. Watch the Brain episode for free at ftNd.org/thebrain. That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G/thebrain.

(01:05:41):
Join our community of monthly donors, helping others recognize how porn can impact them, their relationships, and their communities. Join Fighter Club for as little as $10 a month to help us continue our efforts. Visit ftnd.org to learn more. Listen to the following testimonial and how fight the new drugs resources help one couple overcome their struggles with Porn

Testimonial (01:06:05):
Fighter Club has given me hope. I’m always needing a reminder that healing is possible and that people can change. No one is stuck watching porn forever. My boyfriend and I have grown so much stronger because of our teamwork, and he is so much healthier and happier now than ever. If it weren’t for Fight the New Drug, we wouldn’t have gotten the resources that we needed to fight. It has been amazing being on the receiving end of hope, but it is even more fulfilling to be on the giving end.

Outro (01:06:34):
Thanks for joining us on this episode of Consider Before Consuming. Consider Before Consuming is brought to you by Fight the New Drug. Fight The New Drug is a non-religious and non-legislative organization that exists to provide individuals the opportunity to make an informed decision regarding pornography by raising awareness on its harmful effects using only science, facts and personal accounts. Check out the episode notes for resources mentioned in this episode. If you find this podcast helpful, consider subscribing and leaving a review. Consider Before Consuming is made possible by listeners like you. If you like to support Consider Before Consuming, you can make a one-time or recurring donation of any amount at ftnd.org/support. That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G/support. Thanks again for listening. We invite you to increase your self-awareness, look both ways, check your blind spots and consider before consuming.