Sex Work 101

1. Welcome to
Sex Workers Rights: An Introduction &
Exploration

2. THIS IS A SAFE SPACE
A big thanks to SWOP- NYC/SWANK for sharing their guidelines with
• Confidentiality: What’s shared here stays here,
what’s learned here leaves here.
• One Mic
• Make Room, Make Noise
• Ouch/Oops
• If you don’t know - ask!
• Speak from the “I”
• Embrace Discomfort
Some guidelines

3. Let’s Start With a Pop Quiz!

4. She goes to work, dreading the next few hours.
She will be in a strangers house on her knees
doing acts she doesn’t necessarily enjoy – but
she chooses this work because she can
support her family, chose her own hours and be
home when are kids return from school. Juliette
is not sure what to expect when she enters the
house, and her back and knees are sore from
the previous day’s work.
What is Juliette’s occupation?
Juliette

5. Marcus goes to work sore from the day before.
A client had penetrated him yesterday and
Marcus had to stop and ask tem to be more
gentle. The client apologized and asked what
would be more appropriate. Marcus knows the
service he provides help his clients better
connect with other people and he is proud of
the work he does. There are times its clear his
client has never given a rectal exam before –
and he is happy to walk them through it.
What is Marcus’s occupation?
Marcus

6. Clara is also a mother who sets her own hours
and is able to provide and create stability for
her daughter through her work. She has not
always been able to do this given her history in
the foster system and on the street, as well as
having 3rd grade reading level. She has been
able to create work and is paid well for her
time. Her clients trust and value her.
What is Clara’s occupation?
Clara
Thanks to Jill McCracken for this exercise – Check out her
book Street Sex Workers’ Discourse: Realizing Material
Change Through Agential Choice

7. What is Sex Work?
Sexual or erotic acts
performed in exchange
for money, food,
housing, substances,
security, or anything of
necessity or value.
People engaging in
sex work can be of any
age, race, gender,
nationality, sexuality, or
class, and enter the
trade through choice,
coercion, or

8. Who Is A Sex Worker?
• Webcam Performer
• Escort/Independent
• Profession Dom
• Profession Sub
• Stripper/ Exotic
Dancer
• Outdoor Worker
• Pornographic
Performer
• Telephone Performer

9. Continuum of Acceptability
Not OK for anyone ever (in the history of
ever)
OK for some (over there, far away)
Fine but not a preferred practice
Good for others, not good for me
Good for others, good for me
Consider these as you move through the continuum

10. Debrief
 What was the first thing you thought of?
 Have you always felt this way?
 How would your position change if this
were a continuum of risk?
 What other factors influenced your
position? Evidence? Anecdotes? Personal
Experience?

11. Who We Are,
What We Do
All volunteer, grassroots direct-service and advocacy
organization for and by women in Philadelphia’s sex trade,
with a focus on women surviving in the street economy in
Kensington.
Barriers to care are material, social, and structural.
Services include:
•late night street outreach •bad date sheet
•home deliveries •case management •health & safety tips
•overdose response training •rape and assault referrals
•ladies night drop-in

13. What is Harm Reduction?
 A public health theory addressing
behaviors that carry risk.
 We all do things we know are bad for
us, and only the individual can decide
what measures to take to mitigate harm
 Those who engage in these behaviors
should have a leading voice in any
organization or program they utilize

14. Criminalization
 Oppression via state control:
 Body : incarceration (probation, etc.),
loitering laws, housing and
employment restrictions based on
criminal record
 Mind : access to education,
information, social services, funding of
research, academic freedom, media
coverage
 Can be explicit in legislation
or how laws are
enacted/enforced, and
replicated through other
institutions (e.g. western
medicine)
 Hand in hand with stigma
“Prostitution is a crime of talking.” – Melissa Gira Grant

15. ATIs = Expanding the Net
From Red Umbrella Project (2014)

16. Application in Practice
Harm Reduction approaches to serving
historically vulnerable, marginalized and
oppressed populations mitigate the impact of
criminalization –
especially in HIV treatment and care.
…So how do we do this?

17. Key Components of Harm
Reduction
 Sex work as work
 Substance use vs.
Drug Abuse
 Theory of
Intersectionality
 Safe Spaces
These frameworks
acknowledge the material,
social, cultural, and
spiritual impacts of
criminalization

18. Intersectionality
Criminalization is experienced disproportionately under multiple
forms or systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
These frameworks must be considered within the theory of
intersectionality.

19. Sex Work as Work
 Sex Work, Sex Trade, Survival Sex
Work – it doesn’t need currency to be
commerce
 Focus on the sex worker
 Honors Autonomy (Choice/Agential
Choice)
 Free of stigma, implies alliance
 Provides for a more comprehensive
understanding of what exploitative forces
may be at work (interpersonal,

20. Substance Use vs.
Drug Abuse or Addiction
 Language creates our reality
 Substance use is normative
 Create a space for individuals to self-identify and/or
qualified professionals to properly diagnose
 Consistent with evidence based practices and
contemporary research
Substance Dependent/
Pharma Refugee
Chaotic Use
Supporting
“I am ready to change”
Addict/ Junkie
Rock-Bottom
Enabling
“You have a problem”

21. Harm Reduction

22. • Area or forum where a marginalized
group is free of standard
stereotypes, discrimination, and
tactics of silencing
• Physically safe: free of law
enforcement/other institutions,
potential clients and assault
• There are guidelines: ‘trolling” in any
Create a SAFE Space

23. What about Legalization?
• Independent contractors pay
house fees that are
approximately 30-50% of
earned profits
• Little recourse for substandard
facilities
• Still targeted by law
enforcement
• Trafficking and coercion still
happen
• “Legalized” only in that it
makes it easier for
management to exploit
workers.
From “Licensed to Pimp” a
forthcoming documentary film about
strip clubs.

24. "FL stripper shows judge that her bikini was too large to expose her vagina to
the undercover cops that arrested her."

26. Partial Legalization or
“The Swedish Model”
• Sex workers and
public health experts
oppose the Swedish
Model – its ‘success’
has been largely
misrepresented
• Legalization fails to
address material
factors and structural

29. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
• There is an estimated 2,250 to 4,000 individuals
under 21 engaged in New York City's
Commercial Sex Market. (<1% of under youth
population)
• Mostly African American (67%), Female (85%) –
however data is quite variable (Gragg et al.,
2007)
• Average age of entry is closer to 16-17
• At least 85% of youth in the sex trade have child
welfare involvement

30. What we are’t talking
about when we focus
on “Human
Trafficking”
• Racism
• Poverty/Generational
Poverty
• Homophobia/Homonegati
vity
• Gender-Based Violence
• State Violence
• The Child Welfare System
• The Foster Care to Prison
Pipeline
• Over-policing of Young
People of Color
• Rape Culture

31. Young
Women’s
Empowerment
Project (2011).
Girls Do What
They Have To
Do To Survive:
Illuminating
Methods used
by Girls in the
Sex Trade and
Street Economy
to Fight Back
and Heal.
Pimps?

32. Dank, M. et al. (2015). Surviving the Streets of New York:
Experiences of LGBTQ Youth, YMSM, and YWSW Engaged in
Survival Sex.

33. Reports of “Bad Encounters”
from YWEP (2012)

34. Sex Worker Rights Globally
NZPC, a peer based health project, est. 1989

41. Protest at XI AIDS International
Conference, 2004: Sex Workers and
Clinical Trials

42. India: Sex Worker Rights as Worker
Rights
• The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) is a
collectivisation of 65,000 sex workers, which functions as
an exclusive forum of female, male and transgender sex
workers in West Bengal, India.

43. SWEAT: South Africa

44. Shifting the Paradigm
Why this?
• Condoms
• Testing
• Street Outreach
• Risk Reduction
• (choice) Feminism
• Focus on Clients +
Pimps
• Sex Positivity
• Gift Cards
• Raid + Rescue
• Militarized Interventions
Not this?
• Racial Justice
• Human Rights
• Holistic Health
• Community Partnerships
• Policy Change
• Social Justice
• State Violence
• Reproductive Justice
• Good Jobs
• Intersectionality

45. Nothing About Us
Without Us.
Lindsay Roth
Ilza Padua
Jen King
safephila@gmail.com
www.projectsafephilly.org
@safephila