The document outlines a presentation focused on the liberation of queer and sex workers, emphasizing the importance of safe spaces and confidentiality. It discusses the complex realities of sex work, the different occupations within the field, and the stigmas and barriers faced by sex workers. Additionally, it explores the concepts of criminalization, harm reduction, and the need for universal labor rights, while advocating for solidarity and intersectionality in the fight for justice and empowerment.

1. Welcome to
An Injury to One is an Injury to All:
Queer/Sex/Worker Liberation

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”
• Please do not record this presentation. (The
slide show with bibliography and notes will be
made available)
Some guidelines

3. A Quick Note…
It’s hard be critical of our own culture.
“A complete contradiction offers not the least
mystery to [people considering their own
society]. They feel as much as home as a fish
in water among manifestation which are
separated from their internal connections and
absurd when isolated by themselves.” (Karl
Marx)
Looking at our own culture is like “trying to push
bus in which you are riding.” (Berger and

4. Let’s Start With a Pop Quiz!

5. She goes to work, dreading the next few hours.
She will be in a strangers house on her knees
doing acts she doesn't’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

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

7. 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
Thanks to Jill McCracken for this exercise – Check out her
book Street Sex Workers’ Discourse: Realizing Material
Change Through Agential Choice

9. What is Sex Work?
sexual 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 circumstance.

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

11. 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

12. 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?

13. 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

15. 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

16. Criminalization
 Oppression via state control of body (legal
gender, incarceration, condoms as evidence,
drugs & paraphernalia) and mind (access to
education/information, mental health care,
definition of disease)
 Can be explicit in law or how laws are
enacted/enforced, and replicated through other
institutions/centers of power (education,
medicine, media and pop culture)
 Hand in hand with stigma

17. SEX

18. Work is the opposite of Leisure and
something we may prefer not to do, but get
paid for.
(Keith Grint, The Sociology of Work)
What is Work?

19. Universal Labor Rights
• Safe and Healthful Working Conditions
• Right to Organize
• Fair Compensation
• Freedom from Forced Labor

20. Criminalization: The High Stakes of
A Shadow Economy
• Survival Sex: sex is
the payment, not
the commodity
• Self-Identification/
“Outness”
• Laws are
weaponized by
exploiters
• Stigma

21. 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 within clubs
• “Legalized” only in that it
makes it easier for
management to exploit
From “Licensed to Pimp” a
forthcoming documentary film about
strip clubs.

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

24. Partial Legalization Vs.
Decriminalization Vs.
“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

28. WORK

29. Sex and Textiles – What’s the
Difference?
pssst – it’s the sex!

30. Sex as Deviance
• “Power is essentially what dictates its law
to sex. Which means first of all that sex is
placed by power in a binary system: licit
and illicit, permitted and forbidden.”
(Focualt, The history of Sexauilty p. 83)
• “The pure form of power resides in the
function of the legislator; and its mode of
action with regard to sex is of a juridico
discursive character.” (Focualt, The history
of Sexauilty pp83-4)

31. “In the bars of the late fifties and early sixties
where I learned my lesbians ways, whores
were a part of our world. We sat on
barstools next to each other, we partied
together and we made love together. The
vice squad controlled our world and we
knew there was little difference between who
was queer and who was a whore when a
raid was on.” (Joan Nestle The Persistent
Desire: A Fem/Butch Reader. pp 232)
Sex as Deviance

32. Discipline of Deviance
• Miscegenation
• Anti-Sodomy Laws
• Forced Sterilization
• Criminalization of BDSM/ Fetish
• Abortion Rights
• Gay Marriage Rights
• Child Welfare

33. Beyond the Vice Squad:
Public Health as Surveillance
• The Public Health industrial complex
maintains a careful gaze on sex
workers
–“Risk Groups” are treated like agents of
disease
–Compulsory Testing/ Compulsory
Treatment
• “Evidenced Based” > Lived
Experience

34. 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

35. 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?

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

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

46. Towards a Points of Resistance/
Solidarity/ Alliance
• Intersectionality
• Post Identity Politics
• Homonormativity
• Surveillance & Criminalization
• Queer Liberation
• Justice beyond the State

47. Thank you!
Questions?
Lindsay Roth
Jen Bowles
safephila@gmail.com
www.safephila.org
www.swopphilly.com
www.swopusa.org
@safephila
@swopphilly
@swopusa
Volunteer Training May 30!