Sex Work Overview

Del Beach-Campbell -
Delversity/SurvivorsUK/ Josephine Butler Society

Jason Domino –
Former Online Rep at Sex Worker Trade
Union/Spectra

Who are we?

 • Oxford Learner Dictionary: A polite way to referring to Prostitute

• Wikipedia: A sex worker is a person who is employed in the sex

industry. The term is used in reference to all those in all areas of the
sex industry, including those who provide direct sexual services.

• World Health Organisation: Sex workers are women, men and

transgendered people who receive money or goods in exchange for
sexual services, and who consciously define those activities as
income generating even if they do not consider sex work as their
occupation.
The words “women”, “men”and “people”in this document include sexually active
adolescents. Children who have not reached the age of puberty may also engage
in sex work but they are not the focus of this document.

Definition of “Sex Worker”

“A consenting adult who provides
a paid sexual service”

Our Definition of “Sex Worker”

 • GFE
• Massage + Erotic massage
• Full Service
• PSE
• Waitressing
• Naked cleaner
• Sugaring/ sugar
• Burlesque
daddy/baby/friend
• Escorting
• Findom
• BDSM
• Sexual Surrogates
• Tantric Sex or energy work
• Phone sex
• Stripping/lap dancing
• Dom/Sub
• Sexting
• Porn
• Duo
• Survival sex
• Incidental sex worker
• Marriage?

Types of Sex Industry Work

• Beats/Strolls • Stripping/lap
• Cruising Grounds dancing
• Dorms • Resorts
• Apartments • Clients home
• Shared Flats • Street
• Peep Show • Sauna
• Woods/parks • Car
• Hotels • Parlour/brothel
• Corporate offices • Escort agencies
• Own home

Locations for Working Everywhere

 • Migrants
• Substance users • Criminals
• Single mums • Actors
• Students • Nurses
• Financial vulnerable • Judges
• Trans & Non- Binary • Celebrities
• Any gender/sexuality • People with
• Parents Neurological
• Homeless differences
• Police Officers

Anyone
Who Can Be a Sex Industry Workers?
• Media/TV • Creates isolation and
• Conflation with Human silencing
Trafficking and Modern • Austerity
day slavery agenda • Violence against women
• Rescue instead of Rights & girls rhetoric
• Societal Stigma • Lack of workers rights
• Taboo • Failure to listen to sex
• Ideology workers experiences

Potential harms faced by Sex workers

• Wikipedia: “Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the
purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual
exploitation for the trafficker or others…”

• Merriam and Webster: “Legal Definition of sex trafficking: the

illegal business of recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or
providing a person and especially a minor for the purpose of sex”

• Cambridge Dictionary: “The act of buying or selling people, or

of making money from work they are forced to do, such as sex
work…”

What is Trafficking?
How NUM works.. Web

1. Reporting 2. Production
and recording & circulation SMS
system of alerts

Email

3. Sharing
anonymous
Sex worker / information
Establishment Staff with police
and SCAS

Incident
NUM (National Ugly
4. Casework
support

Mugs)
 2018
Total reports since
2012-2018 = 4,167+
Reports in 2018 = 814

Average 2/3 per day

currently

Violence
including Attempte Removal of Stalking and
gion Rape d Rape Sexual Assault Robbery/Attempted condom Refusal of condom Fraud harassment Other Total
London 2020 (pandemic)* 37 4 7 12 6 1 29 35 22 153
London 2021 (Pandemic)* 10 1 4 5 4 7 11 6 48D elversity
 80% of street workers have experienced physical
violence

50% of all workers regularly fear for their safety

65% of online workers endure persistent

unwanted contact

56% - Threatening/harassing contact

53% - Non payment/attempting to underpay

49% - Verbal abuse

“Wherever they work the majority of sex industry workers can
be the victims of crime and many won’t report as they are
heavily stigmatised….”

(2018)
• Stigma involves labelling, stereotyping, status loss
and discrimination
• ‘Stigma is entirely dependent on social, economic,
and political power…’
• More powerful groups ‘forcefully’ label less powerful
ones.(Link and Phelan 2001 pg. 375)
• ‘Whore stigma that suggests sex workers sell their
‘honor for base gain…’
• Assumption that sex workers are indiscriminate in
their practices, seeing random men. (Gail Pheterson
1993 pg. 42)

Stigma
 Asymmetrical
Criminalization- all Criminalisation (Nordic
aspects illegal Model) – buying sex is
illegal

Legalisation – if meeting Partial criminalisation (UK)

certain requirements if 18+

Decriminalisation – sex work recognised

as a commercial activity if 18+

Legal Frameworks
In UK we have partial criminalisation. It is legal to
have sex with someone and for them to give you
money … BUT… ...the following activities illegal:
Prostitution is • Brothel Keeping
legal, but many of
the activities • Soliciting (public)
surrounding the
exchange of sex for
• Working together
money or other • Being under 18
goods are criminal
offences

It is illegal if the
appointments are
arranged by anyone More than one
other than the sex person selling sex
worker e.g. by a under the same roof
friend or ‘maid’ as is illegal as this
the law views this as constitutes a brothel
coercion/manageme
nt
 Sex work recognised as a job like any other

Commercial activity

Without coercion or child activity

Proponents concerns: government regulation

considered intrusive, demeaning, or violent

Criminalisation
 State regulates sex work,
No space for anonymity (DBS checks)

Sex workers may have to pay special

taxes, work exclusively in brothels or
certain designated zones, or get a permit

Sex workers could be obliged to register

and pass physical exams that can lead to
the workers being quarantined

Legalisation
 Sex work recognised as a job like any other

Commercial activity

Without coercion or child activity

Proponents concerns: government regulation

considered intrusive, demeaning, or violent

Decriminalisation
Who:

• Sex Workers that want to - should be allowed standards to

work safely

• Sex Workers that have to - should be supported in exiting

• People who are underage, or trafficked - These are not

sex workers, the Sex Worker community and those adjacent
should be unthreatened when enabling support to these
people when discovered.
Remembering that deportation against their will is often not

Autonomy vs
in an undocumented person’s best wellbeing

Safeguarding
• Lack of Trust • Immigration Status -
• Retaliation deportation
• Re-victimisation from past • Threat of conviction
or present • Pressures of daily life -
• Judgement & survival
misunderstanding about sex • Reporting anxieties - fear of
work reprisals
• Punitive policing of beat • Fear of arrests for self or
areas
colleagues
• Traumatisation
• Closure of premises
• Stressful process of going
• Fear of public identification
through court
• Stigma • Drugs on premise
• Waiting game

Barriers to reporting to the police Trust

• Posing as clients to enter premises of migrant
workers based in the UK
• Criminalising sex workers when they report a
crime or an incident.
• Confiscating condoms as evidence
• ‘Welfare Checks’ when they are not in the
interest of the worker
• Contacting landlord of premises when no sign of
criminal activity
• Raids, crackdowns and enforcement, e.g. search
for 2013 Soho raids

Examples of bad police practise

● Lack of inclusivity for work types, ● Who is ‘hard to reach’?
genders or sexuality “Underserved”

● Project not being flexible to meet the ● Trust about the data security: where
working conditions/hours of service will their information go?
users
● Not identifying as a Sex Industry
● Alignment with police/immigration Worker so not feeling specialised
services are for them
● No peer involvement, Sex Workers
themselves not consulted in policy ● Heavy focus on targets - can “tea and
or practice sympathy” work better?

● Presentation - perceived lack of ● Rescue industry

specialised Knowledge

Barriers to engagement with services

nswp.org/resources/types
The working practices, regulation and safety of Internet-based sex work in the UK
 Key Crimes Recent research has highlighted:
Experienced • Nearly 200 sex workers have been killed since 1990
• Women involved in sex work mortality rate is 12 times higher than women in
the general population
• Globally, between 45 and 75% of sex workers have experienced violence in the
workplace, with over 75% of street sex workers experiencing physical violence
• 58% of students involved in sex work had faced sexual harassment while at
work
• Average number of types of crime experienced by people working online over
12 months was three
• The top three crimes experienced by commercial content creators were, stolen
content illicitly shared, harassment and stalking online, threatened with outing

• Low reporting rates due to:

• Privacy/anonymity: fear of becoming known to police, leading to public
identification/university knowing.
• Belief not taken seriously: ‘occupational hazard’/judged
• Lack of awareness regarding online harms
• Additional issues faced by migrant, male & transgender sex workers who are
Information taken from https://www.beyond-the-gaze.com/ the least likely to report
 December 17th 2023 - International Day to End
Violence Against Sex Workers

A memorial piece called ‘Say Their Names’ goes out form the community.

Inviting people to join us to say the names of those we as a society failed to protect.

For more information visit #IDEVASW (or with added year on the end)

Ending Violence Against Sex Workers

Follow

Twitter: @Nationaluglymug, @ukdecrimnow,

@SexWorkHive, @ProstitutesColl,
@sexworkeurope, @SWAIIreland,
@students4decrim, @UmbrellaLane, @ScotPep

Website: www.uglymugs.org www.survivorsuk.org

decrimnow.org.uk www.prostitutescollective.net
www.beyond-the-gaze.com www.delversity.com

Email: delversity@outlook.com

Show support, keep updated!

Recommended Reading
•dominofound.com/vbnq
• SNAP Covid toolkit
(snaptogether.co.uk/cv19toolkit)

• Student toolkit
(le.ac.uk/-/media/uol/docs/offices/edi/student-sex-work-toolkit)

• Sex Worker Solidarity Goldsmith student Union

(goldsmithssu.org/democracy/asv/campaigns/sexwork/)

Tools for sex workers