Sex workers in Italy banned together against abolitionist projects and managed to force support mechanisms for 'trafficking victims' into anti-trafficking legislation.
A proposed law in Germany pretends to help prostitutes by registering them, but it will only increase sex workers’ precariousness and vulnerability. Respect and peer knowledge would go much farther.
The French state ostensibly sees sex workers as victims, but its combined legal framework positions them first and foremost as offenders, especially when they are migrants.
State entrapment, extortion, imprisonment and slander sharpen the consciousness of sex workers who denounce anti-prostitution, anti-pimping and anti-trafficking policies invariably used to repress women and undermine feminist liberation struggles.
Chinese sex workers in Paris demand respect from those who had no right to take it away in the first place.
The sex workers’ movement demands full decriminalisation of sex work, but this will only help sex workers already permitted to work unless migrants are also provided with labour and residence rights.
Austerity has increased poverty, particularly for women, while the rise of the far right has exacerbated hostilities against migrants and LGBT people, catching sex workers in a web of intersectional vulnerability.
Across the world sex workers organise to resist abuse, exploitation, and trafficking. For two weeks we will air their voices. Let us listen.
Critics of Amnesty International’s proposal to decriminalise sex work ignore the critical question of labour and livelihood for those structurally disenfranchised by poverty. Español
The New Zealand experience of decriminalised sex work offers a practical alternative to the often-cited Swedish Model. Might it point to a more general way forward? Español
Protective homes for women in India are carceral institutions that confine women rescued from the sex trade. Tied to a moralistic agenda of reform, protective homes restrict women’s freedom in multiple ways.
Many women find themselves returning to situations of everyday violence after being ‘saved’ from selling sex in Europe. Why are some types of suffering seen as more legitimate than others?
