SWOP_ACT

ALT Scarlet Alliance, national sex workers organisation

ALT We are Scarlet Alliance, the national sex workers organisation. We campaign for the health, rights and safety of all sex workers in unceded Australia. Our membership is made up of sex workers, and sex worker organisations and projects. Each state and territory has a sex worker organisation or project that delivers peer education and support to sex workers in their area. For more infomation about how to contact your local peer org, please visit our website.

ALT Our purposes | We work to: Advance the health of past and present sex workers. Promote and protect the human rights of past and present sex workers. Promote respect for all sex workers. End all forms of stigma and discrimination against sex workers.

ALT All our staff and committee members are past or current sex workers. As sex workers ourselves, we understand the discrimination and stigma faced by our community. We understand the barriers to accessing essential services like banking and housing, and the impacts that this has on our overall health and wellbeing. We aim to achieve equality, social, legal, political, cultural and economic justice for sex workers. We strive for a world in which all sex workers are recognised as experts in our own lives and we are free to choose how we live and work.

ALT SWOP ACT IS NOW HIRING PEER EDUCATORS: Send an email to [email protected] to apply.

ALT Are you a passionate member of the Canberra sex work community? Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) ACT are now hiring Peer Educators to deliver health promotion, challenge stigma and discrimination, support the industrial and legal rights of workers, and build community. SWOP ACT encourage people who are culturally and linguistically diverse, LGBTQI+ and people with disability to apply. Please send a short email outlining your lived and/or professional experience and availability to [email protected].

ALT UNPACKING ‘AGE VERIFICATION’ LAWS & REGULATIONS: The Federal government has committed to pilot age verification to “protect children from harmful content”.

ALT AGE VERIFICATION: As attention turns to the current epidemic of violence against women, some people have decided that pornography is to blame. Eager to grab an ‘easy win’, the federal Government has committed $6.5 million to pilot age verification technologies “to protect children from harmful content, like pornography”. Despite evidence to the contrary, many people have unquestioningly accepted and promoted unproven and disputed theories that pornography directly leads to an increase in domestic and family violence against women, and that young people accessing pornography is inherently harmful.

ALT Anti-pornography activism is part of a long-standing history of scapegoating sex workers by blaming sex workers, the sex industry and sexual content for the attitudes and behaviours of (mostly male) perpetrators. The theory that porn leads to greater misogyny, male violence and sexual aggression is highly contested. There is reputable research showing no effect, and/or an inability to distinguish causation between pornography and non-consensual behaviour. The studies instead found that pornography can have a positive impact on the development of healthy sexuality, and provides entertainment, representation and education on topics of sexuality excluded from curricula, particularly for LGBTQI+ people. Refer to our post ‘Let’s talk about porn’ for more info.

ALT ROBLEMS WITH AGE VERIFICATION: Age verification regulations will not impact porn and adult content distributed via torrents or other file sharing platforms. Age verification doesn’t prevent young people from sharing content among themselves. These laws may end up funneling people from ‘mainstream’ websites that comply with the legislation (or those that don’t and are blocked or removed) to sites that steal the paid content of sex workers instead.

ALT FAQ Friday: What alternative services can I offer my client?

ALT Sometimes you may find visible signs of a potential STI/BBV or related condition when you do a visual health check on a client. Based on the health check, you may decide that you are not comfortable continuing with the agreed service. Some sex workers may refuse service when this happens, and others may offer alternative services with a lower risk of STI transmission. Alternative services are lower-risk sex work service options you can offer to clients when you do not feel comfortable offering a requested service. These can be a great way to avoid loss of income, help you retain the client, and help avoid difficulty with management.

ALT NEGOTIATION: Negotiating an alternative service can be challenging, especially if it involves delivering bad news to the client about their health and/or suggesting that they might need to see a doctor. Keeping the conversation light, playful, and fun can help diffuse any tension around this and prevent the client from feeling shame, which can impact their willingness to receive the service and may make the booking more challenging.