Sexual Health and Future Advocacy

There's been so many brilliant episodes of this podcast where we've had celebrities, thinkers, politicians. Some of my favorite episodes though are where we hear from workers themselves. And that's exactly what we're gonna do today. There is so much misconception, misunderstanding, and stigma around sex work, particularly around the difference between decriminalization, legalization, and different models. Ultimately, we really believe in nothing about us without us. So I'm delighted to be joined by Audrey, who is a sex worker and very involved with the organization Decrim Now. This episode is sponsored by Crowdfunder. Bring your bold idea to life at crowdfunder.co. ek forward slash bold. Audrey, thank you so much for joining me. Viewers will notice that your face is blurred, and that's because of your privacy. I just want to confirm you're a real person and we're in conversation together. Lots of people will know lots about this subject. Some people will know nothing about this subject, and we know there is a huge kind of stigma often attached to it. So should we start with what you do for a living? Yeah, sure. So I am what you would call a full service sex worker, so that is an escort. That's my kind of main way of earning money. I did briefly have an OnlyFans for about three months during the pandemic, but it was um actually quite a lot of work . So I stopped that quite quickly. But yeah, so a full service sex worker is like an escort. I've worked both independently and also within brothels. But on top of that, I also work for an organization called Dec rim Now, which is a grassroots group campaigning for the full decriminization of sex work in the UK. And it's not work, but I'm also a sex workers union member. And I just wanted to shout them out. Amazing. In fact, I saw an amazing exhibition of a sex workers' union at the Welcome Cl uh Welcome Trust last year, which is brilliant. And if I start with the term sex worker, because I know lots of people who work in sex work prefer to be called different things. Could you outline w what's going on there? Yeah, sure. So sex worker is an umbrella term that encapsulates anyone who exchanges sexual labour for resources, primarily money, but it could be things like housing, food, and within that umbrella, it could be sort of like full service sex workers like me who are working as escorts or on the street, dominatrixes, strippers, all the way on to kind of like online workers, porn creators. And we use that umbrella term because it is a recognition that what we do is work and that recognition is important because if we are seen as workers, if we are able to operate as workers, we're able to utilize labour rights and protections like all other workers to be able to improve our working conditions. And it's important for us to recognise that sex work is a form of work, it's a form of labour, and not kind of like an identity, not like this kind of shady underclass of people . And it's important for us to use that umbrella term because the primary thing that affects us all as sex workers, regardless of where we're working, whether we're working indoors in a porn studio, is that the law harms us. And it's important for us to organize collectively to change that so all sex workers can be working in safety, can be working with full labour rights and protections, and have the autonomy to change our own working conditions for the better. Aaron Ross Powell Lots of people get into sex work for lots of different reasons. Would you mind outlining some of some of those reasons? Aaron Powell Yeah, sure. So DCRM now actually did a study this year or last year of 172 sex workers to find out this exact thing. So why do people enter and why people remain in sex work? And seventy-six percent of those respondents stated that they entered sex work due to financial need. And I mean I don't think that's too surprising . Right. Um but if we break it down even a bit further, we can see that the reasons why people get into sex work, whilst primarily due to financial need, are also due to a whole host of structural and social issues as well, primarily policy decisions made by successive governments that have landed us in austerity, that have lowered benefits, that have made benefits so much harder to access, including kind of like personal independence payments. In the survey that we did, 77% of the respondents said that they would class themselves as having a disability or a long-term illness, including neurodivergence. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents had caring responsibilities and turned to sex work because it offered them the flexibility to be able to work around those responsibilities. And even as well, actually, one of the things that I was surprised by in the survey was that fifty four or fifty five percent of the people who responded, the sex workers who responded, already had another job outside of sex work as well. And I think that just points to I mean, at the moment, especially wages have stagnated for what, like 10, 15 years now? Um we live in a cost of living crisis, we live under austerity measures, the cost of living is rising exponentially, but many people's wages aren't, and they're not rising in line with inflation or haven't done for a long time. Most people are getting real terms pay cuts. So even if you are in full-time work, you might be turning to sex work to bridge that gap between what you're earning and what you need to survive. And it's the same thing for people on benefits as well. The majority of people who were in receipt of universal credit, who responded to our survey, stated that they ended sex work again to bridge that gap between what they received from universal credit and what they needed to survive. So it's financial need, but it's also kind of the fact that you know job the job market is inaccessible to disabled people, growing increasingly inaccessible to trans people, especially. You know, it's migrant workers who are in sex work may have entered sex work because they're either stuck on a certificate of common sponsorship and trapped in exploitative, low-paid conditions, or they may be an asylum seeker who is prohibited from working. So there's a whole range of reasons why people enter and enter sex work. And you know, some people also do enter sex work because they really want to do that work. And that's also fine. They should be able to do the work they want to do. And at DeCrim Now, part of the reason why we not only advocate for the decriminalisation of sex work but also for a wide range of social changes is so that the people who don't want to go into sex work don't have to. They have a welfare state that adequately supports them. They have rent controls. So their housing isn't extortionate. They work in jobs where there are, you know, disability provisions that enable them to work or they work in part time work that pays high enough that they can work around childcare outside of that. Trevor Burrus You laid out beautifully there a whole whole range of reasons. And it strikes me whenever I talk about this in phone in shows, for instance, and talk about why decriminalization is so important. But the response you always get back from someone. And I think it's often well intentioned is but people are being exploited, particularly women. And I think it's fair to say that some people are being exploited, right? But it's about finding the nuance between people who want to do it, people who are doing it because they're living financially precariously, but still this is what they choose to do. That's still not the same as exploitation. And then there are some people who are just being straight up exploited. Aaron Powell Yeah, definitely. So I mean for me, I think that most people in the UK do work because they need to earn money. Right. And the thing that's often levied at sex workers is that you're getting coerced, you're getting exploited, because you're doing this for money. But that's no different to when I worked at McDonald's for two years. It's not a job that I dreamed of doing, but it's a job that I had to do because I had to make money to survive. Many sex workers have made the choice to enter sex work because it it is the best choice for them to do, dependent on their material conditions. Like, you know, for instance, if you are a single parent, you have a lot of childcare needs or high childcare needs, you can't afford childcare, you have to then make the decision between do I pay for childcare and do more work, or do I do less work and try and have more free childcare? And many people then, within that decision, then say, okay, well maybe I can do sex work because I'm earning money then, but it's flexible enough to fit around my circumstances. So while sex work may not be the choice that people have dreamed of making. It is still a choice that many people are making based on their so own circumstances. There is exploitation in sex work. There is exploitation in all forms of work under our current system. That's why trade unions exist. It's why we have workers' rights. So workers are able to challenge that exploitation by using labor rights and protections, by unionizing, by entering collective bargaining agreements , exploitation persists in sex work because of the law. Because the criminalization of sex work prohibits sex workers from being able to access those labor rights and protections so they can't challenge any poor conditions or exploitative conditions. The law takes away the power from sex workers. Sex workers are more concerned with how they interact with the law often because it's ever present, it's always there. Do I work legally and alone? Or do I work illegally with someone else and have some safety? So you're always aware of that law. And in many cases, again, the law is what stops you from being able to challenge exploitation. The law creates the exploitative conditions that many sex workers are in. And even further than that, there is certain types of exploitation like trafficking, coercion, that also again exists within sex work, as they do again in many other industries, like agricultural industry. And the way again to challenge that exploitation, to give those people who are being exploited a better chance of changing their conditions, isn't by criminalizing them. It's by dec ingriminaliz them, enabling them to work without fear of arrest, enabling them to report exploitative circumstances without again worrying about arrest. And unfortunately, there is no especially in the case of people who've been trafficked, there is no magic pass for trafficking victims to be exempt from the law within the sex work , if a brothel raid is happening and brothel raids are often used as de facto immigration raids by the police, if a trafficking victim is caught up in a brothel raid, they don't get a magic card that is like, okay, you don't have to worry about the police. Your earnings may still be confiscated. You may then also be detained and deported straight back to the conditions that you were trafficked from. So again, the law is not protecting trafficking victims just like it's not protecting any other sex worker who hasn't experienced trafficking. It is compounding the exploitation that sex workers exist in. Trevor Burrus, and I want to talk more about D Crim shortly. I want to look at some other models around the world. So probably the most famous is the Nordic model. Yeah. Um which I know DKrim now and including the Green Party by the way have uh criticisms of. What is the model first of all I guess as a thing and why is it flawed? Yeah. The Nordic model or um is sometimes called the end-demand model or the Swedish model is a system that primarily focuses on criminalising the buyer of sex work, but also both directly and indirectly criminalises the sex worker too. So within Nordic model countries it is still illegal for two or more sex workers to work together for safety, just as it is in our system of partial criminalization . But also, under the Nordic model, the increase of police powers to catch these clients also then directly impact the sex worker in many, many ways. So not only under the Nordic model are sex workers put in more danger because obviously their clients are the ones who are being targeted primarily by the police. So clients may not be willing to give over kind of a name or a phone number to a sex worker. So that sex worker has no opportunity to kind of trace them or if something does happen to that sex worker, no evidence to point to who may have hurt them. Sex workers are then forced to meet clients in more isolated and dangerous areas. I mean, in France, for instance, after the Nordic model was implemented, ten sex workers were killed in the space of six months as a direct consequence of having to work in isolated, dangerous areas away from police and public eye. On top of that, in order to find clients, the police actively surveil sex workers. So in Norway there was a project called Operation Homeless, where the police surveilled sex workers, found out where they lived, who their landlords were, then told their landlords that they were renting to sex workers and that they could be prosecuted. And then thousands of sex workers were made homeless. Again, under the Nordic model, even kind of interpersonal relationships between sex workers and family members or loved ones can also be kind of indirectly criminalized. There was a case in Sweden where the husband of a sex worker was arrested because he shared a home with a sex worker and they both paid rent on that home. And I think that's one of the main points of the Nordic model is this idea of giving the police increased powers. And I don't think it's a hugely I don't think it's a huge logical leap to understand why that might be dangerous. We've seen in the Republic of Ireland that one in five street-based sex workers after the Nordic model was implemented, have reported being sexually exploited by the police, by the Gardi . And we can look broader, not outside of sex work as well, to see the way that the police interact with black and brown people, the way the police interact with trans people, the way the police interact with women, like you know, cases like Sarah Everard, to understand that giving the police increased power over a marginalized criminalized community of primarily women, but also of migrants, of trans people, of black and brown people, LGBTQ plus people, is not going to lead to a good or safe outcome for those communities, for that population of sex workers, especially when the police are the enforcers of the law, are the enforcers of violence against those sex workers, whether that violence be via the methods of the state, by you know, giving criminal records, by arresting, pushing sex workers into more dangerous areas, or whether it's, you know, that real physical violence that does happen. You mentioned the partial criminalisation is what we have in this country. I think there's so much misinformation about what the laws are. Could you spell out what the situation is right now for sex workers? Yeah, of course. So sex workers in England , Scotland and Wales are working under a system of partial criminalis ation. What that means is, whilst selling sex is technically legal from one person to another, many of the acts included within that transaction, and in fact, many of the safety strategies that sex workers use are criminalized. So for instance, in England, Scotland and Wales, any two or more sex workers working together for safety is classed as a brothel. Whether or not there is a manager present, driving someone to a booking is criminalized under third party laws. Acting as security is criminalized under third-party laws. If you are a street-based sex worker and potentially you could be amongst the most vulnerable because you have little access to financial resources while you might be out on the street, you are the most targeted by criminalization. So even the act of a street-based sex worker working on the street is a criminal act. And in many cases, that criminalization, this partial criminalization, acts as a trap for sex workers too, because if you're found to be working on the street, you may get fined. You, of course, then need to go back to working on the street in order to pay that fine off. And then if the police catch you again, you could be arrested. So you get caught in this trap of criminalization . And it's the same trap that could even occur to indoor workers. If I were found by the police to be working with someone else and then therefore accused of each other pimping the other one out or pimping myself out, which is what could happen under the law, I could then get a criminal record. That would then also make it harder for me to exit sex work because I've got any kind of advanced DBS check or DBS check at all would catch me out. So yeah, we exist in that system of partial criminaliz ation in England, Scotland and Wales and in Ireland they have the Nord ic model, or in Northern Ireland even. And my understanding is there's resistance to full legalization. Aaron Powell Yeah, 100%. So legalisation and this is something I want to make very clear because it's something that often gets said uh is not the same as decriminalization. Legalization is totally different to decriminaliz ation. I like would think that that was quite clear by the two different names, but people often get them confused . So legaliz ation is a system where the state gets to set the terms of who is working illegally, but also and importantly, who is still working illegally. So the resistance to legalisation comes from its creation of a two tier system of sex workers. And again, the people, the sex workers who are most likely to be working illegally or be told they're working illegally by the state are often migrant sex workers, trans sex workers, black and brown sex workers, the unhoused and that two-tier system doesn't really solve any of the issues of partial criminalization or the Nordic model because as I said, sex workers are still criminalized underneath it. And so we've explored all the models that we think don't work and the flaws in them. Um I think you've probably given a spoiler that decriminalization is where we're going forward. But well what does that model look like? What is the model that keeps people safe? So it's sex workers, you know, you can ask any sex worker-led organization in the UK, including DKrim now, helpfully pointed out by our name, but also any sex worker-led organization from Kenya to Cambodia to India. And we will all say that the model we want is the full decriminalization of sex work. The full decriminalization of sex work means that the current laws and criminal penalties targeting sex workers and sex work will be removed. So things like you know, two or more sex workers working together safety under decriminalis ation won't anymore be against the law. And under that system of decriminalisation, by removing the criminal penalties that are currently targeted at sex workers. Sex workers would then be able to access full labour rights and protections, as all other workers do. We'll be able to challenge exploitative conditions in our workplaces, especially those workplaces like brothels that are currently criminalized. Sex workers will be able to work without the threat of arrest, will be able to access support services without the threat of arrest and be able to take back power that is currently being withheld from us by the law in order to change our own conditions. And we can see in countries where they already have decriminalization, so Belgium most recently decriminalized sex work . And after they decriminalized sex work, the government worked with sex workers to expand labor rights and protections to better protect sex workers. So now there is uh enshrined in law a right to refusal. Now, many sex workers already do have a right to refusal. I certainly told many clients to get out , or that I would not want to do the service anymore. But by enshrining that right to refusal in law, it means that sex workers who work in brothels or manage premises won't have to fear that if they do refuse a client, then their manager or boss might , you know, fire them, dismiss them because they have that protected. And if something did happen, if their boss did, you know, fire them or dismiss them from refusing to see a client, they could then take their boss to an employment tribunal. And we've seen again in New Zealand where they already have decriminaliz ation, that sex workers are taking bosses to employment tribunals and they're winning. There was a brothel worker who took her boss to an employment tribunal for sexual harassment and she won. So we see that under decriminalization, sex workers are already exerting their rights to make themselves safer. And I think, you know, decriminalis ation isn't, you know, the end of anything. It's just the starting point. And any government that seeks to implement decriminalisation should as governments in Belgium, New Zealand have done, work with sex workers to figure out exactly what it is that sex workers need next after sex work has been decriminalized. That was so clearly laid out. Like I think there's it can be can be no kind of confusion there. Um it's not your job to to speak to to conservatives necessarily. Yeah. But what I'm interested in your thoughts on is I think there'll be lots of people who watch and listen this who consider themselves on the left or socialist or progressive who get this entirely and go, of course this is just obvious it's a woman's right to choose or a person's right to choose, um and they're not doing h any harm, etcetera. There'll be, I imagine, probably a daily mail headline that is apoplectic that you go dare speak to someone who does sex work. But do you think there are arguments that you know to speak to people who wouldn't necessarily want to get involved with the world of sex work, but actually we could speak to those people in a way that actually this is making everyone safer? Yeah. And I think that's it. really Like the key message is safety. We here have so many conversations about ending violence against women and girls, which are necessary conversations to have . But we also need to include sex workers in those convers ations too. Sex work is a very gendered industry. It is, you know, the majority of sex workers are women. But sex work isn't necessarily the cause of that. It's just a symptom of a system that we already live under. We already live under a system of capitalism that is patriarchal. You know, women are the subject of more violence than men, both systemically and interpersonally. So sex workers need to be included in these conversations of violence against women. And I think that the one point that even both myself and someone who supports the Nordic model or someone who reads the Daily Mail might all agree on is that ultimately we all want people to be safe and the only way sex workers can be safe is if we remove the thing that is currently doing the most harm to them, and that is the law. Maybe I don't know how much this would fly with Daily Mail readers, but I would look towards other kind of issues as well, like abortion, you know, like drug use and the ways in which we have convers ations around how to give more people safety when they're finding abortion care, how to make drug users more safe when they're using. And again, the same thing is true as it is in sex work is that the law is the thing that's harming or creating the most harm for people who use substances. The law is creating harm for people who want to find good abortion care. So we need to remove the law that is doing the harm to make sure that sex workers, people who need abortion health care, people who use substances can all be as safe as possible. And I think one of the things that I always think all the time is that it's easy for a lot of us to think about what we'd like to see in an ideal world and that's great. We should always look to the future. But we also need to recognise what is happening right now. And the reality is that people are sex working right now. That isn't going to change overnight unless, you know, someone can magically come up with a solution for poverty or the government just has a radical overhaul and starts to make real radical reforms to the social welfare net, or you know, maybe if we get a new government. Um until that happens, and that's gonna be a long, long process, people are still gonna be in sex work. They're going to remain in sex work. And we need to figure out how to make those people safe rather than having conversations about oh well in an ideal world no one would do sex work is like perfect. In an ideal world I'd make pottery all day, but unfortunately I can't. So unds like a nice day though. It sounds like a lovely day. Um recreating ghost. And it strikes me there's there's some libertarian arguments as well though that are pro sex work and we're speaking at a week where I don't know if you saw there was a reform counsellor who has an OnlyFans. Yeah. And Reform responded, I thought it was interesting how they responded. They said that it might not be to everyone's taste. I can't remember what the rest of the sentence for it but they didn't actually condemn him.. Okay And that was pleasing to see. But I also thought, oh that's interesting that that reform, for instance, are kind of going, well actually what what people do is up to them. Yeah. I think it is interesting. And I think the thing that I find interesting about that response of reform coming out and being like, oh well it's you know, it's their choice, is that when I look at sex workers' rights um and the movement for sex workers' rights, ultimately it is a working class movement , primarily of women, but also including within that disabled people, people who are using benefits, people who are using drugs, people who are unhoused, migrants, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, LGBTQ plus people . Those are the intersections within the sex workers' rights movement. Because again, due to policy decisions, due to a system that we currently live under, these are the people who are most likely to have to find an alternative form of work that is outside of the traditional job market. So I raise this because I find it interesting that reformer may be having a stance of, oh well, he can do whatever he wants. Because when you look at that group of disabled people, migrants, trans people, uh sex workers and the larger working class, reform aren't very friendly to any of those groups and that's putting it very lightly. So I think when there's like libertarian arguments that are pro-sex work. Whilst I enjoy any argument that is pro the safety of sex workers, I'm wary of having that kind of like personal like, oh, we can just do whatever we want, because especially when it's coming from a party like reform, we know that for the majority of sex workers, they're going to be enacting policies that are going to worsen the conditions, they're going to go directly against what sex workers and the people within the sex workers ' movement need. Like reform aren't a party that support the working class. Reform increasingly are becoming a party of abortion hardliners. They want to completely dismantle or dismantle as much as they can the rights of trade unions, the rights of workers and, you know, more broadly the rights of the working class. So yeah, I feel like maybe it's kind of one rule for a councillor and one rule for everyone else when it comes to reform on sex work. This episode is brought to you by Crowdfunder . There's a street in Walthamstow where nobody used to talk to each other. Old Victorian houses freezing in winter and gas bills going through the roof. Then Hillary and Dan at number 44 had an idea. What if they turned the whole street into a power station? Solar panels on every single roof. So they got their neighbors together and they fundraised for it. And at the same time, they built a community. Together they raised over 3 50,000 pounds on crowdfunder . Dan and Hillary were fed up with rising energy bills and a government doing nothing about it. So they got together and they did something radical. They turned the whole street in London into a renewable power station. 20 homes, solar panels on every roof, 3 40 tonnes of carbon dioxide saved. And now their blueprint is spreading across the country. What's your bold idea? Start it at crowdfunder.co.uk. Generatieplantrekkers die je echt geen auto kopen, als je gewoon een teleauto kan fixen. Dus ja, als je ziet wat je allemaal zelf doet, dan lukt je abonnement zelf regelen ook wel. Mobiel, internet, tv, 1, 2 of alle drie. Jij kiest wat je nodig hebt. Pace, based on you. En Colrijd tracteert. Ja, echt waar? Colrijd tracteert op 10 euro korting. Kom winkelen tussen 19 en 22 mei en krijg een korting van 10 euro. Geldig bij je volgende winkelbezoek bij aankoop vanaf 100 euro. Voorwaarden op kolra.be. OnlyFans or webcams have made people safer because they're less likely to be out and about and putting themselves in vulnerable positions. I can also imagine maybe it's lonelier. And yeah, I'm just wondering about the technology. No, definitely. So yeah, things like um you, know , having websites where people can advertise themselves on independently, whether that's for doing kind of like full service work or camming, websites like OnlyFans have given more independence to sex workers. It has in many ways given sex workers another choice that isn't just potentially relying on an exploitative labour relationship in a brothel or working on the street. It has then also at, the same time, done the same thing as you can see within many workforces that are moving to work from home, moving to work online. It has, as you said, isolated and atomized workers. N ow, when I said that it is given sex workers another option from being able to work without relying on exploitative labor relationships in a brothel , these platforms still also have exploitative labour relationships with workers. Right. Only fans charge a cut of earnings. The same goes for if I was to advertise on a website independently to sell my services. I would have to pay that website for certain th ings. And by isolating and atomizing workers, as many people in the workforce have also done, it's also made it more difficult for us to be able to challenge those condition s. Just as the law by criminalizing the workplace of a brothel has made it difficult for brothel workers to be able to organize in those workplaces . The The isolation and atomization of sex workers on platforms, on OnlyFans, has also made it more difficult for us to challenge any conditions that we want to change on there. Like there was one adult service website that over COVID, I think, suddenly decided, um, for no good reason other than their own profit, to start charging workers for advertising our phone numbers, which is quite a key factor in getting a booking. But because sex workers are isolated on those platforms, because we don't often work together, again, primarily due to the law, because it prohibits us from working together for safety, it's very difficult to be able to kind of like organize on those platforms. And I mean, in the Sex Workers Union, we've been talking about um pulling off a strike on a platform for a long time. But we're running into difficulties by trying to get the amount of work as necessary to make a financial impact due again, yeah, to the atomization isolation of how we work on those platforms. It's like super difficult. And one day I would love to be able to uh go on strike from that platform, but I think it's going to be a long way off. And again, like sex workers, primarily due to the law, can't do what traditional workers do in trade unions, where like we want to pick at our workplace. We don't know where like we don't know where they are. You know, this particular platform, I've seen like five, seven different addresses for where their head office is. And they're doing that again because of the law. The law prevents us from collectivising a lot of our issues, and you know, the functions of those websites also do that as well. But sex workers have for many years come up with strateg ies where for our own safety primarily, where we are sharing information, where we are trying to connect with each other. So yeah, it's just playing the long game, I think. Aaron Powell And I'm really interested in asking about the sex workers union before I get there. I think you got into it through the strip club in Bristol. Yes. Do you want to tell that story? Yeah, of course. So um I was sex working and I saw that the council were going to implement um what's called a nil cat policy on strip clubs. And what that means, it's an effective strip club ban. Strip clubs have to renew their licenses every year. And if you implement a nil cap on strip clubs, it means that you're going to give out zero licenses. next year Bristol City Council, in their wisdom, decided to try and implement a nilcat ban on strip clubs, a nilcat policy on strip clubs over COVID. So many workers were already out of work, already running through their savings, getting menial loans or grants from the government to survive, and then were then suddenly faced down with the potential that they might not even have a workplace to return to. So I saw that. And I'm not a stripper. Unfortunately, I don't have the coordination for it . Or probably the business savvy. But yeah, I saw that and I was like, okay, that's that's not okay. Like something needs to happen. So myself, alongside many of the strippers who worked in the club, including one of my very good friends, put on a campaign to prevent the closure of the strip clubs. None of us had ever done anything like that before. We were really winging it as we went, um kind of figuring out how to talk to politicians and counsellors as we went. But thankfully, you know , due to us kind of getting media coverage, lobbying counsellors, attending council meetings anytime they are on to like put our you know opinion forward, we end ed up getting one of the biggest responses to a public consultation in Bristol history that was overwhelmingly in the favour of us the workers. And now, I mean, especially during the campaign, one of the things that was consistently levied at particularly the strippers in the campaign was that they were doing management's job for them. They were organizing to keep the strip clubs open just for the sake of keeping the strip clubs op en. And I mean, we were all so offended by that because the reason, the primary reason the shippers were organizing or we were organizing to keep the ship clubs open is so that they could work. And the other reason was that because strippers work in legal workplaces, strippers could then argue to access labour rights and protections. So the workers in the club actually then, after the success of keeping the strip clubs open, started organiz ing so against the misclassification of their work as self-employed contractors . This is something that's seen wide across the gig economy. It happens, you know, to Uber, to delivery riders, but it also happens to strippers across probably all of the strip clubs in the UK. And so the strippers then took their clubs to an employment tribunal. They argued that they deserve uh worker status, so Limby worker status, and they were successful . The judge ruled in their favor. So now what that means, by keeping their workplaces open, they can organize to get a formal recognition agreement with the trade union. They can access sick pay , they can access all of the rights that they're due as workers. I think that uh employment tribunal happened last year, so that was like a great end event to the strip club campaign. But that was the way that I got into the sex workers union because throughout that campaign it was sex workers were the ones that were reaching out to help. There was a stripper who'd won worker status in a employment tribunal against her club in Lond on a few years before. There were people in the sex workers union who were reaching out to help us out with our campaign to be like, if you need any assistance with any comms, here you go, if you need us to do anything. So So yeah, all of us I think who were involved in that campaign then joined the sex workers union. Um and I've been a member ever since. It's such an amazing story of like worker power and people working together. it's probably an ignorant question, but it just comes from literally not knowing. In terms of to grow the sex union, do workers then sometimes phone people's numbers and say you're aware of the the sex workers' union? Like how how do you do outreach? So it's again it's a tricky thing with outreach. A lot of sex work organiz ations, including us, can be sometimes a bit wary about what information we put over . We don't want to be, you know, told that we're facilitating prostitution, which is against the law. But we do do outreach. Again, strip clubs are one of the easiest ones. Strippers can be quite transient in work patterns. So if you're working in you know one area, if you're working in Bristol, you might then travel to Wales to work as well. You might then go to Swindon to work too. So union members who are strippers could then go to those different workplaces, talk to those strippers in those workplaces. And the same thing for many other sex workers. So people in brothels as well. Like we can often travel to different brothels to work and then speak to workers there. Independent sex workers, you might, you know, do a duo, like a booking with someone else. But also sex workers have thankfully huge community networks. There's so many organiz ations, there's so many local groups, there's so many, you know, collectives of sex workers that are popping up across the UK that are you know talking to each other, helping each other, sharing safety information. So it's through those kind of like informal networks that sex workers organ ise and also, you know, in our kind of brick and mortar workplaces when we can. But one of the things that I'm a bit worried about that might impact that organising currently is that um there seems to be like an increasing censorship of sex workers online alongside kind of like sexual health organizations , both on social media, but also due to the online safety act, um, on the way that sex workers advertise, the way we use platforms. And sometimes this censorship of sex workers online could in turn impact the way we organize because a lot of our organiz ing will be digital in nature because we don't, you know, we're not on the factory floor anymore . Yeah. So that's one thing I am worried about. But um sex workers have been organizing for many, many years in way worse conditions than we exist in right now. So yeah, have every faith. Find a find a way through. And when you say there's been online censorship, do you mean kind of websites coming down or or what does that mean? Yeah, so um we see it lots across social media. Like a lot of social media platforms are quite aggressive in banning sex worker um accounts, even sort of, you know, not just direct marketing accounts, but accounts of sex worker groups who are doing kind of arts stuff. And I think, you know, we can look at that in the growing trend of like even sexual health organizations getting censored, um queer people getting censored online and Palestine, you know, you know, activists getting censored online. It's like this broader form of social control. And in terms of websites, we have seen that the way that sex workers have to advertise on websites change after the implementation of the Online Safety Act. You know, on one uh platform that we use to advertise, we are no longer allowed to put on I can't remember what the exact term was, but it's sort of like promiscuous photos . Which seems kind of at odds of the service that we're offering. You have to look really dower and like wear a smock. Um so but there's also conversations that have been happening recently as well about um banning kind of the websites that we use to advertise on. I've seen a few pieces here and there from kind of ministers and the government or around banning online platforms that sex workers use to advertise on. And that would to be honest be quite disastrous. It happened in the States. There were a set of laws called Foster Sester . And as a consequence of those laws, lots of the websites that sex workers used to advertise on were shut down. And what happened after that was that sex workers were forced into more invisible spaces. So were forced to work in brothels, were forced to work on on the streets because they had no alternative option. And not only did that force sex workers into potentially more dangerous and criminalized forms of work, but there were also reports from organisations that support victims of trafficking saying that their work was made so much harder because sex workers and the trafficking victims that use those websites pushed into the margins. They couldn't find them anymore. They couldn't locate where trafficking victims were to offer them services. Um so yeah, there have been conversations, quite worrying conversations around doing that. And I think if what we're after is safety, if we want to make sex workers more safe, then we shouldn't then remove a form of work that enables them to work independently and advertise by themselves. Too often legislation is made about sex work without sex work. So when we look at the criminalization of sex work , when we look at the way that strip club licensing regulations were written, these were all written without sex workers but have a direct impact on the lives and safety of sex workers . And I think that any legislation that is going to have a direct impact on sex workers should be written in conjunction with sex workers and sex workers' experiences and voices put centre within that. Aaron Powell Finally, uh to talk about sexual health, which is a good thing to talk about anyway, outside of of sex work, but are there specific things that that need to happen that should be happening to make both sex workers safer and indeed people who um I'm l looking for the verb who who service sex work or who utilize sex work. Oh yeah, yeah. Um so we've seen in any country that has any form of criminalization, whether that be the Nordic model , full criminalization, partial criminalization, that sex workers' health outcomes are worse. In countries like where they have full criminalization of sex work, things like even carrying condoms can be used as evidence that you're then gonna be sex working, which of course means that people don't want to carry condoms on them. Criminalization neg ates uh us being able to effectively negotiate harm reduction strategies with clients. Street based sex workers, for instance, if you're worried that the police are going to come and arrest you, you don't have the time to look in the car and check if there's anyone else there or make sure that you've told someone where you're going . And when it comes directly to health, we've seen, especially around conversations with HIV transmissions, you know, the government set themselves a target that they were going to end HIV transmissions by 203 0, but have done nothing to decriminalize sex work. And I mentioned that because uh the Lancet, for instance, has said that if sex work was decriminalized , then new HIV transmissions would reduce by 46% . UNAIDS has said that the decriminalization of sex work is the single greatest intervention that could be done to end new HIV transmissions . And that all again comes down to under criminalization, condom use is often used as evidence that you are selling sex. Sex workers might not want to go and get tested in sexual health services if they have to be open about what they do and therefore are worried that how that might impact them. Sex workers under any form of criminalization are more worried in general to reach out for support. Health outcomes are always worse under any form of criminalis ation, not just for issues that specifically affect sex workers like the sexual health or like checking our sexual health as we're working, but also more broader social kind of issues as well, like kind of reducing HIV transmissions. You know, condoms and sexual health kits are kind of like the PPE of sex workers, you know? And under decriminaliz ation, not only would sex workers feel able to go and access kind of like health services without worrying about getting arrested, without worrying about getting deported . But sex workers also advocate for themselves or organize to get given condoms as free PPE by their employers. We could treat our workplaces like other workplaces where they have, you know, you get given a hard hacks you're going on a construction site by your employer because they have to give you one. So under decriminalization, utilizing those labor laws and practices will be able to benefit sex workers' health as well. Thank you. And finally, is there kind of the biggest misconception that you'd wish to bust or that people think about sex work that you just think I really want people to know? Um there's probably a lot to be honest. Um one of the main ones is that people need to think about why or at least I think about why a lot of politicians, a lot of people who campaign for the Nordic model or for the you know further criminalization of sex work are so keen to align the reasons why people enter sex work with some sort of shady underworld or with demand. Because that's, you know, the thing that we most often hear is that people are in sex work because of the demand for sex work. That's what a lot of Nordic model advocates argue. That's what, you know, a lot of politicians or certain politicians argue as well, that the demand for sex work is what is causing sex work to happen. And that is just not the case. If that were the case, then any country where they implemented an end-demand model, like Norway, like Sweden, like Northern Ireland, or Republic of Ir eland would have no sex work anymore. But that's not true. Sex work has not decreased in number in any of those countries because the Nordic model by tackling demand is tackling the wrong th ing. What makes people enter sex work or what you know keeps people in sex work is what I mentioned earlier. It is financial need. It is structural issues that have not been tackled by successive governments. You know, like implementing rent controls, like bettering the conditions of people on welfare, ending benefit sanctions. Um there's a whole raft of, you know, radical social, or not even that radical, just social changes that can be made to prevent more people from entering sex work. And this focus on the ending demand for sex work, I think, is often a sort of, you know, like veil. So people don't look towards the failures of policy decisions or don't look towards structural issues. Far easier for someone to point and be like, well, it's you know it's the demand that is causing people to enter sex work, or it's you know the criminal gangs that are causing everyone to enter sex work, rather than acknowledging it is because we've had, you know, successive governments that have failed to tackle poverty, that have made policy decisions, that have actively made people's conditions worse. You know, being in the sixth wealthiest country in the world and having the rates of child poverty that we do is unconscion able. But it benefits politicians, it be some politicians, it benefits some people in the media, it benefits some Nordic model propon ents to point at demand rather than acknowledging what needs to happen is radical social change, and that's the only thing that's going to prevent more people from entering sex work . And I often see it like there's quite a class divide, I think, as well, between people who support the Nordic model and people who support decronisation, most often sex workers, because sex workers are by and large working class. We haven't had the luxury of trying to identify what is good work and what is bad work. We just need to do work. We just need to survive. Sex work might not be good work. It might not even for some people be bad work, but it is work. We don't have the luxury of pontificating over those decisions. We also, as working class, as you know, as sex workers, aren't able to often conceive of police as , you know, protective benefactors because they are the enforcers of laws against us. And if you're working class, if you're black, particularly, if you're trans, the police are the people who target you specifically when you look at people who support the Nordic model, and this isn't all of them, but it's certainly the people that I've come into contact with, they are middle class. They are in occup ations that they can consider good work. They're journalists, they're politicians, they're you know, maybe they're a trustee for a charity. They've never had to stare down the barrel of do I do something that is illegal so I can feed my family? Or do I, you know, wait out for the next graduate position? Like and I think class divide is not only about kind of, you know, whether sex work is work or not, because they can only conceive of work as being good work, but it's also about the way that they view the police. They are able to see the police as, you know, their benefactors, as their protectors, because they're the middle class. And the police were set up to protect the interests of the middle class. The main thing that I would say is that yeah, the Nordic model doesn't benefit sex workers in any way, shape, or form. And the most important people to listen to in conversations about whether sex workers want the Nordic model, sex workers want decriminalization, are sex workers who are currently working right now. I don't care if you're a sex worker , but you've not sex worked for like the last ten years. You can have your opinion. But you're not going to be directly impacted by the law. So yeah, in any conversation around the law, it is the sex workers who are currently working who should be listened to the most. And it is the sex workers who are currently working who by and large want decriminalization. Aaron Powell Finally, if anyone listens to this goes, I want to help or I want to get involved with campaigning, well, where should they go? Yeah, so you can come check out our social media . I think our Instagram is like at Decrim Now. I think our Twitter is at Decrim Now UK. Or you can look at our website. And we've got like a whole range of ways that you can support sex workers. You can meet with your MP, which is often the most powerful way to enact change. We can support you through that process. You can also, if you are a trade union member, you can pass a decriminalization motion in your