Off the back of my tweets last night, about sex work being more heavily restricted than comparable industries and activities in Australia, I wanted to talk a little bit about the situation here. This might get a little long, so I’m sorry about that 1/

I have been pretty keenly following the updates about which alert level we need to be at before sex workers can return to work. 2/

Something I have seen cropping up a bit is tacit approval of the idea that sex work should be more restricted than comparable kinds of close contact work as part of the project of de-stigmatization. I think this is a bad idea, and I would like to discuss why 3/

Obv just because sex work is allowed at level X doesn’t mean everyone will return then. Many SW may be part of high-risk populations, or might live with someone who does. Other people will decide not to return for other reasons. This won’t be economically possible for everyone 4/

I’ve been fortunate enough to pick up some non-SW contracts to see me through the next few months, so I don’t have a personal financial stake in when we’re allowed back. I do have a personal stake in social perceptions of SW, because I’ve been dealing with SW stigma for years 5/

First: most sex workers I know are considering initially only doing massage bookings (ie: no sex). Before lockdown a lot of people had stopped offering kissing, so I would imagine that will also be pretty standard as we come out of it, if people are offering full service at all 6

ie: like other businesses, sex workers have already been thinking about how our industry will need to adapt during the coming months. 7/

With this in mind, the most obvious point of comparison is beauticians, massage therapists, tattoo artists and hairdressers – all non-essential services, which involve being in close contact with another person and touching parts of their body for 15+ minutes 8/

I have noticed some SW and allies seem keen to restrict sex work until lower levels, and I think this stems from a desire to demonstrate that we don’t deserve to be stigmatized as disease vectors. I think this strategy is backwards. 9/

If we are not disease vectors, why should our work be regulated more heavily than similar industries? 10/

*Expecting* sex work to be more heavily regulated (rather than having, say, industry appropriate guidelines, e.g. no kissing) is implicitly agreeing that it is an industry which is particularly dangerous rather than responding to the specific parts of it which need attention 11/

I absolutely get where this desire to prove we are exceptionally conscientious and responsible comes from! The stigma of being a disease vector is huge, and often internalized, and I have definitely internalized it and been surprised when it catches me out 12/

But. We ARE conscientious and responsible: we are also community members, and like everyone else have been staying home for the last six or more weeks to protect ourselves and everyone around us 13/

We need information which is appropriate to our actual risk and the actual activities we undertake, not to behave as though our work is exceptional and exceptionally dangerous 14/

Sex work should resume when it can be carried out with the appropriate safety measures, based on evidence, not on a desire to prove that we deserve rights and respect because we are being especially ‘good’, when that's predicated on the assumption that we’re especially dangerous

I am very anxious about posting this, btw! Because I'm worried I will open myself up to exactly the kind of criticism and stigmatization I’m talking about, where saying SW should be regulated in an evidence based way is seen as advocating for something dangerous and irresponsible