5 Ways to Promote Equality for Sex Workers

Protecting Health, Safety, and Human Rights

Time and time again, the dignity and human rights of sex workers are discarded and neglected. Sex workers deserve to exist in a fair world without targeted discrimination.

In New South Wales, Australia, there are various types of legal sex work, performed in a number of venues including erotic massage parlours, brothels, escort agencies, BDSM venues, and street-based sex work. Sex workers can also choose to work independently of an agency.

Despite moves in some parts of the world to decriminalize sex work, sex workers are disturbingly condemned from wider society. They are often barred from healthcare, employment and housing. The media and public describes sex workers with misogynistic slurs which further criminalize or objectify them. As a result of structural barriers, rape culture, misogyny and social stigma, 68% of 827 sex workers across 9 countries in a study met the diagnostic criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Cultivating respect, understanding and compassion for sex workers prevents sexual assault, secondary victimization, stigma and institutional discrimination. Even though the negative evaluations of sex workers are dispiriting, there are several ways individuals can advocate for fairer societal conditions on behalf of sex workers.

(1) Challenge Stigmatizing Media Portrayals

Due to social stigma, sex workers often hide their occupations from loved ones and the wider community. This means most members of the public do not have close proximity into the life of a sex worker. For most people, their ideas of sex work are shaped and influenced by media portrayals.

Media rarely represents sex workers as complex and multifaceted human beings. Many sex workers are queer, mothers, neurodivergent, office clerks, teachers and people trying to both survive and thrive financially and economically.

Season three of HBO’s Euphoria has faced criticism from Australian sex workers and advocates for its portrayal of the adult industry. The creator Sam Levinson has been admonished for neglecting to explore the complex inner worlds of sex workers. In the show, an online sex worker is infantilized and dressed up as a baby, while a camgirl is referred to as a “hooker.” Such one-dimensional portrayals are reductionistic and portray sex workers in an objectifying manner. Sex workers argue that Levinson fails to address sex work beyond the provocative veneer he presents.

In Grand Theft Auto, which is visited by million active gamers monthly, sex workers are depicted as disposable, fundamentally exploitable and inhumane. They exist as background props which reinforce misogyny and objectification. To compound this issue further, sex work is often confused with trafficking. Such a conflation further feeds into the narrative that sex work is inherently exploitable and that sex workers have no self-respect for themselves.

Not only do reductive and stigmatizing portrayals cultivate social stigma against sex workers, but they also encourage the enactment of punitive legislation.

Including sex workers within the process of narrative-writing is important for producing more nuanced and destigmatizing media. Margo’s Got Money Troubles covers the story of a young mother leveraging OnlyFans to support herself and her child, thereby presenting a more authentic and compassionate lens. The movie is based upon a book written by Rufi Thorpe, who consulted with OnlyFans creators. Sex workers deserve to have a voice in media stories, especially when such stories impact policy decisions and public perceptions.

Changing how sex workers are treated in society can look like writing to a movie editor or broadcaster, criticizing articles which use disparaging and derogatory terms to describe sex workers, substituting “hooker,” “brothel girl” and “prostitute” for “sex worker,” protecting the privacy of sex workers during media interviews or podcasts, and highlighting the voices of those with lived experience within the adult industry.

(2) Advocate for Accessible and Judgement-Free Healthcare

Sex workers are, across the board, disadvantaged. Anonymous, inclusive and accessible healthcare can be difficult to reach due to social stigma and privacy concerns.

Providing destigmatizing educational training on sex worker healthcare will help to mitigate the negative experience sex workers report with healthcare practitioners, including experiences of judgmental attitudes, inappropriate assumptions, misdiagnosis, pressure to exit the sex industry and a refusal of care.

Sexual health education is of paramount importance, ranging from teaching people about sex IQ, consent, rape culture, misogyny and its effect on self-expression and pleasure, effective communication and sexually transmitted diseases.

All-embracing healthcare should consider the intersection of sex workers with communities who experience homelessness and drug-related harms. Considering the intersectionality of situational factors and the resulting impact on health will prevent practitioners from assuming a health problem is a direct result of the adult industry. Doctors should refrain from trying to persuade sex workers to leave the industry, or needlessy recording their occupation onto medical records for the sake of ensuring confidentiality.

Medical centers can support sex workers by providing evidence-based services. These services include interventions which enrich community empowerment amongst sex workers. Furthermore, medical centers can offer education on correct condom use, periodic screenings and presumptive treatment for asymptomatic STIs, HIV testing, counselling, sex worker check-ups, safer needling injecting equipment, free condoms and lube, Naloxone supplies, Opioid Agonist Treatment for those who are dependent on opioids, antiretroviral therapy, harm reduction policies and catch-up hepatitis B immunization strategies.

Community empowered care and patient-centered models of care have the potential to improve health outcomes for marginalized members of society. Community-empowered care grants the community the opportunity to have more agency and influence over healthcare decisions by playing an active role in the planning, deliverance and evaluation of health services. Person-centered care prevents reducing a client to their occupation, one aspect of their life, and seeks to understand a person from a holistic viewpoint.

(3) Encourage Transparent and Fair Payment Processors

Many laws and financial policies are discriminative of online sex workers. The original intention of these policies was to combat fraud and human trafficking, and yet there is unclear evidence that such policies have successfully reduced crime. In this way, banks, credit card companies, and payment platforms police their customers through automated systems and establish strict rules about permissible digital content. As a result, sex workers often face barriers to using financial services such as processing payment services and obtaining loans.

For instance, the US FOSTA-SESTA passed in 2018 urged websites to remove sex work advertisements, sex-related discussion forums, and safety information about dangerous clients and safe practices shared amongst sex workers.

Sex workers are identified through business names, links to websites, description of services, use of stage names, or public advocacy of sex worker rights, and these characteristics are classified as indirect evidence of high-risk accounts. Unproblematic activities such as purchasing a large number of condoms and paying for sexual advertising websites are flagged as suspicious.

Altogether, these systems specifically target sexual digital content without accurately distinguishing between consensual and legal content, and illegal content. To combat this, companies should avoid over-censoring and aggressively surveilling sexual content. Laws and regulations should be reformed so that banks and payment processors are held accountable for financially discriminating against sex workers.

4) Challenge Rape Culture

Rape culture are the pervasive ways rape is minimized or trivialized within society. It looks like victim-blaming and phrases which reduce the culpability of the offender. Expressions such as “boys will be boys” and “she liked it” feed into rape culture. Rape culture is embedded within the system of male supremacism and unequal gendered power relations.

Sex workers are especially vulnerable to the impacts of rape culture, as cultural attitudes towards sex workers reflects the belief that sex workers “can’t be raped." As a result, sex workers are prone to victim-blaming. Victim-blaming is a common weapon of rape culture, which seeks to transfer blame from the perpetrator to the victim. Rape-affirming beliefs such as “she was dressed as a sl*t” and “she was drinking” are examples of victim-blaming.

It is imperative that people examine and dismantle their own stereotypes and misconceptions about consent. Many people assume consent for one sexual act translates into generalizable consent across all sexual acts. This could not be further from the truth. Furthermore, many clients will attempt a sexual act and wait for a “no” rather than listening for an enthusiastic “yes” before attempting anything. Consent is an ongoing process of verbal and non-verbal communication and can be withdrawn at any time. A sex workers should retain the right to end a service at any time for any reason.

Male supremacy posits men are entitled to sex, even if through violence and dominance. Male supremacism offers impunity to boys and men who degrade and disrespect the dignity and free will of women. As a community, boys and men should be urged to reexamine their notions of toxic masculinity and consent. Society should collectively denounce and prosecute all sexual violence and rigid gender stereotypes.

(5) Donate Money or Supplies to Sex Worker Organizations

Donations are a great way to pour funds into communities in a way that will meet their needs and make a difference in the lives of sex workers. Sex worker organizations amplify the lived experiences of sex workers and advocates for legal decriminalization, self-determination and protection against violence.

For instance, NSWP has made important contributions in the lives of sex workers by asking the United Nations to use the terms “sex worker” and “sex work” in substitute of derogatory terms which criminalize and stigmatize sex workers. NSWP has also advocated for defining trafficking in a way which distinguishes it from sex work and securing recommendations to decriminalize sex work in World Health Organization guidelines.

Text by Ruby Nebula

Published on August 8, 2026 on the portal aninjusticemag.co