Sex Work 2.0

By Juhu Thukral, American Sexuality Magazine. Posted January 13, 2008.

Sex workers have been using technology both to enhance their work lives and to organize as a movement. For example, sex workers used listservs, blogs, and online video to address the scandal involving Randall Tobias. The administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Tobias had enforced the policy requiring that U.S.-based groups working to fight trafficking and HIV/AIDS overseas denounce prostitution in order to receive funding. But in 2007 news broke of Tobias’ own personal association with an escort service. Although he denied ever having sex with the women he hired, he resigned.

While the mainstream press focused on the scandal, activists used technology to point out the troubling policies that Tobias enforced, which jeopardized programs targeted to assist and support people whose rights are almost always ignored. The Sex Workers Project released press statements to blogs, radio, and other media outlets that then gave substantial coverage to the Anti-Prostitution Pledge policy created under President Bush. Sex workers organized via listservs to have screening and education parties to watch media coverage, and they viewed online videos about the policy impact of Tobias’ work. They also started a blog to talk about sex workers’ rights issues. Using this kind of technology, they were able to get their own voices out to the world without compromising confidentiality and safety.

Over the last decade technology in its many forms has changed the ways that people interact, work, and engage in collective action. Sexuality has been a major focal point for online connections since the inception of the Internet and email—whether it is porn, casual hookups, prostitution, sexual and erotic services, or old fashioned searches for romance. Activism is another area that has benefited from online communication. It has enabled like minded people and groups to educate, organize, and speak with a collective voice.

Like other groups who come together because of shared work and interests or out of shared political concerns, sex workers have created thriving online communities beyond those that relate directly to their work. Due to the ever decreasing cost of laptops and wireless access, along with cell phones that come equipped with fancy cameras and texting options, technology has empowered many sex workers to organize online. Sex workers are rallying around technology to create collective political voices, using a broad array of tools: the ubiquitous listservs that crowd everyone’s in-boxes, blogs, podcasts, texting, video, and MySpace pages.

For example, at the Sex Workers Project, we engage in street outreach with sex workers who are often not part of mainstream organizing efforts, including youth, immigrants, and transgender women. In addition to handing out legal rights cards, condoms, and lube, we have also started interviewing sex workers with digital recorders to get their thoughts on life, work, and the police. We are putting the interviews on our website as a podcast, giving people a platform to speak on important issues while remaining anonymous. Another example of sex workers mobilizing via new technology is the global Network of Sex Work Projects, which convened a working group on HIV and sex work policy. The group, comprised largely of sex workers, produced a guide on UNAIDS policies and created a dedicated website that allows for activists around the world to comment on the document and offer support.

These tools have helped breakdown some of the basic barriers to organizing that sex workers normally face. Not only is a great deal of sex work criminalized in most parts of the United States, sex work also carries a social stigma that makes it difficult for activists to simply meet and discuss common fears and concerns. The underground nature of the work lends itself to underground organizing. For example, the fear that a new member of an activist group is an undercover police officer is a real threat—it is almost impossible to engage in political organizing without outing yourself as a sex worker and admitting to have engaged in unlawful activity. Online organizing allows people to share information and “meet” without sharing their faces, their real names, or other identifying information.

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Juhu Thukral, Esq., is the director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City. She has been an advocate for the rights of immigrant women in the areas of health, work, and sexuality for fifteen years.

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