On this page: Wednesday agenda | Thursday agenda | Friday agenda
National Forum 2023
Daily Agenda for Wednesday
11.00-11:30am
Registration and morning tea
11:30-12:00pm
Welcome to Country
12:00-12:35pm
Welcome and Housekeeping
12:35-1:35pm
Reports from WA, QLD, NT and TAS, and Q&A
1:35-2:35pm
Lunch
2:35-3:35pm
Consent Law Reform – steps to consensus
3:35-4pm
Afternoon Tea
4-5pm
Workshops
- The digital wallet 101: Skillshare on deposits & banking options
- Building Worker Cooperatives with Sex Workers
- Interrupting criminalisation
5-5:15pm
Day Wrap Up
6-9pm
Fly in Power Film Screening and panel at the Red Rattler
Please note this event is open to the public and requires registration.
Interrupting criminalisation
Location: Main Space
Are we invested in in carceral responses to harm against sex workers? Where do the contradictions or tensions sit in our movement around responses to harm? Is our energy being use to de invest in systems that harm and invest in spaces that heal? We will explore mapping the way we bring our values into how we work with each other and to the movement space around responding to harm, the environment we are hoping to create and what supports this. We will look at what gets in the way of this or makes this less possible, and what might need to shift or change to support us in working together in ways we want.
The digital wallet 101: Skillshare on deposits & banking options
Location: Balcony
Community skillshare about how to take deposits and what our best banking options are. Featuring Tallula’s update on their lost case against Stripe at AFCA.
Building Worker Cooperatives of Sex Workers
Location: Workshop Room | Content Warning: Conversations about money, earning privileges.
A presentation that illustrates how building worker cooperatives is possible. As sex workers, we have the skills, rights and knowledge to do this as demonstrated in New South Wales and after December 2023 in Victoria.
Worker Cooperatives are a powerful means of collective ownership. They can be a perfect business model for a group of five or more sex workers who want to own their own shop. However, there are skills to learn, and some deep-level agreements needed to be in the centre. We have some powerful ways of supporting each other, and some terrifying ways of cutting each other down.
How do we build trust to earn a fantastic amount of money, and create an environment where we call the shots?
This workshop is for those that want to illustrate just how powerful sex workers are.
Fly in Power: Film Screening & Panel
Location: Red Rattler Theatre, 6 Faversham St, Marrickville
Scarlet Alliance and Red Canary Song (RCS) are proud to present the Australian premier of Fly In Power, with a panel of Asian migrant sex workers from the Scarlet Alliance Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group (AMSWAG) presenting afterwards. We will also be joined by Xen Nhà, the producer of Fly In Power, who will speak before the screening about the development of the film.
This event is open to sex workers, family, friends, allies and supporters.
6pm to 6.30pm Arrival and dinner provided
6.30pm to 8pm Film screening with introduction by Xen Nhà
8pm to 9pm Panel presentation by AMSWAG
9pm to 10pm Drinks and socialising
Tickets are by by donation – pay what you can, with all money raised going to AMSWAG to support their advocacy. If you can’t make it, you can still donate here.
Whoredrobe Swap
Interactive Clothing Swap with SWOP NSW (happening throughout the forum)
Bring your unwanted sex work clothes and accessories to the Whoredrobe table.
Swap for new whorey goodness or donate to give them a new life. Who doesn’t love free things?
Badge Making Workshop
Practical Workshop with SWOP NSW (happening throughout the forum)
Since the 1980s, sex workers have used badges to communicate messages about our rights and health. In this workshop we will create old & new badges drawing from the SWOP archives promoting sex work advocacy, consent and safer sex practises.
Daily Agenda for Thursday
10-10:30am
National Training Project Skillshare
10:30-12:00pm
Workshops
- Joys of Resistance: A Skillshare for Anti-Fascist Whores and Antifa-Curious Sex Workers
- Best Practice Approaches for Peer Organisation Ugly Mug Lists
- Tricking Tricks: more from the Sick Sad Whores
12-12:30pm
Morning tea
12:30-1:30pm
Reports from NSW, ACT, SA and VIC, and Q&A
1:30-2:30pm
Lunch
2:30-3:30pm
Workshops
- Preserving whorestories: Forming a community sex work archive
- Disabled Sex Workers Roundtable
3:30-4pm
Afternoon Tea
4:00-5.15pm
Workshops
- Grief work
- Maintaining Community Values and Refuting the NGO Industrial Complex
5.15-5.25pm
Report from Touching Base
5.25-5.40pm
Day Wrap Up
7pm-midnight
Sex worker only party at the Bearded Tit in Redfern
Includes the annual Whore Of The Year awards and performances at 8pm
Sex Work Skillshare
Location: Main Space
Explore workplace skills and gain fresh insights, tips and tricks from sex workers across the country. This session is led by participants, graduates and alumni of the Scarlet Alliance National Peer Educators Online Training Program (SANTP). It’s a chance to
engage in an enjoyable exchange of skills, all while providing support to SANTP learners and graduates as they refine their facilitation skills. This skillshare workshop will cover the following:
- Advertising and Promotion
- Client Screening
- Negotiation Skills
- Sexual Health Checks
- Managing Boundaries
- Hustling for Extras
- Safety
The Joys of Resistance: A Skillshare for Anti-Fascist Whores and Antifa-Curious Sex Workers
Location: Balcony | Content Warning: Fascism, violence against marginalised communities, racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, whorephobia, right wing ideologies, conspiracy narratives, religious fervor and neo nazi cultures.
The anti-trafficking movement has evolved, and our tactics must too.
As demonstrated by Sound of Freedom, the current iteration of the anti-trafficking panic has evolved to take on increasingly fascistic rhetoric and tactics, and the anti-trafficking movement is now solidly placed within spaces occupied by the far-right/ neo-fascists (e.g. Q Anon etc). Christians, SWERFs/ TERFs, and conservatives are similarly cozying up to fascists, and sex workers in our communities are increasingly experiencing doxxing, online harassment, physical abuse and violence from empowered fascists.
Sex worker networks around the globe have long-standing involvement in anti-fascist organizing spaces and historically stand on the frontlines against fascist street mobilisations.
This workshop involves an overview of contemporary manifestations of fascism, and analysis on what this means for sex worker mobilization. Facilitators will discuss the rise of far-right and fascist movements, the evolution of fascist tactics and rhetoric, and examples of anti-fascist sex worker actions locally and abroad.
A series of skill-share activities will explore undertaking diverse anti-fascist actions, and aims to to upskill and inspire participants with enthusiasm and confidence to undertake anti fascist organizing and activism within their local communities and networks.
Best Practice Approaches for Peer Organisation Ugly Mug Lists
Location: Workshop Room
This session is an opportunity for all sex workers and the staff of Australian sex worker organisations to discuss current Ugly Mug List processes and formats.
By sharing information about contemporary community needs and preferences, and considering the strengths and weaknesses of existing practices, we hope to gain insight into how we can all improve these important resources in the future. A summary of observations and recommendations will be recorded in writing for provision to all Scarlet Alliance member organisations.
Tricking Tricks: more from the Sick Sad Whores
Location: Main Space
A skillshare workshop for fucking when you just can’t be fucked. When it comes to difficult clients, dickheads, or shit you just don’t wanna do, we’ve got ways to help you deal, distract, deflect, dazzle or dupe!
Preserving whorestories: Forming a community sex work archive
Location: Balcony
Sex workers have always found creative ways to preserve and share our knowledge, whorestories and skills with one another. Some of us may hold onto material related to our sex working lives: a selfie, a broth robe, a comedic text from a client, a sex worker zine, screenshots of our deleted accounts. Others may keep practices and histories alive orally: in back rooms, smoking areas, at community events, in public spaces, through performance.
Archives are places where historical records are collected and preserved. A community sex work archive could gather existing hooker archives, and create a space for sex workers to contribute their own emerging archive of stories, feelings and materials.
Join this session to learn about existing archival projects, workshop the possibilities for a collective archive, and create the next steps to form our own sex work archive – together!
Disabled Sex Workers Roundtable
Location: Workshop Room
This workshop consciously uses the identity-first terminology “disabled people” in order to challenge the medical model that views disability as an individual trait. Instead, we suggest that our society actively disabled specific bodies/minds through exclusionary policies, infrastructure, and attitudes.
Conversations around sex work and disability usually centre on the ways sex workers support disabled clients, but as Scarlet Alliance’s submission to the Disability Royal Commission shows, a significant percentage of sex workers are disabled ourselves.
In this roundtable disabled sex workers will discuss their reasons for choosing sex work, the barriers they face, and what the sex workers’ rights movement can do to support disabled sex workers.
Grief Work
Location: Balcony
How do we hold grief in community? What are memorial practices we want to bring into our movement spaces? Come together to begin to craft a memorial quilt that can be part of an ongoing project of honouring our sweet comrades who are not with us. A space for grieving and remembering and holding those no longer with us.
Refuting the NGO Industrial Complex and Maintaining Community Values - or - The Funding Conundrum, Maintaining Boundaries While Hustling the State
Location: Main Space
Sex worker cultures are deeply rooted in transgressing dominant gender, social, sexual, and moral norms. Autonomous activists will explore the radical values that historically underpin sex worker spaces, and question to what extent accepting (State/philanthropic) funding impacts sex worker organisations’ abilities to genuinely reflect and uphold these values.
Through a lens of neoliberal critique, panelists will define the NGO industrial complex and discuss the multitude of ways that sex worker organisations are at risk of ceding – whether deliberately or unwittingly- and the resultant impacts on our movement. Panelists will reflect on the benefits, ethics, and challenges of accepting State funding, and question whether radical approaches to community mobilisation can meaningfully exist within a State funded context. A facilitated discussion and participatory activities will invite and challenge participants to: explore how “professionalisation” impacts peer spaces; consider whether our organizations are complicit in maintaining the NGO industrial complex; and identify strategies to pro-actively challenge and/or negate this positioning
Whore of the Year Awards and Party
Thursday 9 November, 7pm to midnight. Located at the Bearded Tit in Redfern.
Join us for a party, performances, and the WOTY awards.
Daily Agenda for Friday
10-11am
Peer supervisors network
Please note this is being held at the Scarlet Alliance office in Newtown.
11-12pm
Public rally
Sex workers and allies, being held at the Hub in Newtown.
12:30-1pm
National Training Program Graduation
1-2pm
Lunch
2-3pm
Workshops:
1. Sex worker research update
2. Rank and File Union Organising: Reigniting the Question
3-5pm
Annual General Meeting with afternoon tea
5-5:30pm
National Forum wrap-up and closing remarks
Peer supervisors network
Location: Scarlet Alliance office
This is a session for people who are responsible for managing and supervising sex worker peers. As more sex worker organisations become autonomous, there is more responsibility on sex workers in managing and supervising roles. How do you balance KPI’s and external expectations with being a supportive and fair supervisor and creating a positive team culture?
Mainstream management principles and strategies dont always fit neatly with the culture of a sex worker peer organisation and it can be difficult to know where to get support and guidance.
This session is for those who want to connect with others in similar roles to discuss these issues, share ideas, and investigate opportunities to support each other in an ongoing way.
Public Rally: End Discrimination Now!
Location: Newtown Hub, Roberta Perkins Memorial Chair
You are invited to join the sex worker community calling for an end to discrimination. Wear red, bring friends, celebrate & cheer this years’ sex worker leaders at this public rally.
Speakers include Scarlet Alliance, SWOP NSW, the Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group.
Sex Workers and Union Organising: Reigniting the Question
Location: Main Space
Join an open discussion about what rank and file union activity for sex workers could look like.
Let’s discuss how it relates to the current landscape of sex work activism and the unique challenges that come with workplace organising for sex workers, as well as what we can learn from attempts made in the past to unionise.
Sex Worker Research Update
Location: Workshop Room
A session for sex work researchers and sex workers who are research interested.
Come and hear from peers conducting their own sex work research, as well as information on the commencement of the Scarlet Alliance Guidelines on Best Practice Sex Worker Research project.