Bad Laws for Sex Workers

Registration creates permanent records linking sex workers’ personal information and legal identities to sex work. 

Overview 

Registration laws for individual sex workers require us to provide personal information and legal identities to government authorities, creating permanent records that link us to sex work. These registration requirements often come with various restrictions, such as limitations on where, when, and how sex workers can operate, which can severely impact our autonomy and safety.

Why is this bad for sex workers?

• Stigma and Discrimination
  Registration creates a permanent record linking sex workers’ personal information and legal identities to sex work. This can lead to social exclusion and systemic discrimination in areas such as employment and housing.
• Privacy and Confidentiality
  Mandatory registration compromises sex workers’ right to privacy and confidentiality by requiring us to disclose sensitive personal information to government authorities. This can result in breaches of confidentiality, potential exposure to harassment or violence, and a loss of control over our personal data.
• Criminalisation
  Registration and associated restrictions increases the criminalisation and vulnerability of sex workers by providing law enforcement with a database of sex workers’ identities. This can lead to targeted surveillance, harassment, and prosecution, undermining sex workers’ safety, autonomy, and human rights.
• Barriers to Access
  Registration requirements and restrictions create barriers to accessing essential services, including healthcare, legal assistance, and social support. Fear of being identified and stigmatised deters sex workers from seeking help when needed, exacerbating health disparities and social inequalities.
• Limitation of Autonomy
  Imposing restrictions on where, when, and how sex workers can operate infringes upon our autonomy, freedom of movement, and right to work. These limitations force sex workers into riskier working conditions, reducing our ability to negotiate safer-sex practices, and undermines our economic independence.

What’s the real life impact?

Forcing sex workers to register with government agencies or police poses a significant threat to our privacy, safety, and overall well-being. This coercive requirement places sex workers in a challenging dilemma: we must choose between non-compliance to protect our privacy or register and risk facing lifelong stigma and systemic discrimination. Opting not to register means that we are forced to work illegally, creating barriers to safety and harm reduction strategies.

Licensing and local planning zoning laws force sex work into industrial areas or ‘18+ precinct areas’, and separation distance requirements deprioritise our safety.

Overview

As part of licensing frameworks and even in decriminalised jurisdictions, zoning rules often force sex work to be conducted in specific designated areas, such as industrial zones or ’18+ precinct areas,’ or away from schools or churches. These restrictive zoning and distancing requirements isolate sex workers and sex industry workplaces from mainstream communities and essential services, creating barriers to safety.

Why is it bad for sex workers?

• Social and Economic Marginalisation
  Isolating sex workers and sex industry workplaces to designated areas, or away from town centres, perpetuates our social and economic marginalisation. It limits our access to mainstream employment opportunities, housing, and other essential services, reinforcing stigma and exclusion from the broader community.
• Barriers to Safety
  Concentrating sex work in isolated areas can make sex workers more vulnerable to violence. The lack of lighting, visibility, safe transport options and isolation from the general public in these secluded locations can create environments where perpetrators can operate with impunity, posing significant risks to our safety and well-being.
• Limited Access to Health and Support Services
  Zoning and distancing rules that isolate sex workers and sex industry workplaces restrict our access to essential health and support services, including healthcare, legal assistance, and social support. This contributes to health disparities, hinders the identification and reporting of violence, and limits opportunities for harm reduction.
• Stigma and Discrimination
  Separating sex work from city centres and isolating us from the mainstream community reinforces stigma and discrimination. It perpetuates negative stereotypes, prejudices, and misconceptions about sex work, which leads to social exclusion, discrimination, and targeted harassment.

What’s the real life impact?

Sex workers deliberately choose locations based on safety, access to essential services and facilities including public transport, access to clients, visibility, discretion and lighting. Being forced away from city centres and built up areas is a threat to our safety. 

Laws that restrict independent sex workers from working together and communicating with each other. 

Overview

Some jurisdictions impose laws that restrict independent sex workers from working together or communicating with each other, including things like texting another sex worker with a safety ‘check-in’. These restrictive laws undermine the autonomy, safety, and well-being of independent sex workers by limiting our ability to collaborate, share information, split costs and support each other, thereby isolating us and posing a serious risk to our safety.

Why is it bad for sex workers?

• Isolation
  Restricting independent sex workers from working together or communicating with each other isolates us from peers and support networks. This isolation impacts our safety and well-being, as we are less able to share information, resources, and safety strategies with each other.
• Hindrance to Collective Advocacy and Support
  Prohibiting independent sex workers from collaborating and communicating with each other hinders our ability to engage in collective advocacy, peer support, sharing overheads and mutual aid.
• Stigma and Discrimination
  Laws that target and restrict independent sex workers contribute to the stigma and discrimination we face. By treating us as a special category of workers subject to exceptional sex work only regulations and limitations, these laws perpetuate the myth that we are not worthy of universal protections and pose a danger to society. 
• Barriers to Health and Safety
  Supporting each, working together and sharing information are everyday sex worker health and safety strategies. Laws that penalise this networking force sex workers to choose between working safely or complying with bad laws.

What’s the real life impact?

Forcing sex workers to choose between working alone or working illegally leads to police entrapment, harassment and arrest. Sex workers who work together report greater flexibility, improved health and safety, reduced overheads and a greater sense of security.

Laws that ‘control’ street-based sex workers are ineffective and create further risks. 

Overview

Some jurisdictions criminalise street-based sex work or restrict where it can take place, under the guise of ‘controlling’ or ‘managing’ public spaces. These laws subject street-based sex workers to increased surveillance, harassment and arrest. Criminalising street-based sex work is not only ineffective but also exacerbates risks and harms faced by sex workers, including violence and social exclusion.

Why is it bad for sex workers?

• • Barriers to Safety
    Criminalising street-based sex work, including restricting where and when it can occur, pushes our work underground, creating geographical isolation and increasing vulnerability to violence. The fear of arrest and prosecution forces street-based workers to work in isolated and higher-risk locations. This makes it more challenging to negotiate safer working conditions and access support services.
  • Stigma and Discrimination
    Laws that criminalise street-based sex work target the members of our community working in public spaces. As a result, street-based sex workers are more likely to have criminal records, be incarcerated, experience social exclusion and discrimination, and be harassed by both law enforcement and the broader community.

• The Rescue Industry

Laws that criminalise street-based sex work justify ill-concieved ‘saviour’ or exit-programs by non-sex workers who want to ‘make a difference’. These programs do not reflect sex workers’ experiences and often amplify anti-sex work rhetoric. The agency of street-based sex workers is undermined and sex worker voices are silenced when the rescue industry is given a platform.

• Ineffectiveness of ‘Control’ and ‘Management’ Approaches
  Laws that criminalise street-based sex work under the pretext of ‘controlling’ or ‘managing’ public spaces are fundamentally ineffective. Instead of reducing harm, these punitive approaches negatively impact street-based sex workers, who are also members of our communities.

What’s the real life impact?

When sex work is criminalised, avoiding arrest is prioritised. Police enforcement disrupts peer networks, displaces sex workers from usual places of work, makes it difficult for workers and outreach services to maintain contact and hinders our ability to look out for each other.

Specific laws, policies or processes that target Asian migrant sex workers at the border and in their workplaces. 

Overview

Anti-trafficking and modern slavery laws, policies and processes disproportionately target Asian migrant sex workers and other sex workers of colour, particularly those on temporary visas. These approaches deny migrant sex workers access to essential rights, protections, and support services. They reinforce the racist assumption that Asian migrant sex workers lack agency and are inherently more vulnerable to trafficking and modern slavery than other workers. 

Why is it bad for sex workers?

• • Barriers to Safety
    The fear of arrest and deportation impacts migrant sex workers’ ability to report crimes and opportunities to access justice. 

• The Rescue Industry

The rescue industry conflates sex work with trafficking. ‘Rescue advocates’ speak out against sex work, believing they are ‘improving’ our lives, but instead silence Asian migrant sex worker voices’ lived experience. Resources that should go towards Asian migrant sex worker organising are instead invested into the rescue industry.

• Stigma and Discrimination
  Anti-trafficking and modern slavery laws are informed by a ‘white saviour’ mentality and the myth that Asian migrant women are all submissive, exploited and forced into sex work. This viewpoint does not allow for a nuanced understanding of our lives. It erases diversity and normalises racist and gendered stigma and discrimination.
• Denial of Labour Rights and Protections
  Anti-trafficking and modern slavery laws predominantly treat Asian migrant sex workers as victims, denying access to labour rights and protections.
• Ineffectiveness in Combating Human Trafficking
  Policies that prevent the safe migration of sex workers from Asia and the Pacific into Australia, under the pretext of combating human trafficking, are fundamentally ineffective, racist, sexist and counterproductive. Instead of protecting migrant sex workers, these policies create harm.

What’s the real life impact?

Anti-trafficking and modern slavery laws have resulted in Border Force turn-backs of Asian migrant sex workers coming into Australia, and raids on our workplaces. The laws treat Asian migrant sex workers differently to other workers and migrants, denying us access to the full range of rights and protections available to local sex workers. These laws platform ‘victim’ and ‘rescue’ narratives and oppress Asian migrant sex workers. 

These laws perpetuate stigma and are not based on current science or evidence. They incorrectly assume sex workers will not engage in safer sex practices or voluntary testing unless forced to do so by law. 

Overview

Some jurisdictions impose mandatory testing and condom use laws, often as part of a ‘licensing’ system. These also often include criminalisation of sex workers with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and blood-borne viruses (BBVs) under the guise of public health and safety. These punitive laws perpetuate stigma, discrimination, and human rights violations against sex workers, while being based on incorrect assumptions about our safer sex practices. 

Mandatory testing, mandatory condom use and criminalisation of STIs and BBVs have proven to be ineffective in promoting public health and undermine efforts to promote safe and consensual sexual practices, access to healthcare, and respect for sex workers’ rights, dignity, and autonomy.

Why is it bad for sex workers?

• Stigma and Discrimination
  Mandatory testing, condom use and criminalisation of STIs and BBVs incorrectly perpetuate the stereotype of sex workers as ‘vectors of disease’. These punitive laws reinforce negative prejudices, leading to social exclusion, discrimination, and harassment, both by healthcare providers and the broader community. These laws assume that sex workers cannot make decisions about our own sexual health and will not implement safer-sex strategies or engage with testing unless forced to do so. 
• Violation of Privacy and Confidentiality
  Mandatory testing laws infringe upon the privacy and confidentiality of sex workers’ health information. The forced disclosure of STI and BBV status without consent can result in breaches of confidentiality, potential exposure to stigma and discrimination, and a loss of trust in healthcare services and providers.
• Barriers to Accessing Healthcare and Support Services
  Mandatory testing and criminalisation of STIs and BBVs create barriers to accessing essential healthcare and support services for sex workers. The fear of criminalisation and stigma associated with mandatory testing laws deter sex workers from seeking timely and appropriate medical care, including voluntary testing, treatment, and prevention services.
• Undermining Safe and Consensual Sexual Practices
  Mandatory testing and condom use undermine efforts to promote safe and consensual sexual practices among sex workers. These punitive laws make the assumption that sex workers aren’t experts in their own health and practice. 
• Ineffectiveness in Promoting Public Health
  Mandatory testing and criminalisation of STIs and BBVs are ineffective and counterproductive in promoting public health and preventing the spread of infections. Instead of promoting voluntary testing, treatment, and prevention services, these punitive laws exacerbate the barriers and risks associated with STI and BBV transmission.

What’s the real life impact?

The imposition of mandatory testing, mandatory condom use and criminalisation of STIs and BBVs creates barriers to access, perpetuates stigma, and erodes trust in healthcare services. These punitive laws not only fail to promote public health but also imply that sex workers do not care about our health and safety, and that we are vectors of disease in the community.

Sex workers are experts in our own health, safety, and safer-sex harm reduction strategies. Voluntary safer sex practices and sexual health screening are best practices. They respect and value sex workers’ expertise and agency, and support us to make informed decisions about our health.