Whoretonomy is power over our own labour. It is the unapologetic declaration that bodily autonomy includes the right to choose, refuse, and define sexual labour. As sex workers, our right to bodily autonomy does not disappear the moment we’ve been paid. The stigma we face, and the moral panic that surrounds our work, does not invalidate our rights or justify state intervention, criminalisation, or paternalistic “rescue.”

Scarlet Alliance produced a suite of printed and digital resources specifically for Women Deliver 2026 to introduce conference delegates to sex worker rights and advocacy priorities. This messaging was delivered through our flagship resource, Whoretonomy, alongside seven pamphlet-style policy briefings providing accessible, policy-focused introductions to key advocacy areas. Printed copies were distributed throughout the conference and the resources are also published here on our website, ensuring they remain accessible to a broader audience and continue supporting advocacy efforts beyond Women Deliver 2026.

Whoretonomy is also the right to care for our own sexual health without surveillance, coercion, or government oversight masquerading as protection. It is a refusal of the politics of pity and the narratives that frame us as victims in need of rescuing, rather than as workers demanding rights, safety, and respect. Whoretonomy is a demand for the recognition that sex workers are the experts in our own lives, and for the acknowledgment that sex work is work.

A portmanteau of the words ‘whore’ and ‘autonomy’, Whoretonomy was produced as a glossy, ‘coffee table’ style magazine, situating the global sex worker rights movement within the context of gender and reproductive justice in an accessible and playful format. Structured around three chapters, Freedom, Justice and Knowledge, Whoretonomy explores the values and principles that underpin sex worker rights, leadership and self-determination. Topics include criminalisation and barriers to bodily autonomy, stigma and discrimination, migration and border policing, intersectionality, consent, peer education and workplace health and safety, and provide an introduction to Scarlet Alliance’s advocacy as well as contributions from sex workers in Australia and internationally.

For too long, “whore” was used to shame, silence, and control us and anyone else who dared to transgress sexual and social norms. When we use the word “Whoretonomy” we are flipping that script, taking a word steeped in stigma and turning it into a powerful collective identity. When we reclaim the word “whore”, we refuse respectability politics. Whoretonomy tells people that we make the decision about how our labour, our bodies, and our choices are ours to name. And when we do so, we do it loudly and unapologetically.

Pamphlet-style policy briefings:

• Safety without stigma: Sex workers are partners in ending gender based violence – Outlines barriers faced by sex workers accessing mainstream family, domestic and sexual violence services
  (FDSV), the role of sex worker peer organisations in providing crisis support, and the need for sustainable resourcing for partnerships and projects.
• By sex workers, for sex workers: Sex workers want peer education now – Outlines the evidence base supporting peer education as a driver of effective public health responses, and the importance of flexible, sustainable funding.
• Healthcare without barriers: Sex workers want sexual and reproductive healthcare without barriers now – Highlights the importance of high-quality and stigma-free sexual and reproductive healthcare, and explains sex workers’ access barriers.
• Nothing about us without us: Sex workers want rights now – Explains the increasing global anti-rights narratives on sex worker rights, highlighting anti-rights actors’ infiltration
  into public discourse on gender based violence, consent and pornography.
• Sex work is work: Sex workers want decriminalisation now – Introduces Scarlet Alliance’s key advocacy goal of sex work decriminalisation in every state and territory of
  Australia, and outlines the evidence supporting decriminalisation.
• Rights not rescue: Asian migrant sex workers want justice now – Explains how Australian Border Force activities such as Operation Inglenook and Operation Greentale fail to
  prevent workplace exploitation, and target Asian migrant sex workers for surveillance, visa cancellations, detention and deportation.
• Peer-led. Proven. Powerful – Promoting sex worker leadership in health and Scarlet Alliance’s peer education resources.