CYBERSPACE—On the heels of International Sex Workers’ Rights Day on March 4, a conference next month aims to further the mission of decriminalizing sex work, providing mutual aid to sex work communities, and ending the stigma around the sex industry.
Informal, Criminalized, Precarious: Sex Workers Organizing Against Barriers is a webinar series that will run daily between April 3 and April 17. Described by organizer and veteran adult performer Lorelei Lee as “organized by and for sex workers,” the conference's daily panels will cover topics including "Sex Work as Work and Sex Work as Anti-Work," "Sexual Gentrification: An Internet Sex Workers Built" and "Sex Work and Migration."
“Topics reflect both conversations that sex workers are already having and conversations that sex workers feel are urgently needed,” Lee said.
The conference will offer both public-facing events to educate laypeople and closed community events to facilitate knowledge-sharing, collaboration and organizing among sex workers. “While this project started as a few disparate events, I wanted to develop it into a conference in collaboration with other organizers because I've seen from past events not only how necessary it is to honor and platform sex worker knowledge, but also how the public urgently seeks this information,” Lee explained.
“While the loudest voices have strong opinions about sex work and policy, it's my experience that many civilians are just confused by arguments over questions of criminalization and worker delegitimization and stigma,” she continued. “Many civilians want to support workers but don't know how. I hope this collection of events will be a space where both sex workers and civilians can gain access to information.”
Public-facing events will provide laypeople with sex worker experiences, data and perspectives. Attendees will learn how sex workers’ struggles for labor and human rights intersect with all struggles for social justice. Additionally, the conference seeks to illuminate how the criminalization and stigmatization sex workers and their clients face worldwide make working in the trade far less safe, and organizing far more difficult—existing as they do under constant surveillance by police, clients, corporations and anti-sex-worker organiztions.
Panels will cover topics like how internet services, platforms and economies exclude sex workers through discriminatory Terms of Use, whorephobic community standards, algorithmic profiling, and laws such as FOSTA/SESTA. Sex workers are also excluded from tech ethics and academia; panelists will discuss how to get regulators, ethicists, policy-makers and technologists to listen to sex workers about ideal community standards, technologies of violence, data privacy and online safety. Laypeople will learn about the consequences the aforementioned exclusionary practices carry for sex workers and for the community at large. Experts will offer advice on how sex workers can organize, build community, and find and offer social support. Panels will also cover the dangers of sex work stigma and criminalization such as stalking, doxxing and the threat of deportation.
Model, performer and activist Daisy Ducati, who is slated as one of the speakers, commented, “The sex industry has always been at the forefront of changing technology and in this era of online culture, we remain pioneers.”
Added Dr. Zahra Stardust, a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society who will be moderating the panel "Sex Worker Activism: Barriers, Exclusion and Organizing" on Wednesday, April 7, "Sex workers have unique experiences that shape our world view and our understanding and analysis of tech, power, work and the state. And yet sex workers often face institutional barriers to participating in tertiary education, from discriminatory policies and stigmatizing syllabi to risks of sexual harassment, deportation and criminalization. We wanted to create a space where sex workers were recognized as experts who should be driving decisions on tech policy and leading international discussions on safety and ethics."
Other featured speakers and facilitators will include Lee, Sinnamon Love, Yin Q., Chibundo Egwuatu, Gabriella Garcia, Danielle Blunt, Melissa Gira Grant, Milcah, Maitresse Madeline and femi babylon.
Sex worker rights organization Hacking//Hustling and various organizations at Cornell Law are co-sponsoring. Lee said co-sponsors will provide honoraria to organizers who speak at the conference.
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