Bodily Autonomy
Self Ownership, Self Determination, Self Empowerment.
Sex Work & Sex Workers
Those engaged in sex work face discrimination, stigma, and violence on multiple fronts. Sex workers are entitled to a life free of violence, one in which where their occupations do not cost them their health, joy, and privacy. Criminalization only perpetuates this violence, and decriminalization is we must fight for. The voices of sex workers need to be centered. Below you will find videos, essays, and resources on this issue. Refer to the employment section of our sexual wellness collection for more information.
Articles & Essays
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Sex Worker Rights are Human Rights
“We have chosen to advocate for the decriminalization of all aspects of consensual adult sex - sex work that does not involve coercion, exploitation or abuse. This is based on evidence and the real-life experience of sex workers themselves that criminalization makes them less safe.” – Amnesty International
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Decriminalizing Sex Work & Harm Reduction
“Harm reduction refers to a set of human rights and public health-based practices and principles aimed at reducing negative outcomes associated with certain activities, some of which are criminalized—such as sex work and injection drug use.” Decriminalizing sex work will allow sex workers to have better access to resources to keep them safe from STIs/STDs, violence, and “prioritizes the safety, rights and dignity of individuals engaging in the activity.”
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10 Reasons to Decriminalize Sex Work
This document from Open Society Foundations offers 10 reasons for why the decriminalization of sex work is so vital. “Decriminalization goes hand-in-hand with recognizing sex work as work and protecting the rights of sex workers through labor law, and workplace health and safety regulations. When sex work is decriminalized, sex workers can press for safer working conditions and use the justice system to seek redress for discrimination and abuse.”
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Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers
“This article analyzes how the U.S. prison and foster care systems work together to punish black mothers in the service of preserving race, gender, and class inequality in a neoliberal age. The intersection of these systems is only one example of many forms of over policing that overlap and converge in the lives of poor women of color.”
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Reproductive Justice Disrupted: Mass Incarceration as a Driver of Reproductive Oppression
“Mass incarceration directly undermines the core values of reproductive justice and how this affects incarcerated and non-incarcerated women.”
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Abolition is a Feminist Project
“The founders of INCITE propose that feminists concerned with abolition seek a society based on three principles: freedom, accountability, and reciprocity. Most feminist researchers and advocates embrace these principles, cultivating an ethic of care that extends beyond family and kin o include the environment, local communities, economic and social relations.”
Red Canary Song
A grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and allies, organizing transnationally.
Sex Workers Outreach Project
A national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people involved in sex work and their communities, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy.
Desiree Alliance
A national coalition of current and former sex workers working together with supporting networks for an improved understanding of sexual policies and the human, social and political impacts of criminalization surrounding sex work.
“From forced sterilization to family separation, the carceral state itself is an act of reproductive violence.”
The movement must center the lives of the most marginalized women whose bodies continued to be controlled and stolen by the state. Reproductive freedom will never be achieved without the freedom of our sisters behind bars, our sisters without homes, our baby sisters in the foster care and juvenile justice system, and all of our Black and brown sisters whose claims to their bodies have been violently taken from them.
Over 70%
of all women in substance abuse treatment have been victims of violence at some point at their lives (ACLU).
79%
of women in federal and state prisons reported physical abuse and over 60% reported past sexual abuse (ACLU).
23 states
have corrections departments that allow restraints to be used on women during labor (Amnesty International).
In 2004
allegations of staff sexual misconduct were made in all but one state prison in the U.S. and in 41% of local and private jails and prisons (ACLU).