We have organised our growing library of publications and tools to better serve the sex worker-led movement, funders, and allies. We have highlighted key topics that intersect with our work including participatory grantmaking, donor finders, and other work contributed from regional networks, sex worker funders, and other organisations that support sex worker rights.
In this piece, Red Schulte and contributors from the Support Ho(s)e collective share their personal experiences with the best and worst funders. There are so few funders in the space that when mistakes are made there is a lack of accountability for funders that leads to compounding violence for organizers.
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“Child sexual exploitation is a serious problem that Congress should address. The EARN IT Act is not a solution to this problem…The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies
Act of 2020 (EARN IT Act) amends an existing federal law to force online
platforms into changing how they moderate content online by scanning
and censoring more of their users? communications.”
“Hacking//Hustling used a participatory action research model to gather quantitative and qualitative data regarding the impact of the removal of Backpage and the passage of FOSTA-SESTA on two groups of sex workers: those who work online, and primarily street-based sex workers who have limited access to technology. The results of our online survey (98 participants) and street-based survey (38 participants) indicate that the removal of Backpage and FOSTA-SESTA have had detrimental effects on online workers? financial stability, safety, access to community, and health outcomes.” Advised by Naomi Lauren at WCIIA (our Grantee-Partner).
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Third Wave Fund’s Sex Worker Giving Ciricle, NCRP’s 2021 winner of the “Smashing Silos” Impact Award, shares four key lessons funders can use as they support sex worker-led organizations: provide unrestricted, multi-year grants, center trauma-informed, empathetic grantmaking, build multilingual grantmaking structures and emphasize language justice, and stop demanding fiscal sponsors, an imposition for some of the most effective groups. They write, “Directly funding the well-being, bodily autonomy and organizing of sex workers most impacted by oppression is in itself a radical vision and our biggest impact.”
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Fact sheet developed by Monique Tula and Charles Hawthorne from the Harm Reduction Coalition and Cris Sardina from the Desiree Alliance.
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“This research aims to gain a better understanding of the ways that platforms’ responses to Section 230 2 carve-outs 3 impact
content moderation, and threaten free speech and human rights for those who trade sex and/or work in movement spaces. In this sex worker-led study, Hacking//Hustling used a participatory action research model to gather quantitative and qualitative data to study the impact of content moderation on sex workers and AOP (n=262) after the uprisings against state-sanctioned police violence and police murder of Black people. The results of our survey indicate that sex workers and AOP have noticed significant changes in content moderation tactics aiding in the disruption of movement work, the flow of capital, and further chilling speech.”
“This document was created to contribute to sex worker organizations’ reflections about, and their capacity to evaluate and use, the language of harm reduction as it relates to sex work, particularly when interfacing with policy makers, funders, media, researchers and other actors. Currently, harm reduction language is used more and more frequently by people outside of criminalized and affected communities (e.g. politicians, lawyers/judges, academics, service providers, prohibitionists, etc.). As a result, narrow and problematic representations of harm reduction are getting more air time and visibility.” Co- authored by Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Worker Support Network.
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Sex Worker Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOP LA) is an all-volunteer, sex worker-led organization doing transformative mutual aid work. When they point out “the precious time that could be spent providing direct services to workers is wasted on another rejected application that won’t address the growing gap in our financial resources to support our community,” the SWOP LA team again highlights that unrestricted multi-year grants are essential to their work’s survival.
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The Kua ‘ana Project is at the intersection of public health, decriminalization, Indigenous rights, and the rights of trans and gender expansive people as they serve the Pasifika trans women and sex workers in Honolulu. Maddalyn Sesepasara, who leads the project, explains that steady allyship means that organizations like hers have enough funding to support both direct service and advocacy efforts, which are equally important.
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