When most people hear about the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (IDEVASW), they probably imagine TV scenes of dead escorts in dark alleys, murdered by a shadowy john or pimp. And to be sure, many sex workers experience violence on the job, disproportionately street-based workers, trans sex workers, migrant sex workers, and sex workers of color. As in any industry, workers who are socially marginalized will confront harsher working conditions. The first IDEVASW was held in 2003 to honor the victims of the Green River Killer, an Evangelical serial killer who both hired and hated the sex workers he murdered. Now, more than twenty years on, the problem is as urgent as ever with many sex workers still fearing for their safety on the job. But these extreme examples offer an incomplete account of the many types of harm the community experiences. Both in-person and online sex workers face violence not just from clients, but also from discriminatory laws, predatory technology, police, stigma, and organized abandonment.

In 2018, the House and Senate passed the US bill Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA-FOSTA) under the guise of policing sex traffickers. In practice, the bill not only failed to curtail trafficking, it also deprived sex workers of vital safety measures. Many full service sex workers used online sites like Backpage to advertise and to screen clients before meeting them. These sites were shut down under SESTA-FOSTA, leaving workers far more susceptible to meeting dangerous men. Sex workers themselves have had to create alternatives that escape the repressive measures of SESTA-FOSTA while still allowing them to create safer conditions by collectively screening clients. 

SESTA-FOSTA creates huge barriers to online content creators promoting their work, which is, for many, their main livelihood. For example, a sex worker who uses Instagram to promote her OnlyFans page or her escorting business might get kicked off the platform for typing the word “sex”—this could be the difference between making rent, affording groceries one week, getting your kid new school shoes, or not. Taking away economic opportunities is a form of violence—and one many people outside of sex work can surely relate to.

The increased criminalization of sex work enables police and prisons to repress sex workers with even more violence and impunity.  Whether through countless cases of police raping and assaulting sex workers or failing to respond when sex workers are assaulted by others, police do the opposite of keeping people safe. And when sex workers are arrested and incarcerated, they suffer what all incarcerated people do: state-sanctioned disappearance from their communities, increased risk of sexual and other physical violence, and economic disenfranchisement. The results of police action are, far too often, fatal. In 2017, for example, police raided a massage parlor in New York City; in an attempt to flee, immigrant sex worker Yang Song fell to her death from a four-story window. Song’s family revealed that she had already been previously assaulted and threatened by an undercover police officer where she worked. 

Deportations are another form of violence that disproportionately fall on sex workers, as members of the informal economy. The Trump administration’s method of deportations specifically terrorizes those targeted and further deprives them of access to employment as well as social and governmental resources. In particular, there has been in an increase in ICE raids on massage parlors where migrant women are suspected of sex work. Unfortunately, these workers are often abandoned by the mainstream immigrant rights movement. “​[T]he broader immigrant rights movement calibrates its messaging to appeal to moderate respectability,” write migrant sex work advocates Kate Zen and Channelle Gallant, “complying with lines drawn between the ‘deserving’ and the disposable. When ICE targets sex workers, many remain silent.” 

Sex work is also the latest sector of the economy endangered by AI. In her recent documentary “Clankers,” filmmaker Naomi Pallas reveals how businessmen are creating deepfake likenesses of real porn performers, violating their consent and cutting them out of the profits derived from their labor. AI creates an unpaid class of virtual workers with no ability to give consent or draw boundaries, leaving the real workers unemployed and unpaid.

Then there is the violence of stigma. The insults, jokes, crude remarks, and general disdain for sex workers is emotionally painful and also materially harmful. Stigma leads to discrimination in employment, housing, medical care, and more. 

So many of these dangers are not intrinsic to sex work itself; they are often the products of conservative social forces that claim to protect us from sex work. And yet, women and trans people face the possibility of sexual violence in almost every profession where we might seek employment. We also face lower wages. I have a Ph.D., and I turned to high-income sex work after years of dealing with the precarity and low pay of academic jobs. As for trafficking, this is a distinct phenomenon from sex work, one that plagues multiple industries and that thrives in a culture of stigma and borders, full of marginalized and undocumented workers who the system intentionally leaves vulnerable.

Thankfully, sex workers are the most badass and resilient people I have ever known. Groups like SWOP Behind Bars, Red Canary Song, and Support Ho(s)e are on the frontlines, creating infrastructures of community care and collective resistance. In my own town, I’m part of the local sex worker organizing group where we do skillshares on everything from using the sex worker-only client screening website to nailing a lap dance. While the civilian world makes jokes and ignores the unchecked violence against our communities, we continue to take care of each other. 

But we can do it better if we’re not alone. On this year’s International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, you can commit to being a part of the struggle to end violence against our community. The next time you hear a joke at our expense, explain how we’re at the forefront of the fight for everyone’s freedom. Participate in anti-ICE demonstrations without ignoring migrant sex workers. Support the work being done by groups fighting to decriminalize sex work. Stop using AI! And, of course, it never hurts to send a tip to your favorite cam girl, stripper, or escort. We appreciate it.