If you’ve spent any time in sex positive circles, you’ve probably heard the phrase “sex work is work.” It means that sex work – which includes performing in porn or on adult livestream sites, stripping/dancing, paid phone or text sex, and in-person sexual experiences – is legitimate labor. It means that society, the legal system, and financial institutions shouldn’t be allowed to harass and harm sex workers with impunity.

Don’t agree? Then you’re disregarding the lived experiences of sex workers themselves. Or you’re confusing “sex work” (which is performed by consenting adults) and “sex trafficking” (which is when someone is forced/coerced.) Honestly, you almost can’t be faulted for the mix up – anti-sex work propaganda intentionally blurs them together.

Sex work (in its many forms) is just like any other job. Some people love doing it, others just start sex work to pay the bills; some people make it a career, others do it for a summer and move onto something else. Sex work doesn’t devalue a person (or mean they’re willing to devalue themselves) because sex itself isn’t a depleting sum. Sex is an experience the same way that small talk is an experience. Nobody tells a restaurant hostess they’re diminishing their conversational value by chatting with paying customers.

But sex work is heavily stigmatized. Misogynists resent that people of marginalized genders are being compensated for sexual labor. They steal performers’ income by pirating/distributing paid content. Whorephobic randos and anti-sex work “activists” harass, threaten, and dox sex workers. Religious crusaders, SWERFs, and political opportunists preach that sex work is inherently exploitative (it’s not.) Anti-porn evangelist orgs like Exodus Cry and NCOSE have used exploitation narratives and public ignorance about sex trafficking to attack even currently legal forms of sex work.

Here in the US, SESTA/FOSTA (which claimed to be about ending online sex trafficking) expanded “existing federal criminal law to target online platforms where users discuss sex work and related topics” (aka the entire internet.) Platforms became liable for users’ content, and “responded by censoring completely lawful activity from their sites. Other sites hosting lawful activity have shut down entirely.”

“Policies that criminalize and stigmatize sex work and ban sex workers’ access to services disproportionately harm Black, Brown, and trans communities,” the ACLU points out.

“These laws did not do much to stop sex trafficking directly,” writes Jessica Stoya for Slate. (In fact, they made it significantly harder.) “But they did place vague and ill-defined new penalties on prostitution—and whatever could be constructed to be a part of it. This is what took down personal ads on Craigslist, and it had deep chilling effects elsewhere: Remember the day Instagram banned, among others, searches of #woman? That was a reaction to FOSTA-SESTA. The spaces where sex workers organized online—from bad-date lists that providers use to warn one another about dangerous clients to Instagram hashtags where we’d organized to fight the very law causing these problems—were decimated.”

What does that mean for online sex workers?

The obsessive social and political harassment of sex workers has resulted in a splintered, often unstable online sex industry. While there’s no shortage of sites for hosting or streaming adult content, these platforms are in constant flux. At any time, a site might change its policies (often to appease payment processors), become the target of legislators, or disappear altogether. It’s a constant hustle to find viable adult content platforms to make money, let alone all the other admin work that comes from self-employment.

Banks and digital payment platforms (like Paypal and Venmo) are openly antagonistic towards the adult industry. As LaLa B Holston-Zannell of the ACLU notes, these institutions “randomly and with little warning shut down the accounts of sex workers. This targeted freezing of accounts, without warning or due process, is extremely harmful to workers relying on that income, and ends up pushing sex work deeper into the shadows.” Being “in the shadows” means sex workers have a harder time seeking justice.

“Mastercard and Visa have a near monopoly on payment processing around the world. Payment processors are therefore able to regulate adult material at the very root—sex workers getting paid for their labor. As long as Mastercard and Visa take an anti-porn, anti-sex work stance, none of these sites are safe,” writes Kitty Stryker for Bitch Media.

But it’s not just adult content sites and financial institutions that abandon sex workers. Social media sites – which are integral to networking and marketing – are notoriously difficult to navigate as a sex worker. Salty has documented Instagram’s overzealous moderation (which disproportionately impacts fat people, trans people, and people of color.) TikTok’s filters are so touchy about adult content that users must use “seggs” and “shrek” instead of the word “sex” to avoid moderation. Twitter’s shadowbans limits an account’s reach, muffling certain voices on their platform – and it’s not hard to guess who they silence most often. Tumblr unceremoniously dumped adult content altogether.

Being abruptly and arbitrarily banned isn’t just a financial loss. It’s a dehumanizing cudgel that further isolates an already marginalized population. “I can’t reiterate enough how traumatizing it is to have your internet presence deleted on you,” Gwen Adora tweeted when Instagram deleted her 85,000-follower account. “Waking up, checking your phone, and everything being GONE. Your community and daily interactions taken right from you.”

That isn’t even going into how difficult it is to navigate constant risks and keep yourself safe on adult platforms. Or having to hide sex work from landlords, judgmental (or potentially abusive) family members, or employers. Or the millions of other major and minute concerns that online sex workers have.

How can you help sex workers?

Now, to be clear: sex workers don’t need saving. They have been fighting for themselves and for others for a long time. But there are things you can do to become a better ally.

1. Pay for your porn. While the proliferation of tube sites makes it seem like porn spontaneously appears for free, the reality is that porn is performed by real, working people. To ensure the porn you’re watching was created ethically and that the participants are being compensated for their work, buy your adult content directly from sex workers.

2. Buy other stuff from sex workers. Sex workers are entrepreneurs, and many of them have further diversified their income by having other businesses. Andre Shakti has assembled a non-exhaustive list here.

3. Get educated. A few book recs: We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, The Politics of Producing Pleasure.

4 Contact your legislators. What are your reps saying about sex work? Are they supporting harmful legislation? If you’re in the US, contacting your reps is literally as easy as typing a tweet. Ask your legislators where they stand on decriminalizing (which is very different from legalizing) full service sex work.

5. Stop the stigma. Sex workers aren’t less valuable, competent, etc, as people. Sex work isn’t inherently demeaning, exploitative, or the career choice of “damaged goods.” Every snide remark about “OnlyFans girls,” every chuckle at violence against sex workers in video games, every pronouncement that you would never do sex work or date a sex worker, is a coin in a religious zealot or politician’s purse. You’re spreading their lucrative hate for them.

6. Follow sex worker activists/advocates. A few Twitter recs: @uppitynegress, @sapiotextual, @Reese__P, @tinahornsass, @whoreganizer, @gwenisadorable, @SinnamonLove, @acvalens, @AmberlyPSO,

7. Support sex work organizations. Sex Workers Outreach Project (or “SWOP”) is a US-based social justice organization with numerous local chapters. Your local SWOP might be looking for donations, volunteers, etc – reach out! There’s also the BIPOC Adult Industry Collective, Red Canary Song, Hacking/Hustling, Heaux History, Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, and Scarlet Alliance.

Thank you so much to Spicy Accountants for sponsoring this post and allowing me to write about something I’m passionate about! Spicy Accountants offer numerous services to online sex workers including content migration, coaching, and the occasional informative livestream!