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Trans sex workers in the UK: security, services and safety
Abstract
Although policy, debate and academic discourse around sex work has become increasingly gender nuanced, with calls to ‘queer’ sex work over past 10 years or so, UK based trans sex workers remain largely invisible in this body of work. This chapter seeks to outline the extant knowledge on trans sex workers and sex work in the UK with a focus on security, services and safety. Starting with an academic overview, we explore the existing knowledge base specifically on the policing and security risks faced by trans sex workers; acknowledging the myriad and complex issues often faced by, or experienced by trans sex workers in the context of gender, sexualities and stigma. Following this, we reflect on the expert knowledge of practitioners offering front line services to trans sex workers, and consider the potential and varied service needs of trans people in the context of sex work. Finally we consider safety though an analysis of data from National Ugly Mugs - an organisation seeking to reduce and tackle violence against sex workers by providing a national reporting and alert system – and discuss reports of violence and criminality made by trans sex workers in. To conclude we make some recommendations about where future research might usefully enhance knowledge and practice around trans sex work in the UK.
... [39]). Academic researchers have also explored stigma as experienced by street-based sex workers [38], student populations [51], or sex workers with other various intersecting identities [37,74]. More recently, a long-term project has explored experiences of sex workers that work primarily online finding that they also experience detrimental impacts in their lives due to stigma [55]. ...
On the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (IDEVASW), sex worker rights advocates and support services commemorate lives lost due to violence. In this paper we describe and reflect on a Feminist Participatory Action Research project that supported the activities of IDEVASW over two years in North East England. Working alongside a charity that provides services to women who are sex workers or have experienced sexual exploitation, we co-organised the first activist march on the day. As researchers and service providers, we present detailed reflections on the use of digital technologies during the public activist march, a private service for commemoration, and the development of a semi-public archive to collect experiences of the day. We develop three implications for the design of digital technologies for activism and the commemoration of lost lives: as catalysts for reflection and opportunities to layer experience.
... Research is still building a picture of the nature and levels of crime experienced by male online sex workers (Ashford 2009;Scott et al. 2005) and the specific experiences of transgender sex workers (Laing, Campbell, Jones and Strohmayer 2018) who experience transphobic violence, as well as violence because of their sex work. Gaffney and Jamell (2010) found in a survey of 107 UK-based male and transgender sex workers, the majority of whom were CIS male (97 per cent) who contacted customers via online methods, that 25 per cent had ever experienced physical violence from a 'client' and 14 per cent in the last year, and that 20 per cent had ever been 'forced to have anal or oral sex without consent' by a client and 12 per cent had been during the last year. ...
It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the internet and digital technologies, including the development of new markets such as webcamming. This paper reports the most comprehensive findings on the internet‐based sex market in the UK demonstrating types of crimes experienced by internet‐based sex workers and the strategies of risk management that sex workers adopt, building on our article in the British Journal of Sociology in 2007. We present the concept of ‘blended safety repertoires’ to explain how sex workers, particularly independent escorts, are using a range of traditional techniques alongside digitally enabled strategies to keep themselves safe. We contribute a deeper understanding of why sex workers who work indoors rarely report crimes to the police, reflecting the dilemmas experienced. Our findings highlight how legal and policy changes which seek to ban online adult services advertising and sex work related content within online spaces would have direct impact on the safety strategies online sex workers employ and would further undermine their safety. These findings occur in a context where aspects of sex work are quasi‐criminalized through the brothel keeping legislation. We conclude that the legal and policy failure to recognize sex work as a form of employment, contributes to the stigmatization of sex work and prevents individuals working together. Current UK policy disallows a framework for employment laws and health and safety standards to regulate sex work, leaving sex workers in the shadow economy, their safety at risk in a quasi‐legal system. In light of the strong evidence that the internet makes sex work safer, we argue that decriminalisation as a rights based model of regulation is most appropriate.
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