Sex workers in the UK are fighting for change, and everyone should listen

As COVID-19 is becoming ever more apparent, so does the need to reform the law. 

Sex workers in the UK are fighting for change, and everyone should listen

Trigger warning: This article discusses mature themes suitable for 16+ readers


When Stacey Clare was in her 20s, she was a student at the Glasgow School of Arts. She worked part-time, minimum wage jobs, which soon enough started taking a toll on her studies. Fortunately for Clare, her luck was about to change. Alongside her studies and scanty jobs, Clare still found time to take pole dancing classes - and in the eyes of the professionals leading the class, she was good enough to become a professional. They told her to do a tryout at one of the local clubs. She hesitated, but after a long conversation with a friend who worked as a lap dancer, her doubts vanished into thin air. "She explained how the industry worked, and after a few auditions, I got accepted," she says. 

Fast forward a couple of years to the last few months of Clare's time at university, Clare says, "I decided to write my university thesis on the change of the licensing laws around strip clubs." She was referring to the Policing and Crime Act 2009, which reclassified lap dance clubs as 'sexual entertainment venues' and gave local authorities the power to regulate them and restrict licenses. As a result, many clubs shut down, forcing dancers to compete for the few jobs left. The remaining clubs were suddenly given a monopoly where they could increase the house fees and commissions. "I became an expert on licensing law," Clare says, adding that "suddenly I could see the many problems in how the clubs were run and the general discontent of the dancers." 

This was a turning point for Clare. Being already involved in the fight for social justice, it wasn't too much of a leap becoming an advocate for sex workers' rights - and what was initially a part-time job turned into a passionate career. In 2014 she co-founded the East London Strippers Collective, a group whose purpose is to promote the self-organisation of strippers and improve working conditions. "Stripping can be a good job, and the amount of money can change the direction of your life, but there are a lot of things about the business that are wrong," she says. 

Strippers and club owners have a long history of disputes over workers' rights. "Whenever I try to talk to an owner about dancers' employment rights, they lose their sh*t. They're attached to a business model that only suits them. A business model only they benefit from and always gives them money, whereas dancers are constantly in competition with each other," she explains. 

At the bottom of this strife are the self-employment contracts that are imposed on the dancers: "We're told that we're our employer and that we can work as often as we want to, but the business model says otherwise. We get pushed around, told when to work, all without getting paid a wage or a fee for turning up. We're sat there on the riverbank casting rods trying to capture big fish. One girl might land a high roller VIP that night and make ten grand, but all the other girls go home with nothing. And the club always takes its cut."

What was already a difficult situation became a dire one with the outbreak of Covid-19. Strip clubs in the UK have been closed since March with no official date for reopening, leaving hundreds of dancers unemployed. "This is another way of stigmatising the sex industry; we've been doing social distancing for years," says Clare, referring to the Policing and Crime Act 2009, which states that dancers shouldn't touch or be touched by clients maintaining at all times a one-metre distance. 

"Right now, sex workers aren't getting any support," she says. Given the self-employment contracts imposed on them by club owners, strippers were left out of the government furlough scheme. "If you're a responsible worker and if you've been doing everything by the book, you can get a self-employment grant. But what we've seen is that self-employed people are precarious –, and when you're precarious, your work history is precarious."

To make matters worse, the legislation around sex work, particularly on prostitution, is a grey area of the law. While the activity of selling sex is legal in the UK, everything that enables it - from sharing a flat to loitering and soliciting on the street - remains illegal. It is also a crime for sex workers to work together on the premises, which has serious safety implications. "These women have to make a choice between working legally but on their own and risking more dangerous situations, or working with others and facing possible arrest", explains Laura Watson, a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes, an organisation of sex workers who campaign for the decriminalisation, rights and safety of prostitutes throughout the UK. "We want to get rid of these laws and to stop any more laws from being added, so that sex workers can work together safely and not be arrested for essentially putting food on the table for themselves and their children."

Before Covid-19, there was a massive growth in prostitution, particularly in the north of England. Watson believes that behind this are the benefit cuts and sanctions. Missing a work-focused interview can lead to a stop in benefit payments for a period of up to 31 days. "No financial alternative means that the risks that you have to take to make money will be greater, and the conditions that you'll be working in will be worse as a result of not being able to say no to people if and when you want to," she says.

Street work is a violent reality. Sex workers are often subject to verbal abuse and threats, physical assaults, robbery, rape and sexual assault and abduction. This can be explained by the fact that street sex workers are far more visible and have no structure to help them feel safe. Heavy policing of street prostitution, directed either at workers or their clients, drives street activity into other places but does not prevent it. With the Sexual Offences Act 1985 criminalising kerb-crawling, clients urge sex workers to act quickly to avoid the police. They end up taking more risks by getting into client's cars or dark places where there are no CCTV cameras to work.

All those types of violence are few reported to the police. "On the one hand, the police are ready to criminalise sex workers and are quite active in doing so with raids and arrests. On the other, when sex workers ask for help after having faced violence or rape, they don't show any interest in doing anything about it," explains Watson, adding that "they threaten prostitutes with arrest, insinuate that violence and rape are part of the job and they should just go home".  

In the UK, anyone with a minor conviction, including a conviction for public solicitation, which is current for a sex worker, is barred from receiving full rape victim compensation. Decriminalising sex work would allow workers to report violence without fear of arrest, which is a big deterrent at the moment. "We've had women coming to us saying that their attackers have approached them with the promise to carry on with the assaults since they won't report them," says the spokeswoman. 

One of the key advantages of decriminalisation over any form of criminalisation is the shift in mindset from prosecution to protection. While sex workers struggle to have their rights acknowledged and upheld in the UK, most sex workers in New Zealand can work in a decriminalised framework. In 2003, The New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) fully decriminalised sex work. It became legal for any citizen over 18 years old to sell sexual services. Street-based sex work is legal, as is running a brothel. Sex workers' rights are guaranteed through employment and human rights legislation. This means that their occupational safety, health and wellbeing are explicitly recognised in the law. 

In 2008, New Zealand's Prostitution Law Review Committee released its report. It found that the number of sex workers had not increased and that most sex workers were better off following decriminalisation. "If your government can recognise sex workers as other citizens, then the social stigma will slowly start to decrease, and so will violence," says Pauline Blanchet, a French-born videographer currently working on a documentary that explores the fight to destigmatise and decriminalise the global sex work industry.

Head of her own production company, the 24-year-old hopes to change perceptions about the sex work industry: "Sex work is something people usually don't think about at all. There's too much stigma surrounding it. And the media doesn't show any true representation." In effect, the media is a key site where perceptions of the sex industry are established, especially since audiences have little to no direct interaction with it otherwise. "On the one hand, there's this misconception that sex workers are victims. On the other, there's the 'happy hooker' myth that women find liberation and empowerment in sex work," says the videographer. The videographer adds, "it has been a very long process trying to reach sex workers because they've been done wrong so many times that they're tired of talking to people".

Despite being one of the worst times for sex workers, Blanchet believes that there is a silver lining to the pandemic: "More organisations are opening up for sex workers, and people realise that this is a very serious issue. This profession has been around and will be around for a very long time. To not give them workers' rights is a breach of human rights."     

Between January and March last year, when the first big blows from the pandemic were felt, sex workers massively shifted to online platforms to make ends meet. "Suddenly, everyone was on OnlyFans, AdmireMe, Chaturbate -, all options of erotic chats or platforms of uploaded pictures and videos. This is super hard because you don't just suddenly have your audience and all the content necessary to get some income," says 27-year-old Sonia Nowak, who started working as a stripper in her hometown in Cracow, Poland, during her first year at university. After a study exchange for her master's degree in London, Nowak decided to stay in Britain, where she soon got involved with sex work activism. 

"In Poland, there is a big stigma around sex work. Stripping is more accepted, but full bodyworkers [prostitutes] are seriously marginalised by society", she says. "When I started, I didn't think about society's views on stripping. It was a problem to speak about my job openly, so I only told my closest friends and siblings about it. A year after I told my parents. My dad had his concerns – after all, this isn't a 100% safe work environment – but eventually, both my parents accepted it as my choice of making money."

In March last year, Nowak, with the aid of her union – United Strippers, a branch of United Voices of the World - took Chandler Bars (the proprietors of London venues Browns and Horns) to an employment tribunal. Nowak contested their claim that she was self-employed and therefore not entitled to rights such as sick pay or holiday pay. The judge ruled in her favour, setting a groundbreaking precedent for the idea that club owners are obliged to afford their dancers basic labour rights. Nowak's victory could change the sex industry for good. "[Stripping] isn't actually self-employment, as described in 99% of the cases. And most people aren't like me, with no responsibilities; they're women with children that need to make enough to take care of their family. They need protection, access to sick leave and minimum wage – and in this industry, you don't have it," she says. "What people need to understand is that sex work is like any other job. I know it's unusual because you're working with your body, but women who work with their mind work with their body too."

There is a renewed sense of hope amongst sex work activists. They now believe that there's potential for society to think differently about what it means to be a sex worker. "We are being forced to choose between putting our health at risk and having food on the table. No one should have to make that choice. However, now you can see similarities between sex workers and, say, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, key workers. They all have to put their health at risk," says Nowak.

In reality, as long as there are stigma and criminalisation, sex workers will remain vulnerable. No piece of legislation will single-handedly end male violence. If it were that easy, women would be safe in domestic partnerships and walking home alone at night. Achieving healthier and safer communities for sex workers requires a collective and inclusive response that needs to start with recognising sex work as work.

There are always going to be people doing sex work. The question is, how safe do we want them to be?


In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email [email protected] or [email protected]. For more information visit www.samaritans.org. Beyond the Streets is a charity that is pushing to end sexual exploitation. They work to see women safe from coercision, violence and abuse. You can find more information about their work on their website

Header Image Credit: Photo by Thomas Charters on Unsplash

Author

Mafalda Costa

Mafalda Costa

Mafalda Costa is a 2nd-year BAJ student at Goldsmiths University of London. Outside the university, she is a singer-songwriter who has travelled around Europe with her music. As a journalist, she delves into societal issues, arts and culture. Through a cinematic writing, she invites readers to dance with her words.

1 Comments

  • Elle Farrell-Kingsley

    On 19 March 2021, 11:01 Elle Farrell-Kingsley Contributor commented:

    This was a really informative and interesting topic, thank you for covering this!

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