Scarleteen and sex work?

[queershoulder]

I see that in another thread, Heather wrote that issues relating to sex work "really aren't something right for our space."

So, is Scarleteen not a safe space for sex workers to discuss issues that affect us? I find that really disappointing from a harm reductionist standpoint. I hope you will reconsider and allow sex workers (many of whom are women and LGBT folks 18+, who work in fully LEGAL parts of the industry such as webcaming/video/phone sex/etc in America and elsewhere) to ask questions pertaining to sexual safety, boundaries, health, etc, if this website is truly to offer "sex ed for the REAL WORLD." In my world, sex workers exist and need places to get accurate sexual health information. There are few places online to find this that are SW-friendly. I hope this is one of them? (Please keep in mind that sex worker run organizations are few and far between as well as underfunded and unable to maintain this type of internet presence, so referring SWs elsewhere isn't an effective solution).

I would love to hear the official Scarleteen policy on this and if I am mistaken I apologize!

[Heather]

Outside of not discussing anything with any users that isn't lawful -- whether that's sex work or it's smoking pot in a place where that isn't legal -- we don't have any official policy, this is one of those things that's more a judgment on a case by case basis.

I hear you with your concerns -- and I'm someone who has also done some sex work in the past, as well as survival sex (and taken more than my fair share of public flack for that for also having the apparent audacity to have had that past and do the work I do now with young people), and someone who's long had many close friends and colleagues in sex work and sex work activism, so truly, I do hear you and am with you on what you've said here, all the way.

When the question is relevant to what we can offer, like when it's about sexual health or safety, or managing other relationships when someone also is a sex worker, and no one is making admissions of breaking laws, we *can* usually have those conversations, no problem, and have had them here on the boards or in our other services. I don't even want to go to how many times in our direct services we've had to do a bunch of education for a user who utilized sex work services and is having STI panics because of ignorance about sex workers being more of a risk in that department than non-sex workers, which, you probably know as well as I do, is usually nothing but sheer ignorance and stigma. Sigh. In the homeless youth outreach I do locally, conversations about survival sex or sex work are also often in the mix. Our social media has also included content about sex work now and then in all the time we've been around, as well, like it has over the last week.

But we do have to be very thoughtful and careful about it -- it's perhaps obvious why, but if not, holler and I'm happy to dig in more with you -- and there are some areas with this where we're either not the best place for some of these conversations, IMO -- and a SWOP, for instance, might be better (just for the record, we also work on a very slim budget, one that's miniscule when it comes to our level of service and reach, and has never paid for our visibility, that's been done with blood, sweat, tears, and an awful lot of coffee, really) -- and one kind of conversation (this is probably where you saw me talking about this) I don't feel is usually sound for us to have here is a should I/shouldn't I conversation about someone trying to decide if they should do that work or not.