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Hello and welcome back to Behind the Padder Podcast, Me Paul, and Victoria. And I know the episodes usually come out on a Monday, but I really wanted to put this out on a Wednesday because today is a very special day, especially for sex workers. Today is December 17th, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. And I feel like this day just isn't spoken about enough at all. Never mind sex workers in general. Today will be that's what we'll be talking about. Simple as. So this day exists because too many people who sold sex were harmed, ignored, disappeared, and killed. All because the world decided that that was acceptable, or at least inevitable. Some sex workers' deaths, assaults, disappearances aren't even accounted for. For the people whose lives were reduced to headlines that began with sex worker found, prostitute found. Never questioned why. Why did this happen? What can we do to prevent it? This is about violence and about the systems that make the violence possible. This is not about rescue. I want to say this very clearly. Violence against sex workers is not an unfortunate side effect of the job. It's not random. It is not inevitable. It is produced. It is produced by criminalization, by stigma, by the laws that make safety illegal, by media narratives that teach the public whose lives matter. We see it to this day. The media controls a hell of a lot of the narrative. By policing practices that punish survival, and by silence. Today around the world, sex workers and allies will gather under red umbrellas. Names will be read, candles will be lit. Some people will stand in public spaces, knowing that visibility itself carries risk. I know that personally. I myself have dealt with social workers, child custody, police. I've even been charged with brothel keeping just because I wanted to keep other sex workers safe. Because remembering is an act of resistance. The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Wers began as a memorial. In 2003, sex workers in the United States held a vigil for the victims of the Green River Killer, many of whom were sex workers whose disappearances had been ignored for years. Now we're going to go furthermore into this in this episode. They were ignored by the police, ignored by the media, ignored by a public, taught to believe that some lives are disposable. What began as grief became something else, a refusal to forget. And that refusal spread. Today, the 17th of December, is observed globally, not just to mourn those who have died, but to name the conditions that made their deaths more likely, and to demand that violence against sex workers be treated as what it is as a human rights issue. This episode may be difficult to listen to. We will be talking about violence, not in graphic detail, but in honest terms. We will be talking about death, criminalization, and systemic harm. One of the most dangerous lies about violence against sex workers is the idea that it comes primarily from individual bad clients. Because while interpersonal violence does exist, the reality is far more uncomfortable than that. Most violence against sex workers is enabled by systems that claim to be about protection, laws that criminalise working together, police practices that punish reporting, immigration systems that treat vulnerability as a weapon, healthcare systems that shame instead of care. This all will not get any better under the Nordic model. Scotland currently and the UK want to bring in the Nordic model to Scotland. We do not want that as sex workers. Everything which I'm about to tell you will get worse if the Nordic model, criminalization, legalization is brought into play. Decriminalisation should be the only option. It's not 100% perfect, but it is far better than the systems that people want to put into place right now. They are proven to not work, the Nordic model, legalization, and they have been proven to worsen the conditions for the sex workers. When safety strategies are criminalized, violence thrives. When reporting a crime means risking arrest, deportation, or the loss of your child, silence becomes survival. And then that silence is used against us. We're going to be talking about what violence against sex workers actually looks like. Not just the moments that end lives, but the conditions that shape them. We are going to talk about criminalization as a form of violence, about raids, about erasing sex workers, about forgetting that sex workers even exist. Forgetting we have rights. About why sex workers so often know exactly who hurt them and exactly why they can't say so. About whose deaths aren't counted and whose are. We are also going to talk about resistance, about community care, about the way sex workers have kept each other alive when no one else would. About why vigilance matters. About why visuals matter. About why the red umbrella matters. About why remembering names is not sentimental. It's political. This episode doesn't ask you to feel sorry for sex workers. It asks you to listen and understand. Because ending violence against sex workers does not start with sympathy. It starts with accountability. So as we move through this episode, I want you to hold one thing in mind. Sex workers are not dying because of what we do. We are being harmed because of how we are treated. On 17th of December, we remember the dead and we tell the truth about why they are gone. So, let's talk about the origin of the 17th of December. In the early 2000s, in the United States, families, activists, and sex workers were forced to confront a brutal truth. Dozens of people had been murdered, and for years their disappearances had gone largely uninvestigated. The man responsible would later be known as the Green River Killer. Between the 1980s and 1990s, Gary Ridgeway murdered at least 49 women and girls, though the true number is to be believed to be higher. Many of his victims were sex workers, some were teenagers, many were poor, several were indigenous, some were struggling with addiction, some were simply trying to survive. For years their disappearances were not treated as urgent. Missing person reports were delayed or dismissed. Investigations were slow, underfunded, or non-existent. Families were told that their loved ones had probably run off. This is not because the police didn't know something was wrong, it's because society had already decided whose lives were worth searching for. When Gary Ridgway was finally arrested in 2001, the scale of what had been allowed to happen became impossible to ignore. And for sex workers, it confirmed something we had always known. Violence does not begin with the killer. It begins with indifference. In 2003, sex workers and allies gathered to hold a vigil for the victims. They stood together, many for the first time publicly, to speak the names of those who had been killed. Candles were lit, names were read aloud, people were remembered as daughters, friends, lovers, parents, not as warnings. That vigil marked the first International Day to end violence against sex workers. It was not organized by governments, it was not led by police. It was not endorsed by institutions that had failed these women. It was organized by sex workers. Who else was going to do this? Many of the people murdered by the Green River killer were misidentified in the press. Some were described using dehumanizing language. Others were referred to only by their work, not their names. Some were misgendered, some were never identified. Even in death, dignity was conditional. And this pattern did not end in the early 2000s. It did not end in the United States. It did not end with serial killers. The reason the 17th of December continues to exist is because violence against sex workers did not stop once people were forced to look. Instead, it changed shape. Today, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is observed in countries across the world. In cities and towns, sex workers gather sometimes openly, sometimes quietly, to hold vigils, marches, and memorials. Red umbrellas are raised. The red umbrellas have become one of the most recognizable symbols of sex worker rights. It represents resistance, safety, and visibility, but also the reality that sex workers often have to protect ourselves in ways society refuses to. Umbrellas shield from rain, from exposure, from being seen too clearly when being seen as too dangerous. And on the 17th of December, red umbrellas make space. They say we are here, they were here, we will not let you forget. To say someone's name is to insist they existed beyond the conditions of their death. It is to refuse the idea that being a sex worker cancels out personhood. It is to push back against a culture that is comfortable consuming violence as long as it remains abstract. And yet, naming is not always possible. Many sex workers who are murdered are never identified. Many are migrants whose families cannot safely come forward. Many are trans people whose names are changed or erased by authorities. Many are people whose lives were already pushed to the margins. So on the 17th of December, when names cannot be spoken, silence speaks instead. Moments are held for the unknown, for the unnamed, for the people whose deaths were never counted. Because one of the most devastating truths about violence against sex workers is this: we do not actually know how many of us have been killed. There is no comprehensive global record, no official system that tracks sex workers' deaths consistently or accurately, no international obligation to record occupation when violence occurs, and when it is recorded, it is often done carelessly or with bias. In many places, being identified as a sex worker makes a deaf less likely to be investigated, not more. And that is not an accident. The 17th of December exists because sex workers realize something crucial. If we do not remember our dead, no one else will properly. This day also exists to challenge a very specific lie. The idea that violence against sex workers is unavoidable unavoidable. You will often hear people say things like, Well, it's a dangerous job. They knew the risks. Well, this is how it is. You have to expect it in a job like this. You shouldn't expect men to be violent towards women. Misogyny violence should not be expected. Whether that is violence by the police, the authority, or a client. Those statements erase the role of policy, policing, and stigma. Because what makes sex work dangerous is not sex. It is isolation. It is criminalization. It is the forced invisibility that comes from laws designed to push people into riskier conditions. When sex workers are criminalized, we are taught to avoid the police, not seek help. When working together is illegal, we are forced to work alone. When landlords can evict us for what we do, housing becomes unstable. And the landlord can evict you within 48 hours, you have to leave. When banks, doctors, and social services treat us as moral failures, harm compounds? The 17th of December calls this out. Violence does not happen in a vacuum. It happens where protection is denied. This is why the day is not just about mourning, it is about accountability. It asks uncomfortable questions. Why were these people not protected? Why were their disappearances ignored? Why did it take decades for anybody to care? And more importantly, what has actually changed? As we move through this episode, we're going to keep coming back to the same central truth. The opposite of violence is not sympathy, it is rights. The 17th of December exists because sex workers refuse to let the world forget what happens when those rights are denied, and because memory, when held collectively, becomes resistance. When people hear the phrase violence against sex workers, they often picture a very specific scenario, a dark street, a stranger, a sudden attack, a traumatic headline that appears only after someone has died. That image isn't wrong, but isn't dangerously but it's dangerously incomplete because violence against sex workers is not just about isolated acts of physical harm. It is about a web of systems, policies, and social attitudes that make harm more likely, more frequent, and far harder to escape. Violence against sex workers is structural, exists not only in moments of physical danger, but in the slow erosion of safety, autonomy, and dignity, often long before any crime is officially recorded. Sex workers do experience physical and sexual violence. That's a fact. This includes assault by clients, partners, ex-partners, strangers, as well as robbery. One of the most damaging myths surrounding sex work is the idea that consent is permitted once money is exchanged. That once someone sells sex, their boundaries no longer matter. This is false. Consent can always be withdrawn. Boundaries still exist. No still means no. Yet, when sex workers are assaulted, their experiences are routinely minimized or dismissed. Survivors are questioned, blamed, or told that harm is simply part of the job. Many assaults go unreported because reporting itself carries risk. Risk of arrest, exposure, loss of income, or retaliation. But focusing only on client violence misses a much larger truth. Much of the violence sex workers experience does not come from individuals, it comes from systems. For many sex workers, the police are not a source of protection. They are a source of fear. Police violence can include harassment, intimidation, coercive questioning, sexual exploitation, sexual assaults, rapes, and threats of arrest. Raids are often framed as welfare checks or anti-trafficking operations or rescues, but their impact is frequently devastating. Phones used for safety screening are seized. Mine was. And I still haven't got that back. Money and personal belongings are confiscated. Even safety items like condoms. All of mine were taken. Safety networks are completely destroyed overnight. And so much income is lost with that. How is somebody meant to move on when they can't afford to live? Even when officers are not directly violent, the consequences of policing can still expose people to greater harm. When the state criminalizes safety strategies, it creates the very conditions it claims to prevent. Violence is not always physical. Being evicted because of your work is violence. Being denied housing because of stigma is violence. Being made homeless by morality laws is violence. Many sex workers live under constant threat of losing their homes if their work is discovered. This forces people into unstable housing, unsafe living arrangements, or street-based work, all of which significantly increase risk. I myself was blackmailed by a private agency who found my adult work account. They lied about the last home inspection, saying the home was in disrepair. They refused to show me proof that my home was like this, where by law they are meant to show me pictures and proof, and I'm meant to get all those reports back. But with that, I couldn't get my deposit back. And I couldn't get a positive referral to be able to get a new property. They told me to forget about what is happening and move on. And if I did, it was water under the bridge. I have a child and I was in a really abusive relationship at the time. I couldn't afford to sit on what was happening and potentially risk so much. I wish back then I kept everything as evidence. But honestly, I felt so hopeless. Economic violence also takes the form of bank account closures, payment processor bans, sudden loss of income, and debt being used as leverage by abusers. I've had one bank account taken down due to my work, PayPal 2, where PayPal actually took all of my money in that account because they can. If they don't agree with your work, and if you can't show proof that you're not doing prostitution, as they say, then they will shut down your account and they will keep all the funds. Same with Stripe as well. If you put anything through Stripe, say if you have a Wix website and you have payments through Stripe, they can shut that bank account down. And I've had my Santander account frozen, which was extremely scary. Sex workers experience domestic and intimate partner violence at rates comparable to and sometimes higher than the general population. Leaving abusive partners can be particularly difficult when stigma is used as a weapon. Abusers may threaten to cut someone's work, report them to the police or social services. Leaving abusive partners can be particularly difficult when stigma is used as a weapon. Abusers may threaten to cut someone's work, report them to police or social services, or interfere with their ability to earn a living. Now I had a fling with somebody in the BDSM community, and they did not like that I didn't like their dungeon. It's very silly. Men. Um and so they called child services on me and said that I was taking my child to work and they didn't have any proof or anything like that. This was all just out of spite and lies. I hate that every one of these things I can give you a personal like antidote of what's happened. It's horrible. The belief that sex workers are used to it or somehow less deserving of protection allows abuse to flourish unchecked. Nobody should be used to abuse. Healthcare is another site where violence occurs not through action but through denial. Sex workers report being refused care, lectured instead of treated, blamed for their symptoms, or forced to disclose their work unnecessarily. Many avoid healthcare altogether after repeated experiences of stigma and mistreatment. This leads to delayed diagnoses, untreated conditions, and preventable harm. Violence does not only happen in emergency situations, it happens when care is withheld. When care is stigmatized. As sex work has moved increasingly online, so is abuse. Sex workers face doxing, stalking, harassment campaigns, and threats sent to family members or landlords. Platforms that profit from sex workers often fail to protect them, offering slow or ineffective reporting systems while allowing abuse to continue. I personally have been doxed, and it took so long for the police to take us, sex workers, 20 of the sex workers seriously, who he has done this to. And even then, sex workers were outed because the police did not tell us that he would know our real names if we were to pursue charges against him. For sex workers who are parents, one of the most profound forms of violence is the threat of losing their child. In many places, sex work alone can be used as evidence of unfitness, even in the absence of harm. This creates an atmosphere of constant fear. Fear of seeking help, fear of reporting abuse, fear of being honest with professionals. Parenthood becomes another site of surveillance and control. I know this personally, as my child's father tried multiple times in court to get custody based on the fact that I'm a sex worker. And he is a massive hypocrite because he produced some porn with me. He has made videos with me before, but he didn't bring any of that up in court or to his parents in ways of showing that it's not fair to use the fact that I apparently am an unfit mother just because of my job. I tell you, it is the very opposite. And I'm so thankful to still have my child with me through all through everything. For migrant sex workers, violence is often layered. Immigration enforcement turns vulnerability into a trap. Reporting violence can mean detention or deportation. Employers and abusers exploit fear of the state. Anti-trafficking frameworks that ignore sex worker voices often conflate consensual work with exploitation, increasing harm rather than reducing it. Perhaps the most pervasive form of violence is silence. When sex workers are harmed and no one listens, when deaths are misreported or ignored, when visuals become the only place truth is spoken aloud. Silence teaches us that harm is expected, that survival is a personal responsibility, that some lives are more disposable than others. Violence against sex workers is caused by the laws that isolate, by systems that punish survival, by a society that withholds protection while insisting on judgment. When we talk about violence against sex workers, people often imagine individual acts a client who crosses a line, a stranger who attacks, a moment of sudden danger. But one of the most consistent and far-reaching forms of violence sex workers face does not come from individuals at all. It comes from the law. Criminalization is not a neutral backdrop. It is an active force that shapes where sex workers can work, how safely they can operate, and whether they can seek help when something goes wrong. When sex work is criminalized fully or partially, the law itself becomes a vector of violence. You're giving everyone else the power apart from the actual worker. In many countries, including the UK, sex work exists in a contradictory legal space. Selling sex is not illegal, but almost everything that makes it safer is. Working together is criminalized under brothel keeping laws. Hiring security can be illegal. Sharing information can be risky. Advertising and screening clients is heavily policed. These laws do not eliminate sex work, they eliminate safety. When people are forced to work alone to avoid criminal charges, isolation becomes the norm. And isolation is one of the strongest predictors of violence. Criminalization teaches sex workers a dangerous lesson. Protect yourself quietly or not at all. Police raids are often framed as welfare checks or anti-trafficking operations or rescues. In reality, they are frequently traumatic, disruptive, and harmful. During raids, phones used for client screening are seized. Money and personal belongings are confiscated. Homes and workplaces are entered without consent. Workers are questioned, photographed, recorded, safety networks are dismantled overnight. Even when no charges are brought, the damage is done. Income disappears instantly, housing becomes unstable. The truth is destroyed. People are left more exposed to harm than they were before the raid took place. Calling this protection does not make it so. I was raided under the brothel keeping laws just for letting sex workers use my property. It doesn't matter if you rent or if you buy, it is still against the law to have another sex worker at your property, even if they're working at a different time. It doesn't matter. Twenty police officers and one with a battering ram stormed my flat. It's so hard to talk about still. And they didn't care. one bit about me. They didn't care about my child. They didn't care about the refunds which I had to give. They didn't care about the safety workshops which I taught. They didn't care about other sex workers having a safe space to work from. And one of the most devastating consequences of criminalization is what it does to reporting. For many sex workers, reporting violence is not a path to justice. It is a risk calculation. Will reporting lead to arrest? Will it trigger immigration enforcement? Will children be taken into care? Will housing be lost? In systems where sex workers are criminalized or heavily policed, silence becomes a survival strategy. This has real consequences. Violence goes unrecorded, patterns are missed, perpetrators remain free to harm others. And then the abuse of reports is used to argue that violence is rare, creating a self-perpetuating lie. In some jurisdictions, items that are essential for safety have been treated as evidence of criminal activity. Condoms have been used as proof of sex work. Even if you're just walking in the street. Messages meant to keep people safe have been reframed as criminal records. When tools of protection are criminalized, risk is not reduced, it is enforced. Sex workers are pushed into working faster, taking unknown clients, or meeting in less controlled environments. These are not personal failures, they are predictable outcomes of policy. For migrant sex workers, criminalization is often inseparable from immigration enforcement. Anti-trafficking frameworks are frequently used to justify raids, detention and deportation, even when no trafficking is present. Consensual adult sex workers are treated as criminals or passive victims. Choices are ignored. For many migrants, reporting violence can mean detention, removal, or permanent separation from community and support networks. Not only that, once you get any sort of criminal record, even if you do not see yourself as a criminal and you shouldn't be, it is then harder to actually exit sex work and get a quote unquote real job, because it will come up on your DBS check. When sex workers are afraid to report violence, perpetrators learn something important. They learn that they are unlikely to be held accountable. Criminalization creates impunity not just for violent clients, not just for violent clients, but for abusive partners, exploitative third parties, and even the state itself. Violence thrives where accountability is absent. Decriminalization is not a radical idea. Ending criminalization legalization is often framed as extreme or dangerous. In reality, it is a public health and human rights approach support by extensive evidence. Where sex work is decriminalized, sex workers are more likely to report violence. Police resources can focus on actual harm. Safety strategies are legal and accessible, and health outcomes improve. Decriminalization does not eliminate harm, no system does. But legalization and criminalization actively makes harm worse. The law likes to present itself as a protector. In reality, it often functions as an accomplice. Many sex workers have already tried to report violence and have been harmed in the process. They have been, by the police, mocked or dismissed, blamed for their assault, pressured to provide information in exchange for safety, threatened with arrest, ignored entirely, or have been sexually assaulted or worse. These experiences travel through communities. When people hear what happens to those who speak up, silence becomes collective wisdom. Being told that's the job, perhaps one of the most corrosive barriers to reporting is the belief, often reinforced by professionals that violence is simply part of the job. Reporting violence is not only legally risky, it is emotionally exhausting. It means reliving trauma, it means being questioned and doubted. It means having your life examined for flaws. For people who have already for people who are already marginalized, the process itself can be re-traumatizing, and sometimes not reporting it is an act of self-preservation. Ending violence against sex workers means change. Violence is not inevitable. One of the most persistent myths surrounding sex work is that violence is simply part of the job. It isn't. Violence is produced by criminalization, stigma, poverty, racism, transphobia, and exclusion. It is shaped by laws that isolate people, by systems that punish survival, and by institutions that refuse to listen to those most affected. Now as we've said, sex work, when it is decriminalized, it does reduce harm. When sex workers can work together legally, it reduces harm. When reporting violence does not risk arrest, deportation, or child removal, it reduces harm. When healthcare is accessible and non-judgmental, it reduces harm. When housing is secure, it reduces harm. When sex workers are believed, it reduces harm. But these aren't radical demands. They are basic protections. Thank you everybody to listening. Thank you everybody that has listened to this podcast fully. I really, really appreciate it. And we do really need to change the harmful media narratives that are out there. We need to oppose laws that criminalize safety. We need to support decriminalization. And of course, donate to sex worker-led organizations and mutual aids. Because in the UK, because the government class us as well, class sex work as violence against women and girls, we can't get funding. And if anybody does support us, any other organizations or grassroots campaigns who do get funding from the government, they can get that pulled. So please bear all this in mind and please support decriminalization. Thank you so much for listening. There will be a lot more on my blog. I've started to properly make a blog full of all the episodes. There's currently a bit of a backlog because I've made a hundred episodes Well, over a hundred episodes in a year, year and a half. So yeah, something like that. So I need to create all those in blog forms, which is kind of simple but not at the same time. But yeah. Thank you everybody who has listened. This has been behind the pedal podcast from me both in Victoria. Bye.