Our Mission

The Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective is a group of sex workers and their allies in the Boston area. We stand for promoting the safety and well-being of sex workers in Massachusetts, with the goal of achieving the full decriminalization of consensual sex work and  the elimination of stigma and persecution against sex workers. We believe that labor rights and resources, not criminalization, enable sex workers to improve their lives. Our collective includes members who are both workers and allies. Our workers have experience in diverse parts of the sex industry, some of whom work legally and others whose work is criminalized. We welcome members of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ethnicity, disability, or class.

In our current socioeconomic landscape, where stagnant wages cannot keep up with the rising cost of housing, education, and healthcare, marginalized and working-class people often have two choices: exploitation or starvation. Massachusetts is the second most expensive state, and Boston is the 12th most expensive city in the country. Rent has now become unaffordable for over half of Americans, and homelessness has hit an all-time high. While our landlords raise our rent every year, housing developers build luxury condos, corporations take advantage of inflation as an excuse to line their pockets, health insurers lobby against universal healthcare, universities increase their tuition costs, and our governments fail to do anything about it, people must find a way to get by.

Sex work is not a solution to the cruelties of capitalism, but it is a tool to survive them. Women, trans people, queer people, people of color, migrants, disabled people, and working-class people have historically been subjugated in our economic system and have a right to refuse poverty and exploitation. When the government criminalizes sex work, it further persecutes working-class and marginalized people. Removing someone’s limited options for economic survival does not help them. All forms of work under capitalism involve exploitation or coercion, and the majority of us must work whether we like it or not. While some of us enjoy our work, we should not have to enjoy it in order to have the right to do it.

Although sex work provides opportunities for some of the most marginalized people within society to survive, it should never be the only option for survival. While we focus on obtaining better legal and labor protections for sex workers, we also demand institutional change and resource allocation to improve the material conditions of working-class people. We strive for a society in which no one has to do sex work in the first place, a society that ensures healthcare, childcare, education, and housing for all.

All workers deserve fair labor rights prioritizing their safety, well-being, and quality of life. When sex work is criminalized, sex workers have to resort to more precarious ways of doing their labor, which opens the doors to violence, stigma, and exploitation. How can workers report assault when they are at risk of arrest? How can workers demand better working conditions if their workplaces are at risk of being raided? How can workers protect each other if working collectively is outlawed? It goes beyond arrest and criminalization: stigma kills as well. A background in sex work can cost us our jobs, our education, our housing, and our families.

We advocate for full decriminalization of both workers and clients. Criminalizing clients will not make sex workers safer; it makes us poorer and more vulnerable. The End Demand Model (aka Nordic Model or Equality Model) has had terrible consequences for sex workers in every place it has been implemented. Criminalizing clients subjects workers to further police surveillance and harassment and forces them to take on riskier clients that won’t screen. Sex workers need money and resources; targeting our clients instead reduces our incomes and forces us to accept clients we would otherwise refuse. The End Demand model promises the eradication of sex work, but it instead makes it more precarious. Meanwhile, the full decriminalization of sex work in New Zealand has been shown to have improved sex workers’ safety and working conditions, allowing them to seek resources, report violence, take legal action against abusive employers, and access labor protections.

We do not support the legalization of sex work, which offers far less bodily autonomy, sexual privacy, and freedom of choice than the decriminalization model. Under legalization (existing in some counties in Nevada and parts of Europe), sex workers are confined to specific premises for working and living, subject to curfews, and surveilled by the state via registration and licensing procedures. Legalization allows law enforcement to regulate consensual private sexual behavior. We are here to educate the public in MA about which model best meets our needs.

Sex workers deserve the right to work without the risk of being persecuted, evicted, and discriminated against for their work. Sex workers deserve to be able to report violence without the risk of being arrested. To move freely across borders without being arrested or deported. To work without police surveillance and persecution. To be able to organize, collectivize, and unionize with fellow workers. To choose (or refuse) their own clients and accept money from clients openly, without fear their clients will be persecuted. To not run the risk of their bank accounts or social media accounts being shut down. Sex workers are tired of hiding in the shadows from the state and society. There is nothing shameful or criminal in providing for oneself with the means that one has. There is nothing shameful about sex work. We are here to share and amplify the voices of sex workers in Boston by saying: we want rights, not rescue; solidarity, not sympathy; and nothing about us without us.

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1. Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, 2023. Cost of Living Data Series. https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series
2. U.S. News & World Report, 2024. 25 Most Expensive Places to Live in the U.S. in 2023-2024. https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-expensive-places-to-live
3. Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2024. America’s Rental Housing. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/files/Harvard_JCHS_Americas_Rental_Housing_2024.pdf
4. Abel, Gillian, Lisa Fitzgerald, and Cheryl Brunton, 2007. The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety Practices of Sex Workers: Report to the Prostitution Law Review Committee. Department of Public Health and General Practice, University of Otago, Christchurch. https://www.otago.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/248760/pdf-811-kb-018607.pdf