human trafficking<\/a>. These are two fundamentally different things. When police arrest sex workers and count those arrests as saving \u201cvictims\u201d of \u201ctrafficking\u201d they are doing nothing more than targeting, harassing and violating sex workers. The reality is that creating safe working conditions for sex workers by decriminalizing sex work helps us better identify and target actual trafficking by creating conditions where sex workers feel safe to report unsafe working conditions. <\/span><\/p>\nMS:<\/b><\/span> Sex workers in the Red Light District in Amsterdam have panic buttons that they can press if they come into contact with unruly clients. However, if you work in a hotel or in the streets it\u2019s hard to ask for help. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\nMaggies:<\/b><\/span> As workers, sex workers deserve access to health and safety protocols in the workplace and safe working conditions. Safe working conditions look very different across different forms of sex work where individual workers may be working remotely (on a computer or screen), in shared spaces (like a club) or in an isolated setting (such as an apartment or house). In any setting, sex workers deserve safe working conditions and the tools needed to ensure this safety. For body rub attendants in Toronto this looks like the ability to lock the doors of their individual rooms to determine who comes in and out, for exotic dancers this looks like a well-maintained club – there are many variations on what workplace health and safety looks like depending on the context of the work. Sex workers should always lead the decision-making on what safety protocols are established in their workplaces, because they know best about what is effective for their well-being. <\/span><\/p>\nMS:<\/b><\/span> Would most sex workers like to pay taxes and have access to health insurance, employment and invalidity benefits? <\/b><\/span><\/p>\nMaggies:<\/b><\/span> Sex workers deserve access to government supports, especially in the midst of a global pandemic, but unfortunately our communities have been excluded from these resources. There are a number of reasons sex workers are currently unable to pay taxes or disclose the nature of their work – from being paid in cash to the stigma surrounding having done sex work. We must decriminalize sex work and the stigma associated with it. <\/span><\/p>\nMS:<\/b><\/span>The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project represents workers of all genders from all areas of the sex trade. Is it still an area where mainly women work? <\/b><\/span><\/p>\nMaggies:<\/b><\/span> Many different kinds of people work in the sex industry – cisgender men and women, non-binary, two-spirited, and trans communities. <\/span><\/p>\nJoana Leal\/MS<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although the sex industry is criminalized in Canada, some people still work in this industry, like in many other countries in the world. Maggies: The Toronto Sex Workers Action …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":68542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4530],"tags":[18173,5950,7321],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/A-women-holds-a-red-umbrella-a-symbol-for-sex-workers-rights-during-a-rally-in-Toronto-Mark-Blinch-_-Canadian-Press-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}