Sex worker and writer Daphne Richards interviewed Red (they/them), a community organizer supporting sex workers with incarceration experiences across America. This interview contains NSFW subject matter and has been shortened for brevity.
Are you a part of a collective or an independent creative distributing zines alone? Do you print these locally?
I’m a founding collective member of Support Ho(s)e–a queer and lefty formation of sex workers with incarceration experiences. We’re also a sex worker zine distro and resource hub. We print in Chicago and Austin primarily.
How do you think your experience in sex work has helped you create meaningful zines about community, health/wellness, and more?
Zines create the conditions for us to share knowledge, political analysis and our own stories in less surveilled ways–which is essential for us to build community as criminalized workers. We can be anonymous, combine art and text, and express ourselves authentically without fear through zines.
What are some positives you enjoy and or freedoms you enjoy that this line of work has afforded you? Schedule freedoms, time management, etc?
Sex work has helped me pay off debts from an abusive relationship, be a student full time, and travel the world. As a disabled and chronically ill person, sex work has allowed me to work fewer hours for more pay and in conditions that I determine. Sex work also introduced me to many members of my chosen queer and trans family, created community organizing networks to enact change, and opened my life to new and challenging experiences–I can navigate conflict, risk, and accept people who are very different than me, because I’ve met and worked with people from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. Sex work, even with all of the uncertainty and criminalization, has changed my life, for the better!
Do you advocate personally for harm reduction as a sex worker and can you explain what those steps are, and what it means to individuals who may not know what it is?
Yes! Harm reduction, for me, is a set of practices but it’s also an ethos and serves as guiding principles for me. Sex workers, trans folks and drug-using people have always been sources of knowledge and community care. We already know how to show up and care for ourselves and our communities because we know we can’t rely on the state to save us, let alone show up when there’s a need or crisis–whether that means getting people condoms, reproductive care needs, drug testing strips, narcan, or homebrewed hormones. Harm reduction means meeting people where they’re at, with care, and extending resources, respect, dignity without fear or judgement.
What are some actions people who want to be allies can take for the working individual in the industry?
Call out whorephobia when you see or hear it, immediately. Speak up with us! Shut down gross, stigmatizing language or “rescue” narratives that dehumanize us. We are working people, who have to deal with everything you face AND criminalization and stigma on top of that! Be nice to sex workers!!
Where can the readers find more of your creative works and information on where you will be next creatively?
People can sign up for our newsletter via sxhxcollective.org.This is the best and most sustainable way to keep in touch with our actions, events and resources.
Red has been around since 2008 and has seen the good, bad, and ugly of the industry as a whole. Having your voice being heard while being outspoken creatively can have some positive outcomes as well as negative. It is important to remember this when you are trying to build community and educate others on what it means to be a working person and an unconventional entrepreneur at the same time.