As we write this, we are experiencing the second lockdown of the year 2020. The government has introduced very restrictive measures in order to stem the infection rates. Street prostitution and brothels have been ordered to shut down.
This year has been marked by huge losses in income for sex workers.

People working in lines of business where physical contact is vital have been especially affected. For the second time this year, migrant workers are fighting to sustain themselves, struggle to support their families in their home countries or pay their debts and come up for the costs of corona tests.

However, it is important to mention that some people working in areas within the sex industry where physical contact to clients is not vital, such as porn, camsex and other exciting stuff, experienced a rise in income due to more sales.

The pandemic made visible how relevant some professions are within our capitalistic system, and also that some groups of people are systematically exploited. Care work such as nursing, child care or family support is mostly done by migrant women*- often as unpaid domestic work that is viewed as necessary
and self-evident by society. Migrant workers attend to the increasing demand in countries of the global north, such as Austria. For most people, sexual satisfaction is included in such basic needs. In many ways,
sex work can be viewed as care work. But it is evaluated and regulated completely differently.

Let us connect and network in order to speak out louder for the removal of taboos and stigmatisation of sex work.

We repeat this loud and clear: sex work is work! And sex worker’s rights are human rights.