Trade Secrets - Health and Safety in the Sex Industry

www.tradesecretsguide.blogspot.com

This guide was envisioned and created by sex industry workers who are invested in the concept of self-governance. The following is a foundational document wherein workers shared their invaluable lived experiences, which were collapsed into best practices to operate as industry standards. We believe that standards or regulation should come from within the industry and not outside of it.

Sex industry workers have the knowledge, skills and capacity to shape the sex industry into one that prioritizes the health, safety and wellness of those who work within it ,as well as dispelling myths and educating others.

Sex industry workers do not support exploitation, violence, youth involvement or forced involvement (economic or otherwise) in the sex industry. The sex industry, similar to all other industries consists of harms and benefits and it is up to those who work within it to reduce the harms and maximize the benefits.

To this end, adult sex industry workers who cover a range of adult services from adult film to escorts, hustlers to exotic dancers, aim to create working environments and working cultures that adhere to human rights legislation, common law and labour standards. They aim to take control of the industry they work in.

These ideas are based on the operating principles that govern co-operatives -one worker, one vote! Simply put, we want those who work in the sex industry to control the industry and to benefit directly from their labour, history and collective experiences.

The audience for this guide are primarily sex industry workers and stakeholders in the broader community who support self-governance, harm reduction, and the realization of human and labour rights for sex workers. Sex industry workers speak out and take action on issues that affect their lives at great risk, especially within criminalized environments and in the face of groups who work to silence and de-legitimize their contributions.

Projects like these only come to fruition through the generous support of progressive funders and the true grit of sex industry workers. I urge readers to embrace this document and recognize it as a practical guide for sex industry workers and stakeholders and as allegory...we will not be silenced.

Raven R. Bowen
Former Regional Coordinator
BC Coalition of Experiential Communities

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The BC Coalition of Experiential Communities developed this health and safety guide with the help of experts in the field of sex industry health and safety (workers and business owners), as well as non-industry legal and health experts.

The Trade Secrets Community Group – an advisory committee convened for the purpose of representing diverse perspectives, vetted all suggestions made in the guide to this end.

The Community Group is made up of thirteen sex industry workers who span the adult industry, and includes the voices of street-based workers, trans individuals, hustlers, webcam workers, adult film performers and producers, exotic dancers, escorts, bdsm and fetish workers, and more.

Beyond the community group, we engaged twenty-eight sex industry workers personally and connected with twenty-one more through focus groups:

One adult film performer;
Four BDSM workers including two dommes, one submissive, and a switch;
Five non-English-speaking Chinese massage parlour workers for which the questionnaire had to be modified and translated;
Four exotic dancers;
Four male sex workers (or hustlers);
One webcam worker with experience also doing peep show and phone sex work;
Seven indoor sex workers including independents, escort service workers, and massage parlour workers;
Two street-based sex workers;
We held three focus groups with streetbased workers, among whom the transgender perspective was also shared.

We also engaged:

Seven sex industry business owners including two dungeon Head Mistresses, two adult film distributors, one exotic dance agent, one escort agency owner, and one adult website owner;
Eight coworkers including one booking girl, one doorman, one driver / security professional, two support agency workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one photographer, and one strip club server.
Seven clients recruited through sex industry workers who participated, as well as an online invitation at nakedtruth.ca;

This is by no means an exhaustive resource for the sex industry. Due to a limited number of participants, we could not accurately represent the industry from every perspective across Canada. So, we included what was shared with us and left out what was not. For instance, in the chapter “Our Work,” we know a bit about what to expect in tips as an exotic dancer in BC or Alberta. But we do not have that information for other provinces.

Every bit of advice in this guide comes from sex industry workers across Canada. These words are your words. If you have advice to share that isn’t here, you can contribute your wisdom using the online guide by writing comments at the end of appropriate chapters.

Some of this advice will speak volumes and others won’t ring true for you. Take what works for you and scrap the rest. Come back to the guide whenever other pieces of information are more relevant.

The terms "sex industry worker," "sex worker," "adult entertainer," "worker," and "entertainer" are all used interchangeably throughout this guide.

This has been a labour of love for me – Trade Secrets. I hope it rocks your world.

Annie Temple
Project Coordinator