Re. Your post about people getting involved in debates that they don’t have any business being in: I absolutely get that. So I figured if people are blindly trying to get involved, is there a way they can get involved that’s actually helpful? Or is it better to wait for people who are sex workers to explicitly ask them for help before they stick their nose in? (Also I’m sorry that anons are scaring you.)

patrexes:

if you’re a civilian coming across some swerf rhetoric or just gross discourse in general and you really desperately feel like doing something, what you can do first is see if a sex worker has already refuted it — reblog their response instead of writing your own.

if nobody’s responded to it directly, consider responding with the bulk of your response being quotes from swers and links to swers addressing the issue in question.

i’ve definitely asked people to field responses for me before, ngl, and if someone asks you to cover a topic theyve like, discussed with you before, that’s totally chill. and if in real life somebody says some bullshit obviously there’s gonna rarely be a safe situation where you can redirect them to the nearest sex worker (and you shouldnt do that anyway lgr). just like, remember that you’re not speaking from experience, you don’t necessarily understand our experiences no matter how close you are with a sex worker, and definitely don’t speak over or argue with us about our lived experiences.

yeah, i know sometimes sex workers can say some fucked up shit about our jobs. i’ve talked about it before. but it’s solidly an intracommunity thing, so just let us handle it amongst ourselves.

on a wider scale, you can support sex workers by supporting the nswp, the red umbrella fund, swop, and others, get involved in protests, sit ins, and the international day to end violence against sex workers (dec 17). and on a much smaller and more personal scale, if you can and want to support us individually — do so! if you’re interested in porn, buy it from sex workers directly instead of going on pornhub! pay for nudes! pay your cam girls (and others)! donate a couple bucks to a sex worker’s ko-fi or paypal if you like their content (sexual or otherwise)!

and if you don’t engage with someone in those contexts or just don’t have money to spare, plain old regular support is still always great. just don’t be…weird about it. keep your “not that there’s anything wrong with that"s and your “i’d do sex work but i don’t like older men"s to yourself, and if someone feels comfortable enough with you to divulge trauma or discomfort with an element of the job, don’t say “i told you so”, or “well you know it’s dangerous”, or “you have to go to the police”. ask what you can do to help, if anything, and assume that they’re able to make their own decisions.