Safety Over Politics: What I Think We've Got Wrong About Sex Work

I've spent years working in the industry. I've seen incredible clients, horrific clients, supportive police officers, dismissive police officers, and workers from every imaginable background.

I'm not writing this because I think I have every answer. I'm writing this because I think we're asking the wrong questions.The goal shouldn't be to win a political argument.The goal should be to reduce violence.The goal should be to reduce opportunities for violence and make it easier to identify and respond to risk before harm occurs. If a policy sounds good but makes the most vulnerable workers less safe, then it has failed.

Whenever the topic of sex work comes up, people tend to split into two camps: "legalize it" or "abolish it." In reality, the conversation is far more complicated than that.

One thing that gets confused constantly is the difference between decriminalization and legalization. People use the terms interchangeably, but they create very different realities for sex workers.,As someone who has worked in the industry, I care far less about political slogans than about what actually keeps workers safer.

Decriminalization

Decriminalization means removing criminal penalties for consensual adult sex work.

It does not mean there are no laws. Workers are still expected to obey the same laws everyone else does:

assault is still assault; trafficking remains illegal; exploitation remains illegal; coercion remains illegal; tax laws still apply; labour standards can still apply where appropriate.

The difference is that simply exchanging consensual sexual services between adults is no longer treated as a crime. Workers are more likely to report violence.They can screen clients without fear that evidence of screening will be used against them. They can work together for safety. They can access banking, housing, insurance, and healthcare with less stigma.
In this blog, I use decriminalization to mean removal of criminal penalties without licensing or mandatory registration systems.

Legalization

Legalization often sounds similar, but it usually means sex work is only legal under specific government created rules.

Licenses.
Mandatory registration.
Restricted work zones.
Special permits.
Operating only through approved businesses.

On paper, that may sound reasonable. In practice, the people who cannot meet those requirements don't disappear…they simply continue working outside the legal system, where they remain vulnerable to exploitation and police attention. A heavily regulated legal market can unintentionally create a two-tier system: workers who fit inside the regulations, and everyone else.

Regulation can create Dangerous Power Imbalances : once clients know a worker cannot legally register or operate under a regulated system, that becomes leverage. "I'll report you." "I know you're undocumented." That threat alone can pressure someone into accepting unsafe situations they would otherwise refuse. Marginalized groups often are already over-policed. Adding fear from clients doesn't help safety for the workers.

Understanding Canada's Current System: End-Demand Model

Even if the Canadian end-demand model is more “safe” then a fully criminalized system, it still puts a bit risk factor on the providers because it puts the client in a situation where they don’t want to share their full information in fear of legal repercussions.

What it does
Canada:
Criminalizes the purchasing of sexual services
Criminalizes third-party advertising and third-party material benefit in many cases
does not criminalize selling in most contexts

What this creates in practice
Clients may avoid traceable communication, particularly when they are uncertain about enforcement risk or legal exposure
Negotiations become rushed or less transparent
Screening becomes harder in practice
Workers may have less ability to safely gather information
Conversations that are coded, indirect or fragmented across platforms to avoid risks of traceable information.

Even when workers are not criminalized directly, it still shapes the conditions under which safety decisions are being made. If our goal is safety, we should ask whether our laws actually encourage safer interaction, or simply drive them further underground.

My Concerns and The Tension I am seeing

I have a hard time imagining a system that would be focused entirely on the decriminalizing consensual sex work without the governments trying to put in place any type of legislations to fence sex workers into a compliance-based system. I have concerns about how any legal system behaves once it starts managing a stigmatized industry. Decriminalization asks : is consenting to this act a crime? While Regulation asks : what rules can we place around this activity to make it legal? I’m concerned about what kinds of regulatory systems tend to get built around visibility and who gets excluded or exposed in the process.

If governments decide to regulate sex work through licensing, registration or permits, we need to think beyond today's political climate. Governments change. Policies change. Priorities change. A registry created to "protect workers" today could become a tool used against them tomorrow. Databases rarely disappear…Did we think of what would happen to a data breach or a future government that would expose personal information that cannot be taken back? For many workers, especially those with children, other careers, or immigration concerns, that risk is enormous. The laws regarding this matter can't swing back and forth between election.

laws → shape behaviour
behaviour → affects screening
screening → affects safety
stigma + enforcement → reduce reporting

Another side that i fear in the decriminalization aspect is that it may become harder to distinguish exploitative third-party control from legitimate support roles such as drivers or assistants. Decriminalization removes criminal penalties for consensual sex work, but it still depends on broader systems such as immigration policy, housing access, labour rights, and healthcare in order to meaningfully improve safety outcomes. In practice, the boundary between decriminalization and regulation is often discussed together in policy conversations, as one addresses criminal law while the other addresses the systems built around it.

Sex work laws don’t just determine what is legal or illegal. They determine how much information people are willing to share in order to stay safe.The real work should be to increase trust in reporting violence. Every system improves one aspect of safety while creating new blind spots. The question is not which model is perfect, but what combination of policies can reduce harm for the most vulnerable workers rather than the most protected ones. I understand that all systems involve trade-offs, but some distribute risk downward onto already vulnerable workers, and that is what we need to avoid.

The Workers Who Will Be Left Behind

This is probably my biggest concern. Whenever people discuss regulation, they often picture someone with stable housing, legal immigration status, identification, banking access and the ability to complete paperwork.That isn't everyone's reality. Many workers would not be able to safely register. Undocumented migrants.People escaping domestic violence.People experiencing homelessness.Workers without stable addresses.Workers with complicated immigration situations. If those workers cannot enter the legal system, they don't stop working… They simply become illegal again! 

That creates a two-tier industry. One group receives legal protections.The other becomes even easier to exploit.Clients know who has options.Clients also know who cannot safely call police. That imbalance creates opportunities for coercion.

Sex Workers Are Often the Victims of Violence

One thing society rarely acknowledges is that sex workers are often among the first people exposed to violent offenders. We can’t ignore it. Too often, violence against sex workers is treated as inevitable. Like we should be the receivers or the sacrifices to make the rest of the population safe.
It pains me to have to bring up the murder of Marylène Levesque. But its a disturbing and painful example of systematic failure that lead to loss. Marylène could have been any of us. Court conditions reportedly prohibited him from pursuing intimate relationships, yet he was still permitted to purchase sexual services from sex workers. The result was that a sex worker became the person exposed to the risk. That case illustrates something larger. Society often accepts that sex workers will absorb risks it would never knowingly impose on others. This raises difficult questions about how risk is allocated, and why sex workers were placed in a position of exposure when other forms of contact were restricted. Why weren’t the workers better informed? Why aren’t we treated as partners to prevent violence? He had been banned from the massage parlour before his crime, why wasn’t that reported? We interact in intimate situations long before other systems do. Our knowledge could save lives.

In relation to the murder of Marylène Levesque in 2020
“Gallese had a special arrangement with his case worker which allowed him to have relations with women to meet his "sexual needs." As part of the conditions of his day parole, he was required to disclose any relations he had with women to his parole officer. “ - CBC.ca 

In the relation to the murder of a Sex Worker in Montreal in 2021
“According to Stella, a Montreal organization by and for sex workers, the 25-year-old woman victim was an escort who was likely working independently and met up with the man whose name had been circulating in the community as a client to avoid or watch out for. “We had heard from workers that had seen him that he was increasingly aggressive, denigrating and violent,” said Sandra Wesley, executive director of Stella. - Global News
If the concerns received by Stella were that he became increasingly aggressive and violent, why don’t we have systems to report that? This suggests that preventive information was circulating within workers before it reached formal channels.

We Should Be Working Together, Not Against Each Other

Instead of treating us as unreliable witnesses or disposable victims, we should be one of society's greatest resources for identifying dangerous individuals. Imagine a system where workers trusted the police enough to report dangerous clients. Maybe not the police, but a different entity created in between. The #MeToo movement also showed that there is a need to report violent people, so why isn’t there a tier that focuses on that.There should be a system for us to identify offenders. And repeat entries of same names, patterns should be evaluated, observed and taken care of before things escalade. The goal isn’t to make a watchlist or a punitive registry and scare everyone of being on a list for one small disagreement, but repetition should be a sign, people with past behaviors should be looked into, any sign of physical violence should be investigated.
I wish of a system that keeps us safe and doesn’t use two-tier system used against some of us. Workers already have informal safety intelligence, but no structured system exists to use it for prevention.

We need to protect everyone, not just sex workers, we need to prevent future victims from becoming victims.

What I Think We Should Be Fighting For

This is the conversation I wish we were having. Less focus on ideology. More focus on DIRECT safety. I don't want a system that creates first-class and second-class workers. I don't want policies that increase fear.I don't want databases that workers cannot control.I want workers to be believed.I want assaults investigated seriously. I want systems that identify violent repeat offenders. I want immigrant workers to report violence without fearing deportation. I want workers to be able to screen safely and where clients feel safe to screen. I want support instead of surveillance. We need to start asking what actually helps people go home safely at the end of the day.

Sexual Services Are More Complex Than People Think

I talk about this in various posts, like reasons to see a sex worker, etc. I know the public conversations often reduce sex work to morality. In reality,it’s much more intricate and faceted. Some clients seek intimacy. Some seek companionship.Some are disabled.Some are grieving. Some are exploring sexuality after trauma. Some simply want human connection.It means acknowledging that consensual adult sexual services exist for many different reasons. Simplifying every interaction into exploitation prevents honest conversations about what actually happens and what humans actually need to feel connected and seen.

Recognizing that complexity should make sex workers important and key members of society instead of stigmatized, but that’s another debate.

Lots of love, stay safe and be the best ally you can to sex workers.
xx
April Killian