Safe Space

Safe Space is a volunteer run support centre for sex workers by sex workers and allies. Our model is one of empowerment with the goal of meeting women where they're at and helping sex workers operate with safety and dignity. For the past eight years, we have been open every Monday and Tuesday evening, providing support and advocacy. By providing harm-reduction supplies, HIV & STI/STD educational resources, cosmetics, clothes, hygienic goods, first aid, food, coffee, tea and information about current services in London, we have supported and connected with hundreds of sex workers in London. Sex workers are a group of people more often spoken about than spoken with; they have not been consulted in forming the rules. Policy decisions regarding sex work have been imposed on sex workers rather than in collaboration with them. As such, speaking as sex workers and close allies, Safe Space states firmly that we recognize a person's right to choose or refuse sex work and we promote the decriminalization of sex work. We do this because when sex work is criminalized, women become even more marginalized, stigmatized and are at a heightened risk of experiencing violence. They are often reluctant to seek services that will help with their emotional, mental and physical health and safety. Along with first hand experience, a huge body of Canadian research supports that stigmatizing sex work, including criminalization, leads to it being hidden and an increase in dangerous working conditions, poor health across multiple indicators, and significant barriers to social supports (Benoit et al., Weitzer 2017, Lazarus et al. 2011, Krusi et al. 2014, Bruckert & Hannem 2013). As long as people do sex work, they have the right to work with enhanced safety. Rather than targeting individuals through laws that criminalize, let us focus on capitalism and patriarchy and the inequities that come from them. In the meantime, telling anyone who is a sex worker that they cannot speak about the issue, that somehow you know better than them and want to help them, that is the worst form of stigmatizing violence.