Why Sex Workers Want Decriminalisation
We have created these resources utilising the Scarlet Alliance Decriminalisation Briefing Paper and the Decriminalize Sex Work website to ensure they align with international advocacy objectives.
What is decriminalisation?
The decriminalisation of sex work repeals sex work-specific criminal and licensing laws. This framework recognises sex work as work, and opens the sex industry’s access to the civil laws that protect and govern all other workforces. This allows sex workers access to labour and industrial rights, and removes the harmful presence of police from their everyday lives.
Licensing = Partial criminalisation
The licensing framework creates a two-tiered system where most sex workers are forced to work outside the law. These laws—most frequently written by people with zero experience in the sex industry—directly impede our ability to make decisions about where, when, how, and with whom we work based on our individual health and safety needs. They are also often ambiguous, confusing, and illogical.
Criminalising our clients puts us in danger
The Entrapment Model (aka ‘Nordic’ or ‘Swedish’ model) creates a ‘buyers market’, where sex workers must cater to and prioritise their client’s need to avoid arrest over their own health and safety. This environment pushes sex workers away from populated areas, forces them to rush or even skip screenings, and — due to there being fewer clients willing to take the risk of seeing a sex worker illegally — pushes workers to take jobs they would usually deny, just to make a living wage.
Decriminalisation = Labour and industrial rights
Decriminalisation is not absence of regulation. It is a whole-of-government approach. Decrim opens up the civil protections afforded to all other workers and workforces to those working in the sex industry. Civil laws protect people’s health, safety, privacy, autonomy, and human and industrial rights. Criminal laws that apply to everyone are still enforced.
Read more on the Tryst Link blog x
TLC, aka Tryst Love Credits, are credits workers use to pay to advertise on Tryst Link. We pay writers 200TLC per 800-1500w article.
200TLC equates to 200EURO (approx. 220USD). Being compensated in TLC means you get to keep that cash in your pocket, lessening the risk of banking or payment processor discrimination — or having to deal with bitcoin — when advertising on Tryst Link.
Tryst Link will always have free plans, but being able to pay with your writing makes standard and premium plans more accessible to all workers.
We understand only a small part of the sex worker community use online advertising sites.
As such, we also publish writers who do not use Tryst Link. If you are not a current member and would like to be published, please reach out to us to discuss other options.
Pitch via our blog!! Xx
“Tryst has always been built for sex workers, on the knowledge and expertise of sex workers.
Our team, based in decriminalised Australia and New Zealand, has shaped everything about the platform based on what we understand. But our community is global and growing, and the world is changing. We know our experiences can’t always represent yours.
So we’re doing something that, as far as we know, has never been done before: real market research with sex workers—not academic research, not research done about us, but research that treats sex workers seriously as a market, and as small business owners who deserve reliable services.
For us, designing appropriate market research starts with working openly and transparently, and sharing what we’re doing with you. In any other industry, you’d hire a market research firm. In ours, that’s just not possible. So we’re doing it ourselves, and we’ve committed to doing it right.”
Maya Deva runs us through our upcoming rounds of market research.
Read the full article at the link in our bio! Xx
“Throughout my life and career as a sex worker, I’ve had to learn how to navigate patriarchal expectations. The expectations of who I am allowed to be in and outside of work as a femme person, a queer person, and as a Black person were at first loud, restrictive and exhausting. They told me that beauty had specific rules. That “femininity” was rigid, it required softness, silence and compliance and desirability was something narrow, fragile and rarely meant for someone like me. I’ve done camming, stripping and other forms of sex work - but becoming a professional dominatrix fundamentally changed how I understood beauty, power, and myself.
Growing up in a white-supremacist, patriarchal, heterosexual culture, beauty felt limited and unattainable at times. It was presented through a slim, rigid lens.
For feminine/femme people, especially Black women, the lesson comes early: be pleasant, be small, be quiet. We are rewarded for softness, compliance, and taking up limited space. We are taught that young girls should be seen, not heard. The strength women of all races represent is only tolerated when it’s convenient to others. Confidence is often reframed as arrogance, attitude or abrasiveness.”
Goddess Imani St John describes how becoming a Pro Domme made her whole life powerful... ✨✨
Read the full article at the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“Meta and Ray-Ban’s smart glasses have been commercially available since 2021, and sex workers have raised privacy concerns since their release. With the ability to record everything a wearer sees and hears, our community already faces documented risks from these products. Internal documents now reveal that Meta is actively developing facial recognition capabilities for their smart glasses—posing significant threats to sex workers’ privacy, safety, and anonymity.”
Misty Wren on Smart Glasses and facial recognition 👓👓
Read the full article on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“Editor’s Note: Our author Eddy shares a fiction piece that imagines what a day might look and feel like if sex work was decriminalised and a UBI (Universal Basic Income) was instituted in the UK.
At the school gates, Lauren gave her daughter a kiss and double-checked her backpack for her lunchbox.
“See you at 3,” Lauren said.
“OK,” replied her daughter.
“I love you,” she said.
“Love you too.”
Lauren smiled to herself as she walked away, feeling a strange nostalgia for the present. She knew it wouldn’t be long before any attempt to kiss her daughter goodbye at the school gates would be met with a furious, humiliated ‘Mum!’, and that she wouldn’t be caught dead telling her mum she loved her. Lauren wanted to grasp these moments and hold onto them forever. It felt impossible to fully enjoy them because she was so scared of losing them. Happy days with her daughter were always tinged with fear that things would change.”
@edftmxx imagines the world a day post decrim... 💙💙💙
Read the full story on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“In-person work gives me the ability to work (or not work) as I need to. I don’t have to answer to anyone and I can set my own schedule and travel when I want to. It has given me the opportunity to focus on my health and my happiness.
I’ve had a lot of fun and I’ve met some very interesting and amazing people since I started.”
We take a Tryst with Roni James ✨✨
Read the full interview at the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“Here is a list of some of my favorite video games that my fellow e-thots might appreciate, hate or like to nibble at. I would like the lovely reader to look forward to me writing future articles about these listed titles and grouped themes. All titles will include us Sex Workers whether they do us good, or terribly.
AAA games that I love
Long games that have a lot to say, all of which include us Sex Workers. Containing high frame rate delights for the eyes. First person shooters with a 400 million budget such as 2077, a dystopian, idealistic oasis for the eyes. TechMeds to prescribe. Cyber vitamin- candy. Yummy yummy and very pretty. Is consuming these in binge amounts good for you? Kinda don’t care. No thoughts, just blood and beauty. Why do I enjoy being lost in a digital ‘open world?’ A Painterly facade to run into. Go in blind? The anticipatorily exciting feeling that I could see anything in this huge gamescape that I have not researched at all. Let me lead you through mental escapes. TechMeds to prescribe. Worlds so vast that you could be Isekai’d into them, and it would be ok for a couple days. Cyber vitamin-candy.”
@nikkepropdx and the Gonzo Gamer Girl Guide 🎮
Read the full piece on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
‘OnlyFans has redefined sex work and the ways in which it operates. By letting performers set their own rates, create on their own terms, and connect directly with audiences, it has given many the opportunity to bypass exploitative websites, pimps, and studios. For some, it has meant safer working conditions, financial independence, and creative freedom.
Yet, as it operates in the orbit of Instagram-era aesthetics, online sex work often comes packaged in a curated, high-gloss image that mirrors influencer culture. Sex work is part erotic performance, part lifestyle marketing, and subsequently it thrives within this environment. The same forces that help it spread also shape who gets seen, how empowerment is defined, and what risks are obscured from view. For those who enjoy building this aesthetic, it can be an empowering creative outlet.
It can also paint an incomplete picture—one where the labor, safety planning, and the emotional toll of sex work remain hidden behind the sheen of glamour.’
@Devirgined_olive_oil_ discusses the aestheticization of OnlyFans...
Read the full article on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“I don’t think that there was a precise moment when I knew I wanted to be a sex worker. For nearly the first decade of performing sex work, I couldn’t fully acknowledge what I was doing.
As a teenager, I wanted to be a park ranger and then, as I started college, a farmer. I was actually a farmer for many years while also performing sex work as a side hustle. From 2011 through 2013, I worked on a few different farms to learn as much as I could and eventually spent seven years managing my own small herd of dairy goats (plus a large garden for my own use). Although I find it incredibly rewarding, farming is a job that can be tremendously difficult physically and offers very little financial return.
Sex work has not ever been my primary income, which is a privilege. I am not a farmer anymore, but I have a different career I love and am passionate about. Despite my love for my vanilla career, it still does not meet my financial needs.”
Em Rose shares the story of shedding her internalised whorephobia and stepping more confidently into sex work. 🌹🌹🌹
Read the full article on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“I didn’t come to erotic education because I felt like I was a sexual superstar.
I came to it through my own desire to learn. As someone who considered myself thoughtful, self-aware, and deeply curious, I was somehow quietly confused about my own erotic life. I had done a lot of reading, reflecting, and a lot of therapy. Yet when it came to looking after my desire and pleasure, I still felt lost.
Don’t get me wrong, I had some experiences under my belt. It’s just that they ranged from stomach-clenchingly awkward and fumbly to utterly ecstatic, without me really knowing what was making the difference or how I could get more of the latter.
As a sex worker I met lots of people who felt the same. Clients would come to me flummoxed by what their bodies were doing during sex. They had questions about how to become a better lover or overcome anxiety about their bodies. Many expressed a sense of frustration, feeling that there was a whole world of knowledge and experience they had glimpses of but couldn’t reliably access without anyone they could intentionally explore and practice with.
Interactive Erotic Education emerged as a response to that gap.”
A rundown of Interactive Erotic Education by Belle Erotic 💕💖
Read the full article on the Tryst Link blog!
Link in bio Xx
“I was lucky enough to be shown the 2011 film L’Apollonide (souvenirs de la maison close), directed by Bertrand Bonello, in Paris by my film class professor in 2015. L’Apollonide is one of those rare films which can completely transport me into its world for the duration of the movie, causing me to forget where in time I really am at the moment.
Where, and when, L’Apollonide transports the viewer to early 1900s Paris, within the walls of a luxurious brothel named L’Apollonide. This is during the famed days of old Paris when brothels were legal, and legendary artists, aristocrats, politicians, and interesting characters made up the clientele of the most elite brothels. Aspects of the film, like the regular presence of an artist as the client of one worker, and that same artist requesting for another worker to enter a bathtub filled with champagne, were based on the real-life Parisian brothel Le Chabanais—the famous artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was a frequent client of Le emop, and he routinely sketched and painted sex workers. King Edward VII of the United Kingdom often visited Le Chabanais when he was a prince and kept a copper bathtub there for the purpose of filling it with champagne.”
empress mirage reviews the 2011 film L’Apollonide: souvenirs de la maison close ✨✨✨
Read the full review at the Tryst Link blog.
Link in bio Xx
