Well it turns out I’m bad at writing everyday.
A lot has happened since I last posted, including the discovery that Substack threads are not the most visually or navigationally-friendly way to share information. Because of that discovery I began building the Decoding Stigma website (hopefully launching this week!), to provide a cleaner “storefront” for the group. But I will continue using this platform as our process documentation blog for now.
In the meantime, a long-overdue entry documenting some outcomes from our first group meeting in August. Allies from seven different universities participated, representing departments of tech, design, law, public health, and clinical social work. We used the hour to have an open discussion about why a group such as Decoding Stigma was necessary, and ideate on things we would like to achieve (or at least see more of in the world).
Here’s a bulleted summary of our first discussion:
What do we want our group to do/be?
Mutual support
A space to process experiences navigating academia with “two identities” (academy/labor)
Support/resources/destigmatization for students who are current or former sex workers
Liberatory futures: make space for conversations that don’t take precedence when there are so many immediate crises and fires
Feedback on ongoing personal projects
Coalition building
Pool knowledge: Combine the expertise of people in every part of the academia/tech/sex work Venn Diagram
Connect a network of the radical individuals “stranded” on different institutional islands
Make a “resource of resources” (archiving? Wiki curation? reading lists?)
Regular but casual paneling/book club/curriculum - lowest-stakes participation
Facilitate personal connections across sex work/art/design/tech/research communities
Ensure our conversations are intersectional
“Participation tiers” depending on time that can be dedicated to the group
Reframe the conversation in academia
Creating toolkits for people who want to make sex work positive tech products
Widely available online resources: syllabi, live and/or recorded classes
Framing inequitable access to tech as structural violence
Ideas for overlooked areas of policy research
Sex Worker Review Board: Ethical guidelines/standards for researchers and technologists (the “cruelty-free bunny” logo of sex work)
Complicate and trouble existing histories: Educate tech/design/art students about sex workers’ key roles in developing the internet and related technologies
Make sure sex workers’ perspectives are heard within existing tech/labor discourses, e.g. platform and gig labor, content moderation labor
Redistribute resources and opportunities
Institutionally-situated allies can create opportunities for people to build their resumes (eg: use “merit”/institutionally-protected status to create opportunities)
Write letters of recommendation
Invite sex workers to speak at events & conferences
Spearhead projects & collaborations with sex workers
Seize opportunities for institutional funding toward the above (aka PAY sex workers for their knowledge, consultation, and participation!!)
This is what we came up with in our first hour ever conversing as a group. Participants described themselves as tired of having to explain why these topics are important to their academic peers or mentors, and as feeling relieved to have a space held where others in the room “get it.”
Obviously people came with a lot to throw on the table of our first meeting—it’s almost overwhelming to consider all the issues that need to be addressed when sex workers are rendered voiceless by tech/academic researchers and developers. To be clear, this is just a sampling of a fully exhaustive list, and goes to show just how much work there is to do in this arena.
So where do we go from here? How does this evolve into something more tangible? What path do we forge to make sure we don’t get lost in “all that needs to be done” and end up getting nothing done instead?
This is what we are moving toward, and I do hope you will follow.
If you are interested in joining our next conversation this Friday, September 18th (5pm EST) please email us at decodingstigma@protonmail.com.