December 17 Day 7: Building Our Safety

For most people, safety means calling 911, trusting social services, or turning to institutions for protection. For sex workers, those options often don’t exist - or worse, they make things more dangerous. Mainstream institutions continue to treat sex workers as problems to be solved rather than people with the right to safety. Too often, we’re criminalized, pathologized, or “rescued” against our will. Police raids are framed as interventions; child welfare agencies use sex work as grounds for family separation; courts label us as unreliable witnesses. The result is a system where safety is conditional - available only to those who fit a narrow moral mold. When protection comes with punishment, when help looks like handcuffs, when “rescue” means losing your home, your kids, or your freedom - people stop asking for help. That’s the quiet violence of neglect. It’s not that systems don’t know how to protect sex workers; it’s that they choose not to.