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ISSUE 1: Creative Control

Welcome to Working It, a newsletter about creative ideas to give more voice and agency to sex workers around the world.

Working It is a new collaboration between Red Insight and Proximate, two media outlets committed to journalism on advocacy and participation.

We’re launching this project because we share a belief that sex workers need to be treated as experts in their own lives.

Too often, sex workers are excluded from decision-making about their own communities – their autonomy disregarded, and their voices silenced. 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight lived experience leadership that shifts decision-making power to sex workers.

For this first issue, we're looking at media and the arts, and the power of controlling the narrative. You can sign up for future issues here – thank you for joining us on this journey.

FROM THE EDITOR

I felt goosebumps, and a sense of belonging. This was the first representation of sex work that I'd been able to relate to.

The first time I watched the Sex Worker’s Opera it unlocked something in me. It showed perfectly how the world can close in on you when you're struggling with shame and living in fear – but also how much having a voice can turn this around. 

The show made me feel less alone. No wonder I'd been unable to articulate my situation until then. 

The Director's support plus my sex work mantra: “Fake it til you make it” got me into my stripper heels to step out onto the stage for the first time. And after that first performance, I knew what I had to do: come out to my Mom about my sex work, and take her to see the show!

We write about the Sex Worker’s Opera's first decade in this first issue of Working It, which we're calling Creative Control.

From film to journalism to theater, the sex worker story is rarely told by those who have lived it. And it's had an effect on how those stories are told.

But that’s changing. Over the past few years, a number of independent projects have popped up to reclaim the narrative – film festivals in Amsterdam and Dublin, and sex workers' portrayals in movies. 

We're also excited to feature stories that discuss challenging newsrooms on honesty and inclusion, asserting voice through art like the opera, and a personal exploration of the performative nature of sex work and gender. 

    – Cass Traitor, Red Insight

The Rise of the Sex Worker Film Festival

“Can you name a single sex working director? I doubt it.”

Film festivals can be artistic gatekeepers; and that sets the tone for how sex work is portrayed in culture. But in recent years, sex worker-led film festivals from Dublin to Amsterdam are reclaiming the narrative. [READ]

The Revolutionary Art of the Sex Worker's Opera

This year marks a decade since the first performance of the Sex Worker's Opera, at a small club in London.

The opera has grown from a community theater project into an international sellout show – using art to combat stigma and advocate for policy reform. [READ]

The Fight to Hold Newsrooms Accountable 

The Reimagining Sex Work collective was created to challenge Dutch media on the many problematic terms and images they use to report on sex work.

The collective has created an image bank and media guide, and an exhibition that is touring around the Netherlands. [READ]

Thanks for reading!

Working It is a collaboration between two organizations committed to journalism on advocacy and participation:

Red Insight is an independent media platform run by sex workers for sex workers in the Netherlands

Proximate is an action-oriented media platform producing content and hosting events on participatory problem-solving

Reach out at hello@proximate.press or info@redinsight.org

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