Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective (BSWAC)

Six women of various races and heights wearing dresses, bikinis, or fetish gear, standing behind a table which reads BSWAC in the front and contains multiple flyers and buttons.

We had the best time tabling at Fist Boston on Monday! I’m told that someone passed out because of how sexy our asses were 🍑

Three people smiling behind a table in an alleyway full of supplies, with two boxes of clothes in front and two pairs of sneakers.

This weekend, we reached ~25 people with our street outreach at Mass & Cass, giving out feminine products, condoms & lube, water, snacks, underwear, socks, and makeup.

It was harder to find people this week, as the police have been cracking down lately and pushing people into hiding.

This is definitely not ok, so sorry this happened to you!!

We testified at Cambridge city counsel to educate on the needs of sex workers in the city, emphasizing decriminalization so that workers can seek help without fear of arrest when they are victims of a crime. When sex workers are safer, we are all safer. 💞
www.cambridgeday.com/2025/06/24/d...

Unhoused Aid Distro List | Amazon Gift List

Want to support our street outreach?

Here’s an Amazon wishlist with the most requested supplies!

www.amazon.com/registries/g...

Two young white women standing in front of a brick building, one wearing sunglasses, the other throwing a peace sign and duck lips in a pink t-shirt that says Decriminalize Sex Work Now! BSWAC

Our first street outreach day at Mass & Cass was a success!

We saw ~25 people and gave out:
- 48 water bottles
- 46 chip bags
- ~50 condoms
- 25 makeup pieces
- ~10 outfits

Have something you’d like to donate for our next outreach day? Let us know! ❤️

These photos aren’t from our event, but we love having BSWAC at the Dyke March!

We were talking to so many people at Dyke March that we forgot to take pics 🥲

Thanks for sharing! ❤️

A play poster reading Mrs. Warren’s Profession, May 29-June 22, 2025, by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Eric Tucker, Bedlum. There’s a photo of a woman in a headscarf and sunglasses smiling with cash between her teeth.

A purple flyer with the text: 06/19 Feminism, Labor, and Generational Perspectives on Sex Work Thursday, June 19 - 9:45 PM featuring: Linda C. McClain Robert Kent Professor of Law and co-director of the BU Program on Reproductive Justice at Boston University School of Law Gowri Vijayakumar Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies The Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective

Join us tomorrow night at Central Square Theater for a post-show talk about Mrs. Warren’s Profession, a play about a former sex worker turned madam whose adult daughter confronts her about her work.

100 years after Bernard Shaw wrote this play, the issues it tackles remain just as relevant.

A group of 5 people holding red umbrellas in a march and a pink banner reading “Whores Started Pride. Decriminalize Sex Work Now! BSWAC Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective”

Two white women in pink shirts reading “Decriminalize Sex Workers Now! BSWAC” standing under a white tent behind a table with a hot pink table cloth and several flyers, and in front of a cardboard sign reading Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective

We had an amazing time marching and tabling at Boston Pride and Dyke March this weekend! 🌈

We honored the mothers of our movement, Sylvia Rivera & Marsha P. Johnson, two trans sex workers who played key roles in the Stonewall riot that started Pride.

We were moved to tears by all the cheers ❤️☂️

Thank you for sharing! ❤️

HAPPY (late) INTERNATIONAL WHORE'S DAY! Support MA sex workers by writing to your legislators! BSWAC

We are currently trying to pass these bills to promote SW safety in Massachusetts: H1980 - An Act to Promote the Health and Safety of People in the Sex Trade H2467 - An Act to Study the Decriminalization of Sex Work H1747 - An Act Relative to Safe Reporting H2634 - An Act Relative to Sexual Assault by an Officer Go to the link below to send a letter to your legislator! bit.ly/SupportMASexWorkers BSWAC

This week was International Whore’s Day! ☂️

In honor of all the sex workers who’ve fought for their rights, we’re asking you to write to your Massachusetts legislators to ask them to co-sponsor these bills for sex workers’ safety.

Go to bit.ly/SupportMASexWorkers 💕

My name is Siobhan, I live in Cambridge and I'm a member of Cambridge DSA. I'm here to speak in support of sex work decriminalization. I'm here in a personal capacity and not on behalf of my employer, but I want to tell you what I do for work, so that you understand why this issue is so important to me. I provide free legal services to working-class LGBTQ people. I help with discrimination in employment, housing, and other public places. Unfortunately, employment discrimination against LGBTQ people persists and is especially pervasive against transgender job-seekers. This exacerbates housing insecurity and homelessness caused by familial rejection that is still all too widespread. It's no wonder, then, that many trans people look beyond legal employment avenues. Cambridge says it "will take active steps to ensure that transgender and gender diverse individuals have access to healthcare, housing, education, and employment without fear of discrimination." These are lofty goals, though, and we are far from achieving them in Cambridge or anywhere else in this country. Compared to cis people, trans people still earn much less money, are much more likely to be unemployed, and are much more likely to experience homelessness.

With that backdrop, it's no surprise that many trans people are involved in sex work. People need homes, they need food, they need healthcare, and sex work provides a way to meet those needs. Criminalizing sex workers or their clients doesn't fix that. It doesn't meet anyone's basic needs, or make our city any safer. It just forces more conflict between vulnerable people and a criminal legal system that exacerbates these issues. Court costs and legal fees make financial woes worse, and arrest or incarceration can lead to unspeakable violence, especially against trans women. Criminalization also casts a shadow over every encounter between sex workers and clients-when sex work is forced into a black market, it makes it even tougher to address problem clients. Trans women, and all sex workers, deserve better than jails, fines, and abusive cops. They're telling you the stakes here. Listen to them.

my comments in support of @bostonswac.bsky.social and sex work decriminalization from today’s Cambridge City Council committee meeting

Thank you so much for coming out in support! ❤️

LISTENING SESSION TRANSITION HOUSE In response to the recent Cambridge brothel case, Transition House is launching a community listening session series to gather essential input on how our city can address commercial sex exploitation. We are asking our community what accountability looks like through a restorative justice framework-focusing on healing harm, addressing root causes, and creating systemic change. These sessions will explore concrete actions the City Council can take to support individuals currently being sexually exploited in Cambridge while considering impactful prevention strategies. Please fill out this 5 question survey and share it with your network: English: https://bit.ly/thouselisten Español: https://bit.ly/thouseescuchar Tiếng Việt: https://bit.ly/thousenghe Português: https:// bit.ly/4ms1GRk

Transition House, a domestic violence shelter in Cambridge, is seeking input from the community in response to the Cambridge brothel case.

We are concerned by the one-sided framing of the questions, and hope sex workers will be listened to. Share your input here:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The Supreme Court Case That Could End Porn as We Know It An anti-porn backlash is in full swing. The Supreme Court might supercharge it.

Our member @saschaec.bsky.social for @gqmagazine.bsky.social today, on how sexual expression is under attack.

Many of our members are porn workers, and these misguided age verification laws will hurt their livelihoods.

www.gq.com/story/suprem...

Criminalizing clients would harm sex workers, not help them - The Boston Globe It makes the industry more dangerous because clients are less willing to participate in safety screening, and it makes sex workers poorer by targeting their livelihoods.

We don’t want our clients arrested - we want labor rights, affordable housing, and free higher education ✊

Link to the letter here: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/04/o...

LETTERS Criminalizing clients would harm sex workers, not help them Updated May 4, 2025, 2:30 a.m. A brothel ring based in Virginia was operating out of units 109, 435, and 530 at 90 Fawcett St. in Cambridge. NATHAN KLIMA FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE With the article "Cambridge brothel ring case may act as deterrent" (Metro, April 27), the Globe once again has published an article about sex work without including the perspectives of any active sex workers or sex workers' rights organizations. The article quotes advocates and law enforcement officials who celebrate the increased criminalization of sex workers' clients, but I fear that such a trend will harm sex workers in our community. I have been doing research on sex work and human trafficking for more than a decade, including interviewing more than 250 sex workers in four countries, and I am a founding member of the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective. From this work, I have found that most sex workers do not want their clients to be arrested. Criminalizing clients makes the industry more

With the article "Cambridge brothel ring case may act as deterrent" (Metro, April 27), the Globe once again has published an article about sex work without including the perspectives of any active sex workers or sex workers' rights organizations. The article quotes advocates and law enforcement officials who celebrate the increased criminalization of sex workers' clients, but I fear that such a trend will harm sex workers in our community. I have been doing research on sex work and human trafficking for more than a decade, including interviewing more than 250 sex workers in four countries, and I am a founding member of the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective. From this work, I have found that most sex workers do not want their clients to be arrested. Criminalizing clients makes the industry more dangerous because clients are less willing to participate in safety screening, and it makes sex workers poorer by targeting their livelihoods. Global human rights organizations agree. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the World Health Organization all have called for the full decriminalization of sex work. Good journalism should be balanced and include the voices of those about whom it writes. The Globe's reporting on the brothel case demonstrates a failure to consult empirical evidence. Jessica Van Meir Somerville The writer is a doctoral candidate in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Our member @jessicavanmeir.bsky.social had a letter published in the @bostonglobe.com yesterday!

Criminalizing clients puts us in danger - when clients are scared of arrest, we have fewer clients to choose from and have to lower our prices or accept dangerous clients who we would otherwise refuse.

Cambridge has seen actual trafficking victims; law enforcement and judicial system officials know what it looks like. Those victims deserve for the term not be diluted, I feel.

Yes, that’s exactly right. Calling all sex work trafficking undermines the gravity of that crime. Sex work can also take place in an exploitative work environment without amounting to trafficking - hence why labor rights are needed.

Thanks @mhlevy.bsky.social for the detailed coverage

@enbrown.bsky.social

The detail, repeated in a February 1, 2024, indictment, was that Han once locked the door of a rented apartment behind her with workers inside awaiting customers. It seems to be the protection's sole detail supporting the common understanding of trafficking, and Foley's footnote even describes it as an "exception" to the fact that workers were allowed to leave the apartments where they worked - that "investigators observed on video surveillance inside one of the common hallways of the apartment buildings that Han locked the unit door from the outside after the women entered the unit." "It does not indicate that the women could not simply unlock the door from the inside," the Boston Sex Workers and Allies Collective noted, "as is the case in most apartments." An employee of the Atmark, the building where the door-locking took place, said Thursday that all its apartment doors can be unlocked from the inside, and that renters are not allowed to replace locks - currently high-tech devices controlled by smartphone - with their own fixtures. Perhaps a surprising aspect to the locked door making it into the indictment and sentencing document was how the act was described in the special agent's affidavit: "I believe Han utilized this tactic so that the commercial sex providers felt that they had to stay in the unit to perform sex acts for cash on behalf of the prostitution network." This part wasn't repeated in the documents that followed. That a door had been locked went on to be used by media such as USA Today and The Boston Globe. The Globe cited the locked door twice in an article in which advocates described sex work as exploitative, with reporters using it as an example of "coercive tactics" that also included "preparing the apartment before the women arrived."

The @cambridgeday.com has confirmed what we suspected - the apartment in the Cambridge brothel case could be unlocked from the inside, debunking the government affidavit’s claim that the women were locked inside.

Cheers to responsible journalism 👏

www.cambridgeday.com/2025/03/27/s...

Are you 18-34 and have engaged in sexual acts for financial compensation?

We’ve just learned of this research study by @laragerassi.bsky.social which will pay you a $75 gift card in exchange for a one hour interview!

uwmadison.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Today’s the day! Join us for a conversation about migrant sex workers’ rights at 3pm in Jamaica Plain.

Cambridge brothel case: What's the point? Massachusetts is in the midst of prosecuting people who patronized a fancy sex business near Harvard University. It's been big news in certain corners,

The latest from @enbrown.bsky.social highlights what we’ve been pointing out in the Cambridge/Watertown brothel case: this case did not involve sex trafficking charges, but rather relies on the antiquated, racist Mann Act (formerly “White Slave Traffic Act”).

reason.com/2025/04/09/c...

Thanks to @chanellegallant.bsky.social @savannahsly.bskyverified.social @newmoonnetwork.bskyverified.social for helping put on this event! ❤️

PANEL & BOOK LAUNCH NOT YOUR RESCUE PROJECT MIGRANT SEX WORKERS FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE Join authors Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam for a conversation about immigration, bodily autonomy, and resistance. This event will also feature speakers from Boston Sex Workers & Allies Collective (BSWAC) and New Moon Network. CHANELLE GALLANT AND ELENE LAM FOREWORD BY HARSHA WALIA | AFTERWORD BY ROBYN MAYNARD NOT YOUR RESCUE PROJECT MIGRANT SEX WORKERS FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE Saturday April 19, 3-5pm Jamaica Plain, Boston RSVP Required, contact: events@newmoonfund.org Free and open to the public. BOSTON

Since the recent news about the Cambridge/Watertown brothel case, we’ve been calling for the public to listen to migrant sex workers.

This Saturday, you can! Join us for the launch of #NotYourRescueProject book, with leaders from Asian migrant sex worker collective Butterfly.

Red and black graphic reading “hi! we’re BSWAC” with a collage of diverse sex workers in black and white, including one holding a sign reading “Power to the People” and another with a sign reading “Support your local hooker”

We’re now on Instagram!
Give us a follow ❤️

www.instagram.com/bostonswac?i...