@swopbehindbars.bsky.social
Sex Worker Community Support Line - 1-877-776-2004 - Chat for support on our website at www.swopbehindbars.org We create Community from the Inside Out!
Embroidery in light pink fabric, in a wooden hoop. There are four children playing london bridge in the style of a 1950’s coloring book. The text reads: if you want community, you have to be community. In a childlike font
Community isn’t something you show up to consume. It requires you to contribute, collaborate, and commit-create.
If you want community, you have to be community.
#craftivism
We are once compiling a list of names for #Dec17 this year. If you have names to add to the list, please email us at December17@swopusa.org
#D17
You cannot build trauma-informed services on top of carceral logic, exploitative labor conditions, and structures that burn through staff.
22.11.2025 21:17 — 👍 30 🔁 11 💬 1 📌 0All hands on deck!
22.11.2025 20:24 — 👍 194 🔁 126 💬 1 📌 0
Quote from article on minors accessing porn states that Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube are the top sites minors access porn.
Remember this when you see scare headlines about the high rate of minors seeing “porn” online: They’re either not seeing it on porn sites or what they’re seeing isn’t actually porn.
It turns out minors not necessarily know what “porn” even is.
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/no...
Next up in our solidarities series is this brilliant piece on an unlikely tactical alliance.
Unsettling and important look at the tensions involved and lessons from it.
By Alex Andrews of @swopbehindbars.bsky.social for @beyondslavery.bsky.social
www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-tr...
Carry Their Names Forward
This December 17, we invite you to honor those we’ve lost by supporting those still here.
Make a gift in memory of a fallen community member
Join or host a vigil in your city
Donate to sustain the work
#D17 #Dec17
www.swopbehindbars.org/donate
Each year, we transform grief into action - through policy advocacy, harm reduction, peer support, and storytelling. We don’t just mourn the violence; we confront the structures that create it.
This is the work that SWOP Behind Bars does every single day: turning remembrance into resistance.
In a world that criminalizes survival, grief is a political act. It pushes us to ask hard questions:
Why are sex workers still dying at disproportionate rates?Why are Black, Brown, Indigenous, and trans women most targeted?
Why do we keep funding raids instead of resources?
Every December, we read names. Names gathered from news reports, advocacy networks, and our own community. Some are known, others are “Jane Doe.”
All matter.
We speak their names to make visible what the world tries to erase. We gather because remembrance is resistance and silence is complicity.
#D17 is the reminder that every name read aloud at a vigil represents a life cut short by stigma, criminalization, poverty, and indifference. And yet, even in mourning, we find movement.
Grief has always been our catalyst.
As we move toward December 17 - the 22nd Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers - we remember those we’ve lost and honor the fight that continues.
For many of us, this day is not just a memorial.
It’s a reckoning.
"The OSA is likely driving adults into a more fragmented, less regulated ecosystem, largely because people are uneasy about handing over ID. We’re probably not going to see less engagement with porn, we’ll see different routes to it — many of them far outside the spaces the law was written for.”
14.11.2025 17:31 — 👍 215 🔁 107 💬 4 📌 7
Donate to sex worker–led organizations like SWOP Behind Bars, who are feeding the families the system forgot
Because while some people are hosting banquets, we’re out here making sure no one gets left behind at the table - and we could use your help carrying the plates
donorbox.org/feed-the-fam...
People aren’t asking for luxury - they’re asking for food and dignity. They’re asking for the systems built with their taxes to stop treating survival as a privilege.
We can’t eat political promises.
We can’t fill a pantry with excuses.
But we can take care of each other.
Hunger has always been a policy choice disguised as an economic inevitability. Every “temporary pause” in benefits leaves a permanent scar. Every “budget cut” means another kid eating ketchup packets for dinner. And it’s not just the poorest who feel it anymore.
13.11.2025 00:22 — 👍 11 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0The divide isn’t abstract - it’s physical. You can taste it, smell it, see it on every empty shelf. It’s a surreal kind of cruelty to live in a country that can throw million-dollar celebrations while children go to bed with nothing. This isn’t about politics - it’s about priorities.
13.11.2025 00:21 — 👍 22 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
Please boost:
Food fundraiser for SW moms and activists hit hardest by SNAP freezes.
donorbox.org/feed-the-fam...
This fundraiser was started by a SWing mom in our network, and is a collaboration between @swopbehindbars.bsky.social and @newmoonnetwork.bskyverified.social
I hate watching everything they were warned about come to fruition.
12.11.2025 20:05 — 👍 130 🔁 52 💬 0 📌 0
"Age verification is not just a major invasion of privacy, but bonanza for cybercriminals. With millions of internet users uploading images of their faces alongside government IDs so they can access online content, age verification companies have become extremely attractive targets for hackers."
12.11.2025 22:01 — 👍 278 🔁 234 💬 3 📌 8
Hidden in the controversial about UK "choking ban" proposal are a host of even more egregious proposals that could:
* make camming illegal
* redefine escort ads as pimping
* render model contracts unenforceable
* criminalize discussions of teen sexuality
And a whole lot more ...
we’re not asking for charity. We’re asking for courage.
To believe that sex workers deserve safety without strings
To invest in solutions that save lives without cages or stigma
This is not about headlines. Or handcuffs. It's about Hope.
www.swopbehindbars.org/post/a-seaso...
What does it look like to fund safety instead of shame?
Commissary funds for food and hygiene products
Reentry kits
The Power Outside Reentry Program, connecting people to real resources
The Hotline, where someone can call for help without fearing arrest
Mentor-by-Mail
Millions of dollars are poured into “anti-trafficking” raids and carceral rescue programs. These efforts often create more harm than they prevent.
Under the banner of “rescue,” people lose housing, income, IDs, and custody of their children. Survivors are forced into programs that punish poverty
At SWOP Behind Bars, we don’t take pity donations. We build partnerships rooted in accountability, dignity, and trust. Because our goal isn’t to “save” sex workers - it’s to dismantle the systems that criminalize, isolate, and endanger them in the first place.
08.11.2025 21:50 — 👍 12 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0Charity vs. Solidarity
Charity asks, “How can I help them?”
Solidarity asks, “What do we need to build together?”
Charity is transactional - it’s about giving to feel good.
Solidarity is relational - it’s about investing in shared survival.
"Whenever you speak to anyone in the sex work space, whether they work for a sex toy company or are a porn star, these are the most educated, understanding, compassionate people you will ever meet. They know everything about safe sex. They know everything about navigating things consensually."
08.11.2025 17:36 — 👍 186 🔁 55 💬 3 📌 4I love this response
08.11.2025 18:05 — 👍 55 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
Join Us-
Be part of the movement that refuses to leave anyone behind. Together, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done - taking care of us, because nobody does it better.
#WeTakeCareOfUs
www.swopbehindbars.org/donate
This November, we’re launching our Season of Solidarity - a month-long fundraising and storytelling series that celebrates the power of mutual aid and the people who make it possible. Every contribution helps keep our hotline open, our mentors connected, and our community cared for.
07.11.2025 01:59 — 👍 12 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
