Out of the dark: Inside the world of sex work
With clients ranging in age from 18 to 92, and tradies visiting in the morning before they head to the worksite, this is the inside story of a Queensland sex worker.
QWeekend
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It’s 6am on a Wednesday and Eva is on the ground floor of her two-storey Queenslander arranging throw cushions atop the fresh sheets she’s just put on her bed before starting work. Upstairs she can hear her flatmate moving around making breakfast. The muffled sound of clanging in the kitchen is reassuring – Eva is about to greet her first client, who will pay her for sex.
But what Eva, 34, is about to do is illegal.
Under Queensland’s complicated prostitution laws – providing sex for money is legal but having someone else on the premises while you do that is against the law.
Stripper Raven, 28, is passionate about all aspects of sex work. She sees clients, strips for private jobs and poses in erotic photography. She says she couldn’t imagine life outside the industry, but it’s incomprehensible that driving a fellow worker to a job could land her in court.
Fellow sex worker Bandy, 27, says every time a new client calls to inquire about a booking, he asks himself, “What if this person is actually a cop who is trying to entrap me?”
Yet if he’s concerned enough about a prospective client, simply texting a colleague to let them know he is safe, is breaking the law.
And even licenced brothel-workers, such as Charlie, who has colleagues in the next room, do not feel safe. Under the current laws more than 70 per cent of sex workers would not report crimes against them, according to a 2022 survey by Respect Inc.
“No one feels safe going to the police. We all just know that we won’t be taken seriously, at any stage of the process,” Charlie, 29, says.
This is the current state of sex work in Queensland: it’s legal to perform, but only if you’re willing to risk your safety.
But there’s a glimmer of hope for the members of this determined group who,
little by little, year by year, have knocked on every door in parliament to demand equality and respect.
The #DecrimQLD campaign was formed in 2017 and brought together people across the full range of sex-work workplaces to focus on repealing harmful licensing, Criminal Code and police powers laws. Now, it’s within reach.
The Queensland government is set to decriminalise sex work and abolish outdated legislation that means workers outside brothel settings must work alone.
A landmark Queensland Law Reform Commission blueprint for decriminalisation made 47 sweeping recommendations, which included removing advertising restrictions, abolishing police powers to undertake covert operations and treating the sector like any other business.
For Janelle Fawkes, sex worker and #DecrimQLD campaign leader, decriminalisation signifies the result of a dogged, decades-long fight by sex workers for equality.
“It’s no mean feat to campaign for change when becoming known as a sex worker could mean you experience vilification or criminalisation,” Fawkes says.
“For sex workers, decriminalisation would repeal sex-work specific laws that criminalise our safety strategies, so that existing laws and protections that cover all Queenslanders will also apply to our work.
“Our workplaces would have workplace health and safety regulations applied for the
first time.”
One of the most exciting changes for sex workers is that they would no longer be targeted for working together or checking in with another sex worker at the end of a booking.
“Instead, the police would have to take our reports of crime against us seriously,” she says.
“The impact of criminalisation on your mental health, access to services and ability to contribute to society equally can’t be underestimated.”
Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath says the government has made a commitment that legislation supporting the “important social justice reform” of decriminalisation will be brought in by the end of the year.
“We want to ensure that we can move away from the criminalisation of sex work to a much safer environment that allows for those who do work in this industry to be supported in doing that, and not feel like they need to be doing this potentially in an unlawful way and choosing between doing it lawfully or being safe,” D’Ath says.
“It also is about bringing us into line more with current standards and also other jurisdictions.”
Asked why people who are not directly or even indirectly involved in the sex industry should care, her answer is to the point.
“There is a social benefit for the whole community when criminalisation and marginalisation are lifted and members of the sex-work community have access to justice, industrial and human rights,” she says.
“Most Queenslanders think sex work is already decriminalised and are unlikely to notice any difference when the laws change.”
Sex workers come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, and with many different talents and are often doing a job they love, in a society that is determined to keep them hidden.
People will be surprised to learn that the state’s workforce could include your child’s teacher, the barista who serves your coffee, a neighbour you wave hello to while lugging the wheelie bin back, or a dear friend you’ve known since childhood.
In order to shine a light on an industry kept in the dark, Qweekend sat down with four Queenslanders who pulled back the covers on what life is really like as a sex worker in the Sunshine State.
EVA, 34
On meeting Eva, you may notice her girl-next-door look, not dissimilar to that of Hollywood megastar Scarlett Johansson, but the registered health professional says her acting days are long gone. Today, she prefers to be herself when meeting clients, rather than slipping into a concocted version of a sweet, young sex kitten.
Eva loves the freedom the job provides; she can work when and if she wants. At the moment her preference is for early-morning shifts, often seeing tradies before they head out onto work sites. She then has the rest of the day to spend doing some laps at the pool, hiking or reading one of the 60-odd books she gets through a year.
She loves meeting all different types of people – from ages 18 to 92, people from every possible occupation and from all different ethnicities and religious backgrounds.
But most of all she loves her community.
“There’s a real connectedness between other workers, some of my closest friends are sex workers I’ve met over the last 12 years. All over the world and all over Australia,” she says.
In fact, she shares her workspace with one of her best mates. Underneath an inner-Brisbane Queenslander home with a thriving vegetable garden and a very friendly black poodle, the women invite their clients.
It looks more like a trendy space than whatever image your mind might conjure about a place where people come to pay for sex. Eva says she spends most of her time in the workspace on jobs much less salacious than expected – washing towels and sheets and scrubbing the bathroom.
But if either her colleague, or her roommate, is in the house, thus making her feel safer when meeting strangers, it’s illegal. It’s also illegal for her to advertise exactly what services she will and won’t offer.
“Decriminalisation will mean not worrying about cops turning up to my work and pretending to be clients – that would be amazing,” she says.
Eva believes that decriminalisation will also help break down the constant social stigma.
“I think stigma is a word that’s not really that well understood. But I guess the way I explain it to people is, you know, I have friends that I had known for a long time and when I decided to tell them I was a sex worker there was this instant fear and disgust of me, this person they’ve known for a long time, and suddenly their opinion of you is completely shifted.”
She says got into the sex industry for the same reason many people do – money.
“How to do prostitution in Melbourne?” she asked Google one morning 12 years ago when, freshly unemployed, she was trying to come up with ways she could make money.
“I lost my housing, I was in a lot of debt and when I was thinking of what else I might be
able to do to try and get work when I Googled,” she says.
For two years, Eva worked in brothels, before moving into private work, which she still does in addition to her job as a health worker, and “very clearly” remembers her first shift.
“I remember thinking, ‘is this it?’. Like, I thought this was supposed to be a bad thing, but this seems fine. I had no big feelings. I thought I was supposed to feel violated or disgusted and I just didn’t. Because it turns out; it’s just sex. Just adult, consensual sex.”
RAVEN, 28
The ticket out of her grandparents’ suburban Brisbane rumpus room for then 21-year-old Raven was sex work, but getting her family to accept that was a journey.
As a young person always in touch with her sensuality, with an interest in stripping and erotic modelling, she decided to “jump in”.
“It was like a flexible way to earn money outside of my paralegal day job. It took me eight months, but I got my dream apartment eventually. The rest has been history,” she says.
“Sex work helped me realise how creatively suppressing my job was. I left my office job behind and I never looked back, and I haven’t been happier.”
Raven, who is also studying psychology at university, grew up in a fairly conservative family and says that coming out to them as a queer sex worker has been a process.
“When I did tell them, they weren’t supportive. They didn’t really understand what sex work can be today, but they did open up to wanting to understand so they could be supportive,” she says.
“But they really did embrace it and opened up once they understood what it was like and what I enjoyed about it, and now they are incredibly supportive and they see it for what it is: work.”
Raven has worked in strip clubs and as a private worker and credits it with helping her to grow into the resilient, confident and empowered person she is today. It’s even where she met her partner.
“I did have a few partners over the years who weren’t fully comfortable with it. But through communication and having clear boundaries, we were able to find compromises.
“It can even be something that you do together with a partner. It’s a really beautiful thing to bond and connect over. I’ve found that with my girlfriend, who I met at a strip club in 2021. She worked there too and we’ve been together ever since.”
Like almost every other sex worker in the state Raven says she feels like she’s on tenterhooks to provide her services legally without risking her safety.
“The current laws heavily dictate how I work and actually don’t provide any safety for me at all. If anything, they have made aspects of my job unnecessarily unsafe. Some very simple safety strategies, like texting a friend or colleague when I have arrived at a booking safely, or working in pairs, that’s all currently illegal. I can’t even give another worker a lift to and from a booking.
“Even working as a stripper, the laws mean that when a customer crosses the consented line, the sex worker is breaking the law just by being the victim of a crime in their workplace.”
CHARLIE, 29
Brothel worker and part-time media professional Charlie says you’d be shocked to learn what she talks to her married clients about.
“We definitely see plenty of men that aren’t married … but of course we see married men,” she says.
“Mostly they love their wives but the communication has broken down between them, predominantly because their wives are doing most of the work. They see that their wives are doing most of the work and they don’t want to add any more stress to it, but they’re also not helping take the load off their hands.
“The amount of marriage counselling that sex workers are actually doing – I think if the wives could hear what we’re saying, they’d be like, ‘yeah, go and see her again’.”
Sex work is Charlie’s main source of income but she also works part-time in the media and is an active volunteer in the community.
When asked what she loves about sex work she answers excitedly: “Oh my gosh, everything!”
“I love the diversity and the autonomy,” Charlie says.
“It can just be really stimulating, because you never know who you’re going to meet or what stories they’re going to tell you and what that brings out in you.”
Charlie is with a man who she’s “madly, madly in love with” and is proof that despite common misconceptions, it’s very possible to have sex for money and still enjoy long-term, intimate relationships.
“I think the most important thing to me is that he understands and strongly believes that my work is important and he knows that I am a lover and a healer,” she says.
Charlie says she enjoys sex a lot more than previously because today it’s an equal exchange.
“It got to the point where I was like, ‘Well, I may as well be doing this for money because I’ve got this skill and I’m not getting anything out of it’.”
What she gets now is enough money to take care of herself properly and the freedom to spend her days the way she wants to.
bandy, 27
What started out as a few revealing photos on social media to help build body confidence has turned into a thriving small business in the sex industry for Bandy.
The interest in his photos led Bandy to start creating his own pornography and charging a subscription fee on Only Fans.
With his fan base growing rapidly it wasn’t long before subscribers wanted to take things from the virtual world to the real world.
For Bandy, sex work is not so much a career as it is a calling. He loves that he can fulfil people’s sexual fantasies or help ease the way for someone still coming to terms with his sexuality as gay man.
But almost daily he is forced to break the law.
“I always have to play this guessing game of, is this person a police officer looking to entrap me and get me to do something illegal, is it going to be a dangerous man wanting to gay bash me,” he says. “If the laws didn’t criminalise my safety strategies, I would be able to work with confidence … every time I get a new client I have to go through a few illegal processes that are in the Criminal Code just so I can feel safe.”
When asked if his family is supportive of his career, Bandy just says he’s grateful for the friends and loved ones in the LGBTQIA+ community who he can freely talk with about his job.
Misinformation is a constant feature of his conversations with the broader community.
“They think of all of these myths of sex workers, that we’re underground, that we’re vectors for disease. These are not true and a lot of the stigma that I face is about the vilification of sex workers. That we are bad people doing something bad, and that causes a lot of harm.”
It’s a career that demands you stay in control of your own life, and Bandy says that’s the only way he’s able to cater to the many and varied needs of his customers.
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