Category Archives: Media

More about sex work and financial discrimination

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I made a post last week about Melbourne Sex worker Matthew Roberts and his historic win in the Victorian courts to get access to EFTPOS services for his sex work business. I received an email today from Matthew promoting his ongoing efforts to have federal laws that are used against sex workers changed and I want to share it with you.

While this fight is mostly about giving sex workers fair access to financial services it is also about us being able to provide you our customers with a greater range of payment options. So it would be great if you could follow Matthew on X/Twitter: @sexworkervbanks or subscribe to his mailing list – email “YES” to sexworkervbanks@protonmail.com

Hi there, 

I’m reaching out to you as you’re interested in sex workers’ rights and efforts to combat financial discrimination. Financial discrimination is a huge problem for Australia’s sex industry, and as Australia moves away from cash, this problem is only getting worse.  

New laws protect sex workers from discrimination. It’s time to enforce these laws. 

My name is Matthew and I’m a self-employed gay male sex worker. When two financial service providers denied me use of EFTPOS machine services, I took the matter to the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria. In a landmark anti-discrimination law case, I settled the case on my terms and forced both companies (Mint Payments and First Data Merchant Solutions) to end their blanket sex worker ban. 

In 2022 Victoria, Australia decriminalised sex work and protected sex workers with anti-discrimination laws based on ‘occupation’.  My case is a huge win for sex workers and proof that enforcing these new laws can result in real change. 

But more needs to be done. The two companies initially tried to use a legal loophole to justify discriminating against me. A section of Federal anti-money laundering laws is routinely being used by financial companies to discriminate against entire groups of customers, including law abiding customers like me. The Federal Government needs to amend these federal laws to stop financial service providers from getting away with unlawful discrimination. 

Want to be kept in the loop as I extend my fight against financial discrimination and form a new advocacy movement? Reply ‘Yes’ to this email to be added to my email list.

Maurice Blackburn lawyers represented me in court. You can find me on X at @sexworkervbanks

Press Release: Melbourne sex worker resolves “debanking” discrimination case over denied EFTPOS machine

ABC News: Sex worker takes on financial sector ‘debanking’, with outcome hailed as transformative for adult industry

ABC TV’s The Business: Why sex workers are facing discrimination from banks and financial providers

News.com.au: Melbourne sex worker wins ‘debanking’ case against two Australian financial institutions

The Age: Sex stays the same, but sex work changes [behind a paywall]

Q News: Fed-up Melbourne sex worker sues financial providers and wins

Banking Daily: Illigit to debank s*x workers

Lawyers Weekly: Sex worker wins ‘decade-long battle’ against debanking discrimination

Yours sincerely 
Matthew Roberts 

Email: sexworkervbanks@protonmail.com 
Media enquiries: Chee Chee Leung at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers 0412 560 584

Thank you for your support of our industry. We really appreciate it! And thank you to Matthew for taking on this fight for all of us sex workers and clients alike.

John

Sex work and financial discrimination

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As a sex worker (for women) I tend to receive payment either in cash or by electronic transfer. For some of my clients, cash is ideal because they don’t want to leave an electronic trail of their activities – and given the stigma still attached to sex work, especially for women as clients, that’s no surprise to me.

It’s not necessarily true for other areas of sex work thought, like male for male and female for male services where clients may be more likely to appreciate the convenience of an EFTPOS payment with a card.

That however is a very difficult service to get and to keep for any sex worker. So it is with great pleasure that a Melbourne based sex worker has just won a major anti-discrimination case in Victoria under their anti-discrimination laws that protect sex workers.

You can read about it here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-30/sex-worker-takes-on-financial-sector-debanking/103908678

In short Matthew’s EFTPOS terminal provider disabled his service because the company sees sex work as a “risk” for money laundering – well that’s their claim at least. Usually these things are more about the company just not wanting to provide services to sex workers on “moral” grounds or because of reputational risk (meaning discrimination).

Matthew engaged a law firm and won the right to receive services under Victoria’s relatively new anti-discrimination laws – which incidentally he was instrumental in the creation of!

It is fabulous to see this outcome. While I don’t intend to provide EFTPOS services in the foreseeable future (and New South Wales does not currently have anti-discrimination protection for sex workers, so I’d probably still be out of luck if I did want to) it is still a win for the industry, and a step forward for all sex workers.

Who knows, after this victory sex workers may even be able to get home loans like everyone else! Now that would be progress.

John

Banning books and the games the media the media play

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This is an old story (six months old now) reported by 9 News, but I think that is still worthy of exploring.

The summary:

“In March, Queensland conservative campaigner Bernard Gaynor complained to Logan City Council that [the graphic novel] Gender Queer [by Maia Kobabe] was on its shelves.”

This lead the Australian Classification Board to conduct a review and they have…

“given the book an “unrestricted classification”, paired with “consumer advice” that it may not be suitable for younger readers.”

There’s a lot that could be explored here, from social “conservatism”, to the myriad issues that young people encounter exploring their sexuality, to literature and how our classification system works. All worthy topics. But I’d like to talk about something small in the way 9 News reported the story.

Firstly, the original article: Gender identity memoir removed from Queensland library shelf, referred to classification board on March 13th is a reasonable piece or reporting that seems to be mostly neutral about the subject and fairly represents the situation.

And credit to 9 News, they did a follow up piece Classification review rejects push to ban Gender Queer book on the 21st of July that is also fairly neutral and just reports the news.

What caught my attention is the difference between the visible title of the articles:

“Gender identity memoir removed from Queensland library shelf, referred to classification board”

and…

“Classification review rejects push to ban Gender Queer book”

and the URLs of the articles:

https://www.9news.com.au/national/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-a-memoir-book-under-review-classification-board-faces-potential-ban/

and…

https://www.9news.com.au/national/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-book-classified-as-m-mature-not-recommended-for-readers-under-15-years/

I’ll expand them to make it easier to read.

“Maia Kobabe Gender Queer a Memoir book under review classification board faces potential ban”

and…

“Maia Kobabe Gender Queer book classified as M mature not recommended for readers under 15 years”

Lets line up the titles with their URLs.

First article title visible to readers:

“Gender identity memoir removed from Queensland library shelf, referred to classification board”

versus URL visible to search engines:

“Maia Kobabe Gender Queer a Memoir book under review classification board faces potential ban”

Second article title visible to readers:

“Classification review rejects push to ban Gender Queer book”

versus URL visible to search engines:

“Maia Kobabe Gender Queer book classified as m mature not recommended for readers under 15 years

In both cases the URL uses significantly more “conservative” and inflammatory language.

The question of why is open to debate, but given that 9 News is chaired by a group including Peter Costello (former right wing politician, deputy leader of the Liberal Party (1994 to 2007) and Australian federal government treasurer (1996 to 2007)) the implication is that 9 News has a conservative bias that it wants to hide from the people reading its articles, but not from the search engines that feed us all our fire hose of media content.

In that landscape these sorts of small details matter.

While the inner workings of Google’s search algorithms are opaque to the likes of you and me, they are closely studied by the kinds of people who run media empires and like to influence the viewing public’s opinion on of matters of “morality”.

I don’t think that I need to break this down further, but I do think that it’s a timely reminder to us all to not trust any media source completely. We need to read widely and try to understand the inherent biases that media of all kinds (even my writings) bring to the stories that they choose to tell, how they tell them, and even how they attempt to influence how they are delivered and to whom.

John

We need to have a conversation about terminology

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I recently happened across this article from Slate.com (here) that I was quoted in a while back and I thought upon reading it again that it was worth commenting on the reader’s word choice when referring to sex workers.

“Prostitute” is a loaded term.  And for people who work in my industry it has a lot of negative connotations.  It’s why most people who sells sexual services prefers the term “sex worker”.

It’s a much more clear definition. It’s work. And it involves sex. We are sex workers.

Culturally the term “prostitute” is linked to exploitation, implies a lack of autonomy (individually and financially) and even a lack of legitimacy.

The idea that someone “had to prostitute themselves” to survive, or succeed is an inherently negative statement. “had to”. Not “chose to”. Or “wanted to”. “Had to” is the way we would most likely hear that described.

And this is where people who oppose sex work will say “But what about all of the women who have no choice?” (they rarely acknowledge that men do sex work too). The answer is that those people are generally what we call “survival sex workers”. Forced by economic, personal, or social realities to do work that they may not choose to otherwise – and they are often punished legally and socially because of that.

As sex workers we support these people and their right to survive however they have to, but at the same time what we fight for is to see the work decriminalised so that they can seek any and all physical, legal, and medical help that they may need to do their work in safety and good health.

Every society has sex work. It is a reality of humanity – but how we look at sex work and especially the words we choose when we are talking about it go a long way to how sex workers are treated and perceived.

So while “prostitute” may be a linguistically valid word to describe what I do, it is not the right word for todays society. I am not a “prostitute” I am a “sex worker”, with all of the connotations that carries.

John

Sex worker, not prostitute – “progressive” media needs to do better

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In the time that I have been a sex worker the everyday language used around people like me who sell sexual services (not our bodies – no one does that, it’s not a thing) has changed dramatically and for the better.

Many politicians now use the phrase “sex worker” instead of “prostitute”. The state of Victoria (Australia) changed their “Prostitution Control Act” (which regulates sex work in the state, requiring workers to register as sex workers) to the “Sex Work Act”. A small change that – while the act itself is still a problem – points to a government that at least sees which way the wind is blowing.

The media though is a different matter. Yes many media personalities understand and call us sex workers. The ones who don’t do so consistently and pointedly and I would expect little more from them.

Then there are media personalities who while ostensibly progressive will choose the words they use based on the subject. And that’s a real problem – not to mention poor journalism.

US right wing politicians are famous for getting caught with their pants down. Their hypocrisy is quite plain to see. But then media who would see themselves as progressive and when talking about us would generally call us sex workers will turn around and start calling us prostitutes instead.

Why? Because they know how people react to language and in their efforts to ridicule someone (who may deserve it) they throw us – sex workers – under the bus as well.

And not just sex workers – but clients as well.

It’s fine to call out politicians and anyone else who is being hypocritical about paying for sex, but you shouldn’t be adding to the stigma of being a client or worker when you do so.

I think that I have perhaps met two or three women in all my time as a straight male escort for women who are open about having paid for sex. The vast majority of women – even in a place like Australia and especially New South Wales, where sex work is decriminalised – still would never tell anyone that they have paid a sex worker.

Why? In part at least because media personalities who should know better help to perpetuate the stigma around selling and buying sex.

Politicians who “point with one hand and jerk off with the other” richly deserve to be pilloried. But for their hypocrisy – not because they pay for sex. That just hurts sex workers and clients who are so often dismissed by a society that doesn’t care to understand why some people choose to sell sex and others to buy it.

John.

The buzz about male sex workers for women

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Buzzfeednews.com published an article today written by journalist Hallie Lieberman about male sex workers for women.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the article, you can find it here:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hallielieberman/male-sex-workers-feminist-consent-boyfriend-experience

Hallie spent a long time talking to a number of male sex workers, including me, as well as our clients. I think that it is great that the subject is getting such mainstream exposure – especially in the US where attitudes to sex work are so conflicted.

So I would like to say a big hello to everyone who has come to my website from that article. It’s great to have you here and I hope you enjoy my website.

John.

Living our best lives

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I have to admit that I live in a bit of a bubble. I don’t watch commercial television or listen to commercial radio. I don’t read newspapers (online, or paper).

I have terms like “Donald Trump”, “Scott Morrison” and “politics” blocked on Twitter.

I really don’t need the ongoing train wreck of Western politics in my face – even occasionally.

And then there’s commercial TV and radio – swamped by cheap to produce reality TV, “current affairs” programs that platform racists in the name of “balance” and ignore the very real problems in the world in favour of tabloid sensationalism.

I’m happy in my bubble honestly. I spend my work times with interesting people who on the whole care about the sort of things I care about – social justice, tolerance, freedom – people who understand that the world is bigger than them and requires an open mind.

As I write this, I am in Canberra. I stopped earlier at a self serve car wash to wash my car and (disappointingly) had to listen to a commercial radio station for the 15 minutes it took me to clean the car.

It reaffirmed to me that I haven’t been missing anything. From the inane banter about clothing to the news items delivered in the most effective way to make a listener feel stressed about things that don’t actually matter.

It was all just noise. Noise that, if you let it, will drown out the things in life that do matter. This is the very real problem with the “modern condition” living in a place like Sydney.

I heard recently of a man, who emigrated to Australia from India and settled in Sydney. He found employment and has been living like so many of us do – working to pay the rent and have some free time and money to enjoy himself.

His realisation though is profound: he has decided to return to the small town that his family comes from in India – because the quality of life there, while modest, is better for him than the kind of life that we live here in Sydney. In his home town he doesn’t have a lot of money, but he has time – time to spend with friends and family doing whatever they want to, or even nothing at all. He may not have great restaurants to go to like we do, but food is cheap and he and his family have time to cook and share good meals.

The list goes on, but I think that you can see the point I am making – we sacrifice a lot living in a place like Sydney. Our lives are driven by work. Our free time is seriously restricted by the daily requirement to earn money to pay rent.

A semi-rural lifestyle with limited money may not seem like the best life to you and me – we have grown up in a different way and have different expectations – but I think that it can still teach us something.

That lesson is: we shouldn’t see work and the assumption that we must all do it all the time as an inherently good thing. For most of us it is a necessary thing, but it tends to draw us away for the fundamentals of human nature – that is connections with the people around us, the sharing of simple pleasures, and time to just “be”, rather than “do”.

I think that this lesson is particularly relevant when considering my industry. Paying for the services of a male escort like myself absolutely costs money. But it’s trading money not for another “thing” in ones life, but for an experience. The older I get, the less interested I become in having things in my life and the more I value the experiences I have with other people.

Much like the gentleman from India, what I really want is to live a life full of people and new experiences with them. I think that, if anything, is the way to live a fulfilling life.

John.

We need your help

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If you are reading this, then it’s likely that you have at least contemplated purchasing the services of a sex worker.

If you live in NSW in Australia, then you have nothing to worry about – today – if however you live in Victoria, then your right as an adult to buy sex is under threat. The Victorian Liberal party has recently announced that they have adopted the “client criminalisation” model for regulating sex work (they call it “Nordic model” so it sounds nicer) and will take that policy to the next election in Victoria.

I don’t want to rehash why this is bad for everyone (including sex workers) in this post.  If you are interested, then google “why the Nordic model does not work”.  Suffice to say Amnesty International, the WHO, and basically anyone who values evidence and harm reduction has condemned it. Sadly, it’s popular in certain feminist circles that want to abolish sex work, and unsurprisingly with conservative and right wing political parties.

What’s happening in Victoria is the thin edge of the wedge in this country in what has, since the US recently past their FOSTA/SESTA laws, become an undeclared war on sex work.  NSW (and New Zealand) with our full decriminalisation of sex work sit, like calm little eyes, in a growing global storm.

Sex workers are uniquely vulnerable as a group.  Publicly supporting us and our right to work safely is very difficult for anyone given the stigma that surrounds our industry, so we tend to have to fight our battles on our own.

I am writing this though to ask for your support because it’s no-longer just about us.  If you would like to be, or are a client of sex workers, then the zeitgeist is trying to turn you into a criminal.  If you can publicly support the message that sex work is work (not abuse, not trafficking) then I for one will be very grateful.

If you can sign the various petitions calling for the protection of sex workers, that will definitely help.

You could also consider making a donation to the sex worker organisations that fight to protect people like me.  They do hugely important work helping to protect the rights and safety of sex workers, talking to government and media, conducting research, and more – all of it on very minimal funding.  In Victoria you can donate to the Vixen Collective and in NSW it’s Scarlet Alliance.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you too for any support you can give.

John

The joyful nude

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It’s not that often that you come across an article that is genuinely positive about body image in a non-preachy, no agenda kind of way. But this one fits the bill.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellbeing/can-spending-time-naked-really-improve-our-selfesteem-20170329-gv8yxx.html

It’s nice to see a journalist writing about personal experience and taking a risk themselves. And that’s not to disparage journalists – I know it’s a tough industry, especially these days – but I am still waiting for the journalist to write a piece about sex workers from a position of personal experience, and really own it – yes people pay for sex. Yes, it’s ok to like it, or not – whatever, this was my experience.

Anyway, back to the article – it’s great that someone is saying hey it’s ok to be nude, it’s good to get in touch with your self, experience some vulnerability, and grow a little as a person.

Everyone has issues with their body and self image – doesn’t matter what our age is, young, old, in-between – there will always be something that we can find to be unhappy with. But it doesn’t have to be a problem. We don’t need to be perfect to enjoy our bodies. And we certainly don’t need to be perfect to enjoy sex. Being more comfortable in ourselves though will definitely make the latter easier and better.

John.

A sex club just for women

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I think that it is a sign of maturity in a society when it empowers women to be and do what they want to do – free from control or even the observation of men.

The normalisation of sex workers (male and female) for women is one example. It’s quite a big statement that women, who for so long have had their lives, finances, and their very bodies ruled by the whims of men are now able to choose to see a sex worker and not have to apologise to any one for it.

We are moving ahead. Becoming more tolerant of each other – not always and not everywhere – but we make progress.

Another small sign of this is the arrival of the Skirt Club in Sydney (http://skirtclub.co.uk/), a UK originated sex club exclusively for women. It has a modest global membership, but by all accounts it is well liked by the women who are members. I can imagine many men feeling threatened by the very existence of such a place, but to me it’s a delight.

You can read more about it here: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/sex-and-relationships/australias-first-womenonly-sex-club-arrives-in-sydney-20160831-gr623w.html

I love the idea of women being in control of their lives and perhaps more importantly being able to choose exactly what it is that they want to do with their lives, without having to involve or answer to men, if they don’t want to. At the end of the day, it makes all of our lives, whether we are male or female richer.

So cheers Skirt Club, here’s hoping that your first party goes well!

John.