x:talk
Location
London
United Kingdom
Website:
Contact email:
xtalk.classes@googlemail.com
Phone +44 (0) 7914703372
Who do you work with?:
We work in London, UK with female, male, and transgender migrant workers in the sex industry, including workers in brothels, escort agencies, outdoors, flats, saunas, independents, bars, on the phone or internet, strippers, dancers, models, porn stars and glamour models.
How are sex workers involved in your organisation?:
We are a sex-worker led workers co-operative.
What are the two main challenges that the sex workers you work with face:
Our biggest challenge is securing core funding precisely because our project does not claim to ‘save’ victims of trafficking—but instead empower and support each other in our choices to be mobile and do sex work as a job. Another difficulty is organizing together in an atmosphere of increased criminalization—which leads to concealment of our migration and the denial of our agency in our victimization/stigmatization as ‘trafficked victims’—rather than as migrant sex workers.
Describe other areas of your work:
In addition to providing free English classes to migrant sex workers, we: support critical interventions around issues of migration, race, gender, sexuality and labour; participate in feminist and anti-racist campaigns; challenge victimizing anti-trafficking rhetoric; and are active in the struggle for rights of sex workers in the UK and globally. We believe the best way to challenge stigma, isolation and victimization is through sharing a collective voice. Therefore, we approach language teaching as knowledge sharing between equals and regard the ability to communicate as a fundamental tool to work in safer conditions, to organize/socialize, and to get our voices heard.
