Harm Reduction & Sex Work: They Can Go Together!

The Shift Blog has had numerous posts on harm reduction recently, but has missed the important piece of exploring how the principles of harm reduction and sex work can go together. To explain the relationship between harm reduction and sex work, this week’s post will examine how harm reduction can be applied to sex work.

Harm reduction refers to a range of services designed to reduce the harmful consequences associated with recreational drug use and other high risk activities. Basic harm reduction principles recognize that individuals who engage in high risk activities such as shared drug use or unprotected sex are potentially at risk for endangering their health, but for many people abstaining from these activities is not possible. Harm reduction works to reduce the risks associated with these activities by education and providing resources.

Sex work can be a dangerous profession. Sex workers can be exposed to serious harms: drug use, disease, violence, discrimination, debt, criminalization, and exploitation to name a few. The use of harm reduction principles can help make sex workers' lives safer and healthier.

For the Shift program, harm reduction means that we focus on a non-exit based approach. That means that for any adult who wishes to exit or leave sex work, Shift will provide the individual with the support to do so, however it is not mandatory to exit sex work to access our services. This reduces the harm associated with sex work by ensuring support and services are open to everyone in sex work, not just those who are interested or able to exit.

Shift also uses harm reduction principles by offering free safer sex supplies such as male and female condoms, dental dams and lube to both individuals and agencies involved in sex work. Working safer also means that sex workers have information around how to screen clients or increase their personal safety while on the job. Shift will offer such safety and screening tips to sex workers who request it. As well, Shift publishes the bad date sheet. The Bad Date sheet is list of bad dates sex workers have reported to us which is then disseminated to other workers who can use the information to screen their potential dates.

Shift’s additional support services such as housing, food, and counseling can also be seen as utilizing harm reduction principles because we believe individuals such as our clients, who are not hungry or in need of stable housing, as example, are less vulnerable and will then have the ability to make safer decisions for themselves.

Regardless of the decisions a person makes in his/her life, everyone deserves health, safety and wellbeing. Harm reduction helps provide those basic human rights.