Abort the Surveillance State: Online Privacy Lessons from Sex Workers
June 2 is International Whores Day (or, if you prefer, International Sex Workers Day), a date that marks the ongoing fight for the rights, safety, and dignity of sex workers around the globe. And let’s be clear: if you care about reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy, and the right to seek an abortion without being tracked, surveilled, or doxxed, you need to be paying attention to sex workers. They’ve been here. They’ve BEEN knowing. And they have a lot to teach us.
In this post, we explore the entangled relationships between sex work, abortion access, surveillance, and resistance. We argue that sex workers—particularly queer, trans, racialized, and disabled sex workers—model subversive strategies for reclaiming autonomy and privacy. These communities embody praxis: living theory through resistance. They exist at the intersections, operating in the margins of legitimacy, and offer a radical template for dismantling control and building community.
Surveillance as a Tool of Patriarchal and Racialized Power
Surveillance is a technology of control. It does not exist in a vacuum—it is historically situated in systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Surveillance tells us who is dangerous, who is deviant, and who deserves punishment. These narratives are deeply gendered and racialized.
While mainstream discussions often focus on state surveillance—police, border control, data collection—feminist theory pushes us to think about how surveillance operates interpersonally. “Interveillance,” or peer-to-peer surveillance, shows up in family structures, romantic relationships, and social institutions. Parents read their children's messages. Partners demand access to phones. Employers monitor social media. All of this creates a culture of visibility and control where deviation from normativity is punished.
Sex workers and abortion seekers are both familiar with this dynamic. The fear of being seen—of being outed, criminalized, judged—can restrict access to care and undermine safety. Whether it’s the anti-abortion protester outside a clinic or the neighbor who reports a suspected escort, surveillance operates to isolate and punish.
Feminist theorist Simone Browne reminds us that surveillance has always disproportionately targeted Black and Indigenous people, queer and trans bodies, and poor communities. To understand surveillance as a reproductive justice issue, we must center those most impacted by it.
From nosy neighbors to controlling partners, surveillance becomes interpersonal—embedding control within our most intimate relationships.
Sex Workers as Theorists and Technologists of Privacy
Sex workers are not simply subjects of surveillance—they are theorists, technologists, and tacticians of privacy. Long before mainstream movements began discussing digital security, sex workers were developing innovative methods of navigating censorship, maintaining anonymity, and building safety protocols rooted in community care.
This knowledge does not emerge from theory alone—it is grounded in lived experience. It is subversive survival. Sex workers understand that privacy is not just about hiding—it is about asserting control over what is visible, when, and to whom. This politicized privacy is an act of refusal: refusal to be consumed, categorized, or punished.
Some examples of these tactical practices include:
Anonymity Through Tor: The use of Tor browser anonymizes web activity, helping users evade IP tracking and censorship. This is crucial in environments where sex work or abortion access are criminalized.
End-to-End Encryption: Messaging apps like Signal protect communication from third-party interception. These tools are essential for coordinating services and sharing sensitive information.
Visual Redaction: Covering identifying features in photos (e.g., tattoos, locations, faces) prevents doxxing and stalking. It is a refusal of compulsory visibility.
Economic Anonymity: Prepaid debit cards and cash transactions reduce paper trails, enabling autonomy in environments where banks cooperate with law enforcement.
Pseudonymous Selves: The creation of digital personas allows workers to engage professionally without linking their labor to their personal identities. This fragmentation is a deeply queer strategy—one that rejects the idea of a singular, knowable self.
These practices are technical & political. They challenge the idea that we must be legible to power to be valid.
Tip: Masking is a great way to conceal your identity, and keep our communities safer.
Activist Security as Everyday Subversion
Reproductive justice activism often centers on direct service and policy change—but what if we also understood privacy as protest? The tools developed by sex workers have direct applications for organizers, abortion seekers, and allies alike. Practicing digital security is a form of resistance. It is how we protect each other from systems that thrive on exposure.
Threat Modeling as Power Analysis: What do you need to protect? From whom? How will they try do get it? What are you willing to do? These are not just cybersecurity questions—they are political inquiries. They help us map systems of power and design strategies of refusal.
Coded Language as Counter-Surveillance: The use of euphemisms like “camping” or “self-care retreat” to describe travel for abortion appointments mirrors the way sex workers talk about “bodywork” or “companionship.” Language becomes camouflage.
Protest Preparedness: Avoiding identifying marks, encrypting devices, and turning off biometric features like FaceID are all ways to resist police surveillance and facial recognition technology. These practices decenter the idea of protest as spectacle and instead prioritize collective safety.
Sex workers model how to build counter networks of people who resist normative visibility and create alternative spaces of connection, care, and resistance. They teach us how to organize without exposing ourselves, how to share knowledge without creating vulnerability.
Sex workers show us that even something as mundane as using encrypted apps or coded language can be radical acts of resistance.
Mutual Aid and Information Networks Are Key
At the core of subversive care is a deep belief in mutual aid: a radical commitment to meeting each other’s needs directly and without judgment. Mutual aid disrupts hierarchical systems of support by prioritizing trust, reciprocity, and grassroots knowledge over institutional authority.
Sex workers have long built resilient, decentralized communication networks to survive and protect each other. Whether it’s vetting clients, sharing bad date lists, flagging phishing scams, or organizing defense funds, these acts reflect a lived theory of care. The tools used are chosen not just for their functionality but for their alignment with values of privacy and solidarity. These systems thrive because they’re grounded in mutual respect and collective wisdom. Information is not hoarded; it is shared strategically. Safety is not an individual burden; it is a communal priority.
Reproductive justice activists and abortion seekers can—and already do—create similar networks. A trusted friend might discreetly hold mifegymiso. A private group might trade reviews of online pharmacies or flag sketchy crisis pregnancy centers. A provincial abortion fund and volunteer network ensure everyone can access what they need to receive care.
These acts are more than logistical—they’re ideological. They reimagine security not as isolation, but as connection with intention. Security becomes a web, a mesh of interdependence where your safety plan includes others and theirs includes you. Privacy, in this framework, is not secrecy—it is a shared, strategic practice. It is a collective act of resistance rooted in care, consent, and trust.
Sex worker mutual aid networks reframe safety as a shared responsibility, modeling how communities can protect one another through decentralized, trust-based systems.
In Solidarity With Care
By learning from sex workers, we engage in a lineage of subversive care. We say no to systems that demand we be compliant, visible, and controllable. We say yes to collective safety, boundaries, and chosen family. This is what reproductive justice looks like.
We operate at the intersections—of queer liberation, disability justice, sex worker rights, racial justice, and reproductive autonomy. We believe that nobody is disposable, and everyone deserves care.
Pro-Choice YQL can:
Help you plan discreet, secure travel to appointments
Support you in navigating harmful or controlling relationships
Work with you to create safety plans
Offer judgment-free emotional and community support from people who get it
