Yesterday evening, FKA Twigs turned over her Twitter account to SWAI, Ireland's only sex-worker led activist group, to highlight issues with Ireland's laws around sex work and efforts to have it decriminalised here.
FKA Twigs, who was herself briefly a sex worker in England, has been turning over her Twitter account to various groups around the world during lockdown in an effort to raise money, highlight issues facing them, and to platform issues like Ireland's current review of sex work laws.
Currently, the Department of Justice is hosting a survey of those impacted by the laws, with the SWAI arguing for full decriminalisation. In a statement, SWAI said that the current laws "distances us from gardai, thereby losing us as the best placed actors on the ground in the fight against trafficking."
Per SWAI's stats, violence against sex workers has risen 92% since the purchase of sex was criminalised, while the likelihood of sex workers reporting to Gardaí has fallen dramatically.
Here's some of the tweets from FKA Twigs' account.
3 years ago Ireland introduced the Swedish Model/ End Demand. @SWAIIreland warned that these changes would increase violence against sex workers, push sex work underground and make sex workers less likely to report crime against us. We were right
— FKA twigs (@FKAtwigs) August 13, 2020
The law is a failure. Only 2 clients have been prosecuted but there have been approximately 50 sex workers prosecuted for working together for safety, so-called brothel-keeping. There have also been 0 prosecutions for human trafficking https://t.co/qT0Tbq0D3P”
— FKA twigs (@FKAtwigs) August 13, 2020
Fortunately this law is up for review. When the law was debated @swaiireland and the voices of currently working sex workers were sidelined. We need to make sure that current sex workers are listened to, we are the experts!
Here's how you can help https://t.co/1Cwh8lsdTX— FKA twigs (@FKAtwigs) August 13, 2020
.@RuhamaAgency is the government-funded organisation which works with prostitutes (as they call them) and were a leading voice in the @turnoffRL campaign which brought in The Nordic Model. They were also founded by nuns that ran Magdalene laundrieshttps://t.co/0ocUHpI6yn
— FKA twigs (@FKAtwigs) August 13, 2020
