LONDON — National Ugly Mugs, a U.K. charity focused on sex worker rights and outreach, has released a comprehensive research report on financial discrimination against sex workers in the U.K., including adult performers and businesses.
The report’s findings confirmed that “there is evidence of financial discrimination against sex workers from various U.K.-based banks and financial institutions,” including “the refusal of services, such as business accounts, overdrafts and loans, and other financial products” and documented cases where “the personal bank accounts of sex workers were shut down or frozen.”
Participants included adult performers, cam performers, content creators, strippers and full-service sex workers. Many participants, the report stated, “were involved in more than one form of sex work.”
Other findings of the NUM report include:
- With increasing digitalization of payment streams and the gradual move towards a cashless society, more sex workers rely on financial products that they are unable to access due to financial discrimination. As a result, many are forced to lie to financial institutions and state authorities about their business and prevented from filing their taxes correctly and even complying with U.K. regulations of the sex industry.
- Sex workers have developed different strategies to deal with financial discrimination which in most cases involve either hiding or lying about their engagement in the sex industry or avoiding certain banks and institutions altogether, resulting in an exclusion from large parts of the financial market, including many investment products, the housing market and retiring funds.
- Experiencing financial discrimination has a significant negative impact on the mental health of sex workers with extreme anxiety, depression and feeling excluded being reported most frequently.
- The anti-sex worker bias of many financial organizations has wider implications for the working conditions of sex workers as a small number of international financial institutions hold significant power in online markets, including various platforms that sex workers are using to distribute their content.
The report also noted that "although most of the anti-sex worker lobbying of Mastercard and other large financial companies originate in the U.S., the interpenetration of platforms results in repressive policing of U.K.-based institutions."
Additionally, the report described the well-documented international influence of American "right-wing evangelical groups as well as U.S. legislation on these financial players."
NUM’s declared mission is “fighting to end all forms of violence against sex workers.”
The charity, according to its mission statement, “provides tools for sex workers to report potentially violent or otherwise dangerous individuals who pose as clients, and parties who victimize sex workers.” NUM also “supports sex workers to prevent harm, report it and access resources for justice, healing and recovery in their communities and through the legal system if requested.”
To read the complete report, “Financial Discrimination of Sex Workers in the U.K.” by NUM, click here.