Historically, the month of June is Pride Month: a time of year to celebrate queer culture and advocacy and to commemorate the Stonewall Riots which ignited the contemporary LGBTQIA+ rights movement.
Across the UK, Pride celebrations, including large-scale Pride parades, continue across the months of July and August: meaning that the celebrations continue all summer. This summer, it’s time for us to ensure that sex workers are also recognised within Pride events.
When it comes to sex work, there’s always been a noticeable overlap with the queer community. Legendary trans activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy all worked as full-service sex workers at points throughout their lives. Brenda Howard, the bisexual rights activist and sex positive feminist, known as the “Mother of Pride” for her role in coordinating the first Pride march in New York City, worked as a phone sex operator.
According to the data, the links between sex work and the queer community remain strong. Figures from the adult advertising site SimpleEscort, covering nearly 20,000 active UK listings for a predominantly cis, male audience, demonstrates the continued visibility of the trans community within the industry. Currently, trans women account for 15.1% of all advertisers on the platform, compared to the estimated 1% of the UK population who identify as trans.
Across the broader sex worker population, a sizeable portion are of gay, bisexual or queer sexualities. For example, estimates from the BBC in 2017 suggest that there are approximately 100,000 sex workers in the UK and that 20% of them are male. (However, it’s worth noting that not all male sex workers identify as non-heterosexual.) There are also several high-profile female current and former sex workers who identify as queer. This includes the Australian author and sex worker Tilly Lawless, who, in 2021, shared her estimate that around half of the people she has come across in the industry are queer.
However, gender and sexual identity are often under-emphasised in conversations around sex workers rights. Equally, queer spaces and events may not always be inclusive and affirming to sex workers. So, what are some of the issues facing queer and trans sex workers today? And how can we support and affirm queer and trans people in the industry?
Trans women are highly visible in sex work, but why?
The prevalence of trans women in sex work can be attributed to numerous factors, including the various barriers which they face in the wider world. Research suggests that some trans women may pursue sex work because of the discrimination they may encounter in the workplace and in the hiring process, as well as in interpersonal relationships.
Lulu Sunnucks, a clinical sexologist, couples therapist and psychotherapist, attests that many of her trans clients are forced to confront numerous professional boundaries. “I often hear from trans clients about the additional challenges they face when navigating employment and workplace culture,” Sunnucks explains. “Document issues, deadnaming and overt or subtle transphobia from employers create a profound disadvantage for them. Many describe feeling scrutinised, misunderstood or having to work harder than others simply to be accepted as who they are.”
While trans individuals can face difficulties within the workplace, there are also factors which make it more difficult for them to enter the workplace altogether. Research published in 2020 suggests that trans people are more likely than their cis peers to be rejected when applying for jobs, whereas a 2018 report indicated that 1 in 3 employers would not hire a trans person. Sex work, therefore, becomes a life-line.
“When formal job markets reject an individual, alternative economies like sex work would offer an immediate path to financial autonomy,” Sunnucks says. “It provides a space where individuals can monetise their labour on their own terms, bypassing transphobic corporate structures and systems to secure income necessary for survival.”
Trans women may also be overrepresented within sex work due to the financial and logistical pressures of obtaining gender-affirming care. NHS England waiting lists for gender-affirming care are considered to be “unacceptably long”, forcing many trans individuals to opt to pursue the private route, which is a greater monetary strain.
“Sex work serves as a direct means to fund the high cost of gender affirmation medical costs,” Sunnucks says. “Where traditional jobs might not cover the steep costs of private medical transitions, the sex industry provides a more flexible, potentially higher-yielding income source to alleviate gender dysphoria.”
The experience of LGBTQIA+ sex workers
In order to learn more about the hurdles that queer and trans sex workers face, it’s important to centre their voices and to appreciate them as more than just their choice of career or orientation, but as fully-rounded, multi-dimensional people.
One individual who has become an advocate for both the queer and sex worker communities, and the spaces in which they overlap, is the artist, performer and content creator Cain, who goes by @thatcainguy on X and Instagram, while also being active on OnlyFans.
Across the various strands of his work, Cain is passionate about making people, especially in the queer community, feel empowered and seen. “I wear a lot of different hats. At the core of it though, everything I do is about community. I work across queer nightlife, events, content creation and advocacy, and I’ve been lucky enough to turn a lot of the things I’m passionate about into work,” he explains.
Continuing, he adds: “Whether I’m hosting a club night, creating content, speaking about recovery, or working behind the scenes on projects, it’s all rooted in trying to create spaces where people feel seen and where shame has a little less power.”
While queerness and sex work are often depicted in the mainstream media as steeped in tragedy, Cain has actively worked to show a different side of these communities. In addition to his broader work, he featured in Slag Wars: The Next Destroyer: a cult reality TV show, headed up by Rebecca More and the late Sophie Anderson, which explored queerness and sex work. In the first season, he appeared as a contestant, and later returned as a casting director and producer.
“Slag Wars genuinely changed my life.Season one gave me the opportunity to be unapologetically myself on screen at a time when there was very little representation that felt honest. It wasn’t about creating perfect TV personalities - it was about showing sex workers and queer people as complex, funny, talented, messy human beings,” Cain explains, of his initial stint on the show. “That’s something we still don’t see enough of. From a community point of view, it was also the first time in my life I was surrounded with fellow sex workers sharing stories, breathing and just existing together - it’s rare to find those pockets.”
“Coming back for season two as Casting Director and Producer felt incredibly full circle. Instead of telling my own story, I got to help other people tell theirs. Finding people with something to say, helping them feel safe enough to say it, and watching them grow throughout the process was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” he continues. “The show has always been bigger than entertainment. It challenged assumptions about who sex workers are, celebrated queer creativity, and gave people permission to exist without apologising for themselves. I’m incredibly proud to have been part of that.”
Now, Cain remains committed to breaking stereotypes and showing the diversity of the sex worker and queer experiences. “I think the biggest thing I’d want people to take away is that sex workers aren’t a one narrative storyline,” he adds. “Everyone has a different background, different reasons for doing the work, different boundaries and different experiences. The problem starts when people assume they know someone’s life because of one label.”
In order to keep pushing for more visibility and acceptance of sex workers, Cain recommends that we continue to speak about sex work, disregarding the old taboos and assumptions. “The more conversations we have, the harder it becomes to hold onto stereotypes. That’s why the projects that I do mattered so much, and why I think visibility still matters now,” he explains. “At the end of the day, everyone deserves dignity, safety and the freedom to tell their own story, regardless of how they make a living.”
Sex work and queer activism
When we look at the past, we can see that many prominent individuals involved in trailblazing queer and trans activism were sex workers. However, nowadays, sex work is often left out of the conversation when it comes to queerness.
Maedb Joy runs Sexquisite, a performing arts company focussed on platforming sex workers’ stories. She’s also the founder of UK Sex Worker Pride, which creates dedicated events celebrating the sex worker community. Speaking to me back in 2025, she highlighted why she started the project. “UK Sex Worker Pride was created to give our community a dedicated month of celebrations where we can come together in joy, visibility, and solidarity — something missing from the wider Pride calendar,” she explained.
“Sex workers have always been part of queer liberation, yet we’re often sidelined or erased from mainstream “safe for work” Pride events. I wanted to create a celebration that centres our voices, showcases our art and activism, and brings us together on our own terms. It’s about reclaiming space, challenging stigma, and reminding the world that our rights are human rights,” she continued.
While the queer rights movement fought to secure rights for queer people, the acceptance of sex workers and trans people continues to lag behind. As a result, Cain believes it’s important to homage to the trans sex workers who made space for themselves and their community in the early days of the LGBTQIA+ rights movement.
“A lot of people enjoy the freedoms that came from queer activism without really knowing who was on the front line. So many of those people were sex workers, particularly trans women of colour, who were already living at the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination,” he explains.
It’s also important that allies look at what they can do now: reject overly sanitised narratives of Pride, and fight for visibility of sex workers in the mainstream queer rights movement of today. “I think history often sanitises movements to make them more palatable. We celebrate Pride now as this huge colourful event, but it was built by people who were criminalised, marginalised and often had very little to lose,” Cain says. “Sex workers have always organised, cared for each other, built community and challenged systems that excluded them. That contribution deserves to be recognised, not quietly edited out because it makes people uncomfortable.”
“If we’re going to honour queer history, we have to honour all of it,” Cain concludes.