we’re not asking for charity. We’re asking for courage.

To believe that sex workers deserve safety without strings

To invest in solutions that save lives without cages or stigma

This is not about headlines. Or handcuffs. It's about Hope.

www.swopbehindbars.org/post/a-seaso...

What does it look like to fund safety instead of shame?

Commissary funds for food and hygiene products

Reentry kits

The Power Outside Reentry Program, connecting people to real resources

The Hotline, where someone can call for help without fearing arrest

Mentor-by-Mail

Millions of dollars are poured into “anti-trafficking” raids and carceral rescue programs. These efforts often create more harm than they prevent.

Under the banner of “rescue,” people lose housing, income, IDs, and custody of their children. Survivors are forced into programs that punish poverty

At SWOP Behind Bars, we don’t take pity donations. We build partnerships rooted in accountability, dignity, and trust. Because our goal isn’t to “save” sex workers - it’s to dismantle the systems that criminalize, isolate, and endanger them in the first place.

Join Us-

Be part of the movement that refuses to leave anyone behind. Together, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done - taking care of us, because nobody does it better.

#WeTakeCareOfUs

www.swopbehindbars.org/donate

This November, we’re launching our Season of Solidarity - a month-long fundraising and storytelling series that celebrates the power of mutual aid and the people who make it possible. Every contribution helps keep our hotline open, our mentors connected, and our community cared for.

Every dollar that comes into SBB moves quickly. Commissary deposits mean dignity. A reentry kit means someone can leave jail with clean clothes and hope.

Mutual aid doesn’t trickle down - it flows sideways, directly from one community member to another.

We don’t wait for permission to care.

Sex-worker-led giving looks different.

It doesn’t demand perfection or purity; it starts with trust. We know that survival looks different for everyone, and that sometimes the most radical act of care is believing someone deserves help, even when they’ve been told they don’t.

Traditional philanthropy loves a success story - preferably one that ends in “rescue” and a photo op. But for criminalized people, those systems come with strings attached: surveillance, forced programs, or religious conversion.

That’s not care - that’s control.

Mutual aid is what happens when sex workers, survivors, and allies take care of each other - directly, without judgment or bureaucracy.

SWOP Behind Bars didn’t grow out of a foundation’s strategic plan. It grew out of the collective recognition that no one else was coming to save us.

Sex workers deserve more than survival in the shadows of myths. They deserve rights, protection, and the full recognition of their humanity. The truth is clear - and we have the receipts.

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We hear this every time someone says, “I support women, just not those women.” Stigma reinforces the idea that only some women are “worthy” of protection.

The persistence of myths about sex work is no accident - they are carefully nurtured by systems that benefit from keeping sex workers silent.

Misconceptions about sex work serve as a social glue, dividing “good women” from “bad women.” Respectability politics depends on these divisions, offering legitimacy only to those who conform to narrow ideals. Stigma gives a sense of moral superiority while pushing sex workers to the margins.

Think about how quickly the public sympathizes with a waitress struggling to make ends meet but condemns a dancer who earns the same money in one night. Both women are working, but only one is seen as “respectable.”

The taboo isn’t about money or intimacy; it’s about who gets to control the terms.