Sex Workers Continue to Face Dire Economic Impact of Coronavirus

As the coronavirus pandemic causes economic devastation around the globe, as countries close down businesses in an effort to enforce “social distancing” and slow spread of the deadly virus, sex workers have been perhaps among the hardest hit professions. As AVN.com has been reporting, not only have incomes dried up for sex workers, but they find themselves largely unable to access government economic relief, due to their position on the fringes of society and even the law. As AVN.com reported earlier this week, sex workers in locales as diverse as Bolivia, Bangladesh, Germany, the United States, India and South Africa are all now looking for ways to make up for lost income. According to a Reuters report published on Friday, sex workers in Singapore now also find themselves out of work, after that island city-state’s government ordered its brothels shut down along with bars, nightclubs and movie theaters. While sex work is decriminalized in Singapore, operating a brothel remains against the law. According to the Reuters report, the official government lockdown order omitted mention of the brothel closings, but sex workers in Geyland, the city’s red-light district, were “passed word” that the establishments would be forced to shut down due to the pandemic. A country of about 5.8 million people, Singapore so far has recorded 732 coronavirus cases, with two fatalities from the disease.  While Singapore’s government has announced a sizable economic relief package, the city’s sex workers have no idea it they will be allowed to benefit from government assistance to get through the crisis.  "I don't know how we'll survive," one sex worker told Reuters. "We don't get looked after like people in other jobs." In Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador Province, which on Friday saw its first hospitalization of a patient due to coronavirus infection, sex workers there also say they are out of jobs. “The pandemic is pretty much affecting all aspects of the sex work industry right now,” one sex worker, “Lydia,” told The Guardian newspaper. “Parlors and strip clubs have been shut down, the majority of clients are not looking for services, and the majority of sex workers are not providing services out of fear of catching the virus.” John Haggie, the province’s minister of health, acknowledged that the coronavirus crisis would cause suffering for sex workers—but seemed to say that there was not much he could do about it. “These individuals are in a unique position in that the services they offer are not of themselves illegal, but their clients and the advertising and the rest of it is,” Haggie told the paper. “It is not a recognized industry, nor does it lend itself to easy identification of people who would want to avail of financial supports." But the health minister said he was open to discussions with advocacy groups on how to help sex workers through the pandemic. Photo by Haima Bcn / Wikimedia Commons