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‘The Master-Mind’ Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. You can see what type of financial attitude you have by taking our personality test here. To illustrate how financial attitudes manifest into one’s life, we created one dimensional renditions that embody a financial attitude. Queen Bae is the character for ‘The Master-Mind’. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Your financial attitude can be consciously changed through self-awareness, education and experience. To read more about how we’ve framed financial attitudes, you can read this post. The idea is to centre ourselves, and our attitude to be ‘Master-Minded’ like ‘Queen Bae’. What makes Queen Bae the master is that she is able to identify situations, knows herself, and she take actions that aligns with her goals and are within her means. Should the occasion call for it, Queen Bae can call upon the inherent strengths and talents of the other financial attitudes: Messy Jessie, Good-Girl Pearl, Risky Misty and Prue the Shrewd. Queen Bae’s greatest strength is their ability to self-reflect and the ability to recognise reality and how best to respond to it. However, our financial attitudes can change over time, and Queen Bae’s are the most at risk of slipping into a Chaotic Katie financial attitude. Chaotic Katie’s have the same flexibility in attitude, but what makes them Chaotic is that they can tap into the weaknesses or vulnerability of the other attitudes. Queen Bae’s can easily render themselves into Chaotic Katie’s should they not make efforts to refresh their attitude and review their personal finance. We will soon investigate ways to maintain Queen Bae’s financial attitude. If you identify as a Queen Bae, think about where your feelings and thoughts around money stem from, and ask yourself how you can teach others in similar positions. Until then, stay subscribed for further material on how to economically empower yourself as a sex worker. Follow us on social media to stay updated!

‘The Virtuous’ Watch the video explaining this here! Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. You can see what type of financial attitude you have by taking our personality test here. To illustrate how financial attitudes manifest into one’s life, we created one dimensional renditions that embody a financial attitude. Good-Girl Pearl is the character for ‘the Virtuous’. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Your financial attitude can be consciously changed through self-awareness, education and experience. To read more about how we’ve framed financial attitudes, you can read this post. If Good-Girl Pearl doesn’t sound exactly like you, that’s normal. Our financial attitudes change over time, and we keep traits of previous financial attitudes, that continue to influence our thoughts and feelings subconsciously. Consciously, we want to draw upon the inherent strengths and talents of Good-Girl Pearl, because the occasion may call for it. The idea is to centre ourselves, and our attitude to be ‘Master-Minded’ like ‘Queen Bae’. What makes Queen Bae the master is that she is able to identify situations, knows herself, and she take actions that aligns with her goals and are within her means. Good-Girl Pearl’s don’t care much for their personal finance because they don’t value money and feel apathetic about the impact money has on the world. In many ways, this is a good attitude to have, many people lose their identity, time, relationships with others and community because they are obsessed with making money (or work). This couldn’t be Good-Girl Pearl. Where Good-Girl Pearl’s attitude falls short, is in seeing money as a neutral tool that can be wielded for good or bad purposes. For this reason alone, Pearl’s can be motivated to take control of their personal finance, as this will equip them with the means to live a life of integrity. We will soon investigate ways for Good-Girls Pearl’s to improve their financial attitude. If you identify as a Good-Girls Pearl, think about where your feelings and thoughts around money stem from, and ask yourself whether this approach is applicable or fitting for your present day life. Until then, stay subscribed for further material on how to economically empower yourself as a sex worker. Follow us on social media to stay updated!

‘The Risk-Taker’ Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. You can see what type of financial attitude you have by taking our personality test here. To illustrate how financial attitudes manifest into one’s life, we created one dimensional renditions that embody a financial attitude. Risky Misty is the character for ‘the Risk-Taker’. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Your financial attitude can be consciously changed through self-awareness, education and experience. To read more about how we’ve framed financial attitudes, you can read this post. If Risky Misty doesn’t sound exactly like you, that’s normal. Our financial attitudes change over time, and we keep traits of previous financial attitudes, that continue to influence our thoughts and feelings subconsciously. Consciously, we want to draw upon the inherent strengths and talents of Risky Misty, because the occasion may call for it. The idea is to centre ourselves, and our attitude to be ‘Master-Minded’ like ‘Queen Bae’. What makes Queen Bae the master is that she is able to identify situations, knows herself, and she take actions that aligns with her goals and are within her means. Risky Misty’s are blind optimists and assume things will work out despite anything that happens. This attitude can be fitting under some circumstances, for example, many people are afraid to invest and would rather save their money. However, someone like Risky Misty has the right attitude when it comes to investing, and only needs a page from Prue the Shrewd book to balance out their impulsive nature and replace this with research. We will soon investigate ways for Risky Misty’s to improve their financial attitude. If you identify as a Risky Misty, think about where your feelings and thoughts around money stem from, and ask yourself whether this approach is applicable or fitting for your present day life. Until then, stay subscribed for further material on how to economically empower yourself as a sex worker. Follow us on social media to stay updated!

‘The Thrifty Spender’ Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. You can see what type of financial attitude you have by taking our personality test here. To illustrate how financial attitudes manifest into one’s life, we created one dimensional renditions that embody a financial attitude. Prue the Shrewd is the character for ‘The Thrifty Spender’. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Your financial attitude can be consciously changed through self-awareness, education and experience. To read more about how we’ve framed financial attitudes, you can read this post. If Prue the Shrewd doesn’t sound exactly like you, that’s normal. Our financial attitudes change over time, and we keep traits of previous financial attitudes, that continue to influence our thoughts and feelings subconsciously. Consciously, we want to draw upon the inherent strengths and talents of Prue the Shrewd, because the occasion may call for it. The idea is to centre ourselves, and our attitude to be ‘Master-Minded’ like ‘Queen Bae’. What makes Queen Bae the master is that she is able to identify situations, knows herself, and she take actions that aligns with her goals and are within her means. Being frugal is not necessarily a bad financial attitude to have, however, if you identify with this attitude, it may mean you’re not setting yourself up for long-term financial wealth or wellness. The financial framework changes rapidly everyday, and being frugal might not be consistent with these changes. Think about cryptocurrencies, when they first appeared many felt this currency was a joke and refused to engage with it. However, if you could afford to and had invested even a little bit of money at the beginning, your gamble with cryptocurrency would be up exponentially by now. In these ways, Prue the Shrewd’s can get in their own way. We will soon investigate ways for Prue the Shrewd’s to improve their financial attitude. If you identify as Prue, think about where your feelings and thoughts around money stem from, and ask yourself whether this approach is applicable or fitting for your present day life. Until then, stay subscribed for further material on how to economically empower yourself as a sex worker. Follow us on social media to stay updated!

‘The Worrier’ Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. You can see what type of financial attitude you have by taking our personality test here. To illustrate how financial attitudes manifest into one’s life, we created one dimensional renditions that embody a financial attitude. Messy Jessie is the character for ‘The Worrier’. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Your financial attitude can be consciously changed through self-awareness, education and experience. To read more about how we’ve framed financial attitudes, you can read this post. If Messy Jessie doesn’t sound exactly like you, that’s normal. Our financial attitudes change over time, and we keep traits of previous financial attitudes, that continue to influence our thoughts and feelings subconsciously. Consciously, we want to draw upon the inherent strengths and talents of Messy Jessie, because the occasion may call for it. The idea is to centre ourselves, and our attitude to be ‘Master-Minded’ like ‘Queen Bae’. What makes Queen Bae the master is that she is able to identify situations, knows herself, and she take actions that aligns with her goals and are within her means. Scarcity mindset is the type of mindset associated with Messy Jessie. However, this attitude can be fitting under some circumstances. If you were suddenly rendered destitute, perhaps by a disability or major life event, taking a page from Messy Jessie’s book could be helpful and you could protect what little resources you have left. We will soon investigate ways for Messy Jessie’s to improve their financial attitude. If you identify as a Messy Jessie, think about where your feelings and thoughts around money stem from, and ask yourself whether this approach is applicable or fitting for your present day life. Until then, stay subscribed for further material on how to economically empower yourself as a sex worker! Follow us on social media!

Your financial attitude is an aspect that determines your financial wellbeing. For the economic empowerment educational program for sex workers, we will be looking at financial attitudes first. Watch Estelle's video here! Why are we starting with financial attitudes? There are three reasons why I want you to better understand your own financial attitude. Firstly, if you have a negative relationship with money, you’re not going to be able to engage with the economic empowerment material. You’ll just switch off at the first opportunity or at the first sign of discomfort. I want you to feel confident and to feel it is worth your while working to improve your financial attitude, despite the discomfort. Secondly, our financial attitude changes over time because our circumstances change over time, for better or for worse. Whatever happens, I want you to equip you with the skills to orient yourself when change inevitably arrives, so you don’t feel disenchanted in the face of strife, or complacent in the face of fortune.  Thirdly, there is no real right or wrong when it comes to money. There’s only harder or easier. For me to help you improve your financial wellbeing as easy as possible, I need to work on your strengths, and there are strengths inherent in all financial attitudes. Some experts have argued that your financial attitude is more of an indication of financial well-being than the actual size of your income. It makes sense then why understanding and improving our financial attitudes is the first unit for the economic empowerment program. What are financial attitudes? Like most things in life, the way in which we respond to money is largely dictated by our life experiences, our unique personalities, our values and belief systems. The way we think and feel about money is determined primarily by three components: The first is our internal factors, which are cognitive in nature. That means it comes from our thinking brain, what do we know from our personal experiences, what are our beliefs, our personality? Combine this with the second component that comes from our heart, which are effective in nature. This means our emotions, what do we think is right or wrong, good or bad, and all other judgements.  The third component is the way we act, the behaviours we exercise around money, what we do when we interact with money, the actions we take. The combination of these 3 components (cognitive, affective and behavioural) is called your financial attitude. We all have a financial attitude, whether we consciously determined this for ourselves or not.  Many of our views around money stem from the subconscious, and it's important to recognise that financial attitudes are more about how you feel towards money, and money-making decisions, than it is about specific knowledge or ability.  That means to improve your financial attitude, we don’t really have to learn anything related to finance, what we need to do is look inwards at ourselves.  We need to talk about our feelings and thoughts, and get to the fundamental beliefs and experiences that inform how we interact with money.  Has anyone ever asked you how much money you need to feel safe? Has anyone ever asked what you think we gain by spending money? Have you ever asked yourself those questions? Have you ever been curious to learn where your outlook came from and at what point your perspective, at its core, was determined? Why would I change my financial attitude? There are consequences to ignorance and understanding your own financial attitude is a good example. In the same way that you learned about money from other people, your financial attitude influences everyone around you, whether you’re aware of it or not. It’s time to get curious and to learn about ourselves. Understanding your own financial attitude will help inform your decisions and strengthen your understanding of how money works for you, and what weaknesses you need to pay a little closer attention to.  Money is modern day magic, you can turn it into anything you want, and your financial attitude has a major impact on your long-term financial sustainability. Not just for yourself but for everyone around you. Your financial attitude is about your state of mind, your personal opinions and judgements which are all informed by the three components mentioned earlier. Your attitude towards money influences your financial behaviour as your attitude tends to shape your goals, priorities and decision making processes. The great thing about financial attitudes is that they can be consciously shaped and modified through experience, education and most importantly self-reflection. How do I improve my financial attitude? To improve, we must first understand ourselves and where we are. If we imagine financial attitudes as existing on two axes, on one our inherent judgment about money good versus bad, on the other, our inherent approach to money risky versus safe, then we have four quadrants in which to understand financial attitudes. This simplified rendition of financial attitudes is just one framework to figure out where you sit and where you need to go. You could be ‘The Worrier, ‘Frugal-Minded, ‘The Risk-Taker’, ‘The Virtuous’ or ‘Master-Minded’. Everyone lands somewhere in these quadrants, and despite the names of the axes, no attitude is entirely good/bad, safe or risky, because there are inherent skills in each approach or attitude towards money. What is truly dangerous, or harder to live with, is having a fixed financial attitude towards personal finance, because the reality is, everything changes whether we like it or not. The economy, the world, our bodies, our health. We create and we lose, change is the only constant in life and if your attitude does not adjust with the times, things will become harder. The aim of the game is to become ‘Master-Minded’, because the ‘Master’ can slide up and down these axes and adapt to the situation they’re in. There will be times in life where it is more effective to be safer or riskier. There will be times where you can feel good about money or times where you can stop and think about whether you’re using your money in an ethical manner. That’s why the aim is to orient yourself to be a ‘Master’, as this financial attitude is the most flexible.  These labels can help us determine how we approach money, and what we need to work on as individuals to increase the potential for financial wellbeing and success. Each of these quadrants have a set of skills and strengths that you can draw upon. We have created six sex worker characters that embody each of the financial attitudes: ‘Messy Jessie, ‘Prue the Shrewd’, ‘Risky Misty’, ‘Good-Girl Pearl’, ‘Chaotic Katie’ and ‘Queen Bae’. Each of these character will have their own character profile (to be posted in this Substack very soon) to detail their strengths, psychology and weaknesses. To figure out which of the six you are most like, we are also creating a personality test to determine your financial attitude. This blog post will be updated when we make this test available. If you would like to be notified it’s best to subscribe to our Substack. These characters are simplified renditions of our complex realities. They’re not perfect characters or to be taken too literally. They are used here to help us build the cognitive infrastructure and awareness about what financial attitudes are, how they appear in our lives and how they change over time. Until the test and characters go live, be curious with yourself about your thoughts and feelings towards money. This is your prompt to simply witness (do not judge) the feelings and thoughts that pass by you every time you interact with money. COMPLETE OUR QUIZ HERE!

Disclaimer: Before Estelle creates a weekly video for the Bigger Sister Channel Youtube, they go through a process of writing about the weekly topic to better prepare and articulate themselves. Estelle is a stronger writer than they are a presenter, and we’ve shared this writing process alongside the accompanying video, for those who want more in-depth explanations. In this blog post, Estelle continues on from our last blog post and explains how they intend to break themselves, and other sex workers, out of the cycle of economic disempowerment. Watch Estelle's video here! Introduction Welcome to Bigger Sister Channel, my name is Estelle and I’m developing an educational program to economically empower sex workers. But what does that even mean, economic empowerment, and how does that relate to sex workers? If you haven’t already, I suggest you watch the video ‘unpacking how economic disempowerment render marginalised populations vulnerable’ on Youtube which explains the problem, before watching this video where I will share the solution. What is economic empowerment?  We know the theory of the cycle of economic disempowerment, so what’s the solution? How do we break out of this cycle? What does economic empowerment look like? To me, economic empowerment requires two things.  One is the skills and knowledge. We need to increase our financial literacy, to help us identify financial stresses and diagnose our financial health. If we don’t know what we’re doing we can’t improve our financial wellbeing and we need to build our awareness and knowledge about the systems at play. That can be systems within yourself, like tracking your income and expenses, or it can be about knowing how to leverage and use the system greater than ourselves, like government schemes or tax laws. This is the type of stuff they should be teaching us at school and if you’re lucky, you might get it from your parents. This is the type of stuff that prevents us from receiving an unexpected tax bill of thousands of dollars, or suddenly being retired with little to no superannuation, or knowing how to make money from money so you’re not endlessly laboring. I will be covering this material and there’s no reason why non-sex workers can’t benefit from this content.  Second is the tools and practice. There’s absolutely no way you can do all the financial and business side of things by yourself and without any tools. However, it’s risky using tools as a sex worker, you can be discriminated against, you could be stigmatised, and this can well and truly impact your health, your reputation, your future, depending on the cultural context you’re in. That’s why I’m going to take one for the team and not only identify sex worker friendly tools, businesses, services and products, but I’m going to use them and review them. What good are all my privileges if I’m not putting them to use, I’m face-out now, my future is irreversibly tied to Estelle, who else is better fit to put their neck on the line? By reviewing products, you can decide for yourself whether Hnry is the right accounting app (Edit: use SISTER promo code) for you, or an Excel spreadsheet (leave a comment for a template) or an in-person accountant like Money Before the Honey. But I’m not just going to find these tools, rate them, review them, recommend them, but for those who say they are sex worker friendly, I’m going to do a bit of advocacy and really make sure what they say is what they do. I’m going to tell them what changes they need to make to be more accessible and safe for sex workers. I'm going to interview their staff, so you can make an informed decision yourself about what tools work for you. Storytelling and synthesis Now, for us to synthesis the skills, knowledge, tools and practices, we’re going to need to reframe our lives. To do this, to demonstrate it, I’m going to ask my fellow peers to join me in the Bigger Sister Channel Community Podcast where we share our financial concerns and status, and assuming I can, I’m going to troubleshoot your situation with you. We’re going to explore these issues and improve our lives together, live, through the Community Podcast. So if there's financial stress you’re experiencing, don’t be shy, tell me about it. And if I can’t help you, I’m going to find an expert that can and I’m going to get their advice and opinion.  The more real stories and scenarios we’re able to share on Bigger Sister Channel, the more opportunities I have to go find an expert, interview them and share the results. We are such a diverse population, the more stories we have to cover the more relatability we have of each other's experience. And we learn better through storytelling, you’re much more likely to remember ‘hey, I remember when Estelle had to register for GST to get that 1 million dollar home’ rather than ‘how do I have to do my taxes to get a home loan to buy a million dollar home again?’ But that’s not all. For us to increase our financial wellbeing we need community spaces, we need skill-sharing workshops to come together and really put into practice all the things we said we’re going to do, we’re going to put those systems in place, we’re going to learn the new habits, we’re going to reflect with like-minded peers. Once a month Bigger Sister Channel will facilitate these skill-sharing spaces and we will rotate between online and in person, and we will rotate between different financial concepts and ideas. This is a form of accountability for yourself and our peers. And there you have it, that’s the package, that’s my blueprint to economic empowerment. Everyone is going to have a different definition of what financial freedom or economic empowerment means to them and this blueprint is just a map, a safe way to get there. But there’s one final problem that needs to be resolved. How do we get this blueprint into the hands of those who need it? And that’s where Bigger Sister Channel comes into play. Many of these aspects that create the cycle of economic disempowerment are systemic and my proposed solution, the blueprint of knowledge, skill, tools and practices, is all individual level intervention. You cannot break a system as an individual, it is designed to withstand individual resistance. That’s why I needed to create something a bit bigger than an individual. You are only as strong as your community I’m Turkish and in my culture, there’s a saying that says you're only as strong as your community. The system can easily crush an individual, it already does on a daily basis. To resist these odds, it takes a community. If we want to break the system that gridlock sex workers into a cycle of vulnerability, we need to unlearn individualistic mindsets we’re socially conditioned to default into and replicate. We need to learn to support each other unconditionally to the best of our ability, whilst still surviving and thriving in a hostile system and political environment. That’s why I created Bigger Sister Channel. I wanted a public facing platform, not just to deliver our resources, skills and knowledge effectively, but to give everyone an opportunity to contribute whilst still maintaining their privacy and confidentiality. Bigger Sister Channel is a front for something much greater and that is how I’m planning to distribute information beyond the blueprint to economic empowerment.  Putting it all together So there you have it, we have our four domains: knowledge, skill, tools and practices, to overcome these obstacles: financial insecurity, precarity, stigma and discrimination, and we have our five means to achieve this: videos and regular social media content, a Community Podcast, skillsharing workshops, access to sex worker friendly products and services and expert interviews with financial professionals.  That’s it from me and next time I will be seeing you to cover some basic definitions when it comes to financial wellbeing.

Disclaimer: Before Estelle creates a weekly video for the Bigger Sister Channel Youtube, they go through a process of writing about the weekly topic to better prepare and articulate themselves. Estelle is a stronger writer than they are a presenter, and we’ve shared this writing process alongside the accompanying video, for those who want more in-depth explanations. In this first blog post, Estelle defines the cycle of economic disempowerment and why we, as sex workers, need a financial wellbeing program. Introduction Welcome to Bigger Sister Channel, my name is Estelle and I’m developing an educational program to economically empower sex workers. But what does that even mean, economic empowerment, and how does that relate to sex workers? For me to answer that question, I need to share insights from my research and break down my theory on the cycle of economic disempowerment.The cycle of economic disempowerment Background I did four major things last year. In May, I was awarded the 2022 Kenneth Myer Innovation Fellowship to make the sex industry safer using technology. With this Fellowship, I did two things: community build and research. The fourth thing I did is get Vampire teeth in Turkey, which no one noticed when I returned to Australia and that made me sad. Why, you may be thinking? Well, I needed to conduct research because despite working in the industry for 14 years, it would still be irresponsible of me to assume I understood the nuances around how sex workers experience safety and danger in the workplace. I needed to build community because trust is paramount in this industry, if sex workers do not trust me, they will never trust anything I do, no matter how superb my gadgets and gizmos are. And I got my vampire teeth because I read a lot of fantasy fanfic in my teenage years and I’d always wanted them. It was through this community building and research that I discovered that sex worker safety needs to be approached holistically and that there’s no one solution fits all. I believe the first step to achieving safety in the workplace for sex workers, in a society that decriminalises sex work, is economic empowerment. Not only can economic empowerment help sex workers no matter what type of sex work you’re doing, but it helps sex workers mitigate risk no matter how seasoned they are and its something that can follow you through to the rest of your days. But how does economic empowerment relate to safety you may be thinking. Let me tell you about my research. To determine what I should do with my Fellowship, I designed a qualitative study that involved one-on-one interviews with 19 participants. I don’t have a lot of research experience and although this wasn’t academic research, I completed an ethics application anyway, to ensure the integrity of the research design and safety of participants. The demographic of the 19 participants included: Underage, survival or ‘for favours’ sex work experience; Culturally and linguistically diverse (first generation and migrant); First Nations sex workers; Varying mental health conditions; Physical or chronic disabilities; Ages from 22 years old to 47 years old; Varying experiences in work settings such as illegal/legal brothels, agency, online, touring regionally/cities, or independent sex work; stripping Genders including cis-female, non-binary, transgender male, transgender female; Less than one year's working experience to over 25 years working experience; Those currently experiencing life crises. The interviews covered four domains: administration tasks, highlights, pain points and prototypes.  I asked about contemporary practices, admin and business management to see if there was any way I could make these processes optimised, quicker or easier. One question I asked was: ‘how do you track and manage the financial side of your business’.  I asked participants about the changes in how they conducted their work over time, to measure how experience impacts how a sex worker experiences safety. For example, I asked ‘how did you determine the rates and services you offer and has this changed over time’. I asked about key concerns, pain points and vulnerabilities with the work, such as their health or their privacy, to determine common trends in experiences. I wanted to not only identify problems but I wanted to measure the extent of the problem. I then looked at things that were working, the benefits of the job and the tools and techniques that were currently working in their favour. I wanted to identify inherent strengths of the participants, to perhaps leverage these in whatever I ended up creating. Finally, I had those participants test three ideas that I had sitting in the back-burner for main impressions and to test validity. In the end I accrued 40 hours worth of transcription and I’m still processing the data, but there are some clear cut insights I can share. I can tell you with full confidence almost every sex worker struggles with either stigma, discrimination, mental health, financial security or disability. None of these pain points exist within a vacuum, they are interconnected, and so if we want to improve the lives and health of sex workers, we must take a holistic approach, because you cannot resolve one issue and expect the rest to be resolved.  Let me explain to you my theory of economic disempowerment. The cycle of economic disempowerment *pulls out whiteboard* I’m going to draw a diagram of what I like to call the cycle of economic disempowerment. This is not a perfect, one way circle but here’s how it works. Financial insecurity is where it begins. The effects of financial insecurity is well-known, it makes people vulnerable to precarity, and it's associated with a decline of health and quality of life. This is true across all industries and we know this because there's a number of financial literacy programs, both government-funded and on a corporate level. There isn't one for sex workers however. For sex workers experiencing financial insecurity, this can affect how a sex worker experiences safety in the workplace. In one example, if you're financially insecure, you may not have the funds to start your business as a sex worker and may seek the assistance of a third party, such as a brothel or agency, for admin, business management, security and safety. This doesn't always go according to plan because third parties have a conflict of interest when it comes to the safety and security of workers. There will always be business decisions that will be made at the expense of the workers safety, and the nature of these relationships is just one form of precarity and this was demonstrated in my research. This is just one example, of many instances, where sex workers can experience precarity in the workplace. In another example, say an independent sex worker goes to work in a different city, and hasn't been able to cover the costs of travel. They might compromise on their screening procedures to make ends meet. As you can see, there's an association here between financial security and precarity in the workplace, the more financially secure you are, the more power you have, the more autonomy you have, the more in control you are of the conditions of your employment. This is true in any industry mind you. I know what you’re thinking, and you cannot in good conscience blame anyone for their financial insecurity. We live under the system of capitalism, and capitalism requires impoverishment to maintain its power. That makes this *circles financial insecurity* a well-calculated by-product, and individuals alone cannot disrupt or overcome systemic barriers. It is designed to be too large, too great for one person to overturn. This *keeps circling* is our moral failings as a society. And we know this because when we replicate this experience in other industries with other people they also experience precarity, their health and quality of life also declines.  Sex workers are no exception to this known fact. However, we need to factor in the third aspect to truly appreciate how the system is currently set up against sex workers. This is not a perfect circle, stigma can go this way or this way, but I’m putting it here to illustrate how pervasive this experience is. My research discovered that while sex workers are generally competent, because of the stigma and discrimination, we have barriers that others don't in accessing information, products, support, advice, resources or skills related to business or financial management. Now what that means is even if a sex worker wants to be financially secure, we have very little means within the system to achieve this. Everything is stacked against us. Every step of the way, stigma comes into play. Now financial literacy is a privilege for most people, regardless of what industry you work in, but for sex workers it’s a bit different because banks don’t treat us fairly and our financial capabilities are restricted by stigma and discrimination. In the above example of a sex worker who compromises their screening procedures, this might look like accepting bank transfers instead of cash. A client could show a fake receipt to fraudulently obtain consent, render the act rape by deceit, and if the sex worker seeks recourse through the banks they’ll be told the onus is on them to prove a violation occurred. The banks will wipe their hands clean and say they played no part in enabling that crime, when in reality we have hundreds of sex workers calling them begging them to create stronger protections and safeguards. This is just one example, of many instances where sex workers can be stigmatised or discriminated against. It’s unreasonable to ask individuals to become fraud detectives and dress it up as due diligence, it’s much more practical to ask multi-billion dollar companies to create a technological safeguard that gives a red light to demonstrate that a payment has not come through, to serve millions of citizens, not just sex workers. Additionally, sex workers don’t start life on equal footing with others, myself included, we have intersecting identities, we are mothers, we are migrants, we are disabled and we are rendered more vulnerable by the stigma and discrimination. Because we have to live in secrecy, we might not be able to ask our friends or family for financial help because that just exposes us to judgment and prejudice. But it’s not just that, if something bad happens at work, and we don’t have access to support systems because of stigma, we are left to deal with this situation in isolation. These structural barriers impact how a sex worker experiences personal finance, which we now know has an association to safety. If you don't have access to information or tools to develop financial capabilities, if you're financially excluded, the more financial stress you will experience, the more likely you are to experience precarity at work and thus the cycle of economic disempowerment begins anew. Now there’s a lot of ways one could disrupt this cycle of economic disempowerment on an individual level, but on a more population level, my interpretation is that the systems at play gridlock sex workers into a cycle of vulnerability. Bigger Sister Channel is my proposed solution, and the economic empowerment program is just one way to get out of this shitshow of a reality.

If you prefer watching or listening over reading then just watch this post on our Youtube. We are thrilled to introduce you to Bigger Sister Channel, a community project dedicated to providing sex workers with the tools, education, skills, and resources we need for safe, healthy, and sustainable work.  At Bigger Sister Channel, we believe in the strengths of the sex working community: self-determination, resilience, agency, peer-education, solidarity, and collective impact. Bigger Sister is not a she or an individual person, we are a community looking to economically empower sex workers by overcoming the challenges that render us financially insecure and setting up systems to maintain financial health. We will deliver our content through video and expand to a number of platforms, formats, and methods to be more accessible and available. Our content will focus on improving overall understanding of financial literacy and health, sharing our financial experiences and stories as sex workers, finding and reviewing sex worker friendly tools, products, and services, trialling financial skills and techniques for financial wellbeing, and interviewing financial experts and business professionals. We understand that financial security impacts how a sex worker experiences safety. When income is sporadic and unreliable, you can't always afford to be safe. With the rising cost of living, money is disappearing faster, and workers are anxiously waiting longer for their next pay. That's why we need skills to make every dollar last because we do not know when our next job is.  Stigma and discrimination make it difficult to seek financial or business support, which is why Bigger Sister Channel works to identify safe routes to financial security. No single thing can make sex work safer, but securing financial health is an important step. We need your help to achieve our goal. We need you to be involved in every step of the process. The first goal is to build a large, engaged audience on the Bigger Sister Channel social media platforms to ensure our educational material reaches the most vulnerable sex workers. We have a Substack blog, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and a Community Podcast, and we encourage you to follow us on as many platforms as possible. Please comment, like, retweet, repost, stitch, share our posts and let's get the ball rolling. We can use your interactions to engage with financial experts and begin our journey to financial security.  Thank you for your support of Bigger Sister Channel, and we look forward to working with you.