Postdoctoral Fellow, San Francisco Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Sex Reprod Health Matters. 2023 Dec;31(4):2272741. doi: 10.1080/26410397.2023.2272741. Epub 2023 Nov 20.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the harm reduction potential of virtual sex work (VSW) such as video or audio calls with clients. VSW limits exposure to COVID-19 and STIs. However, sex workers using digital technologies face high risks of technology-facilitated intimate partner violence (IPV), such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images. This study explored perceived risks and benefits of VSW, including the salience of STI harm reduction. Ethnographic interviews and participant observation with self-identified cis women sex workers in Dakar between January 2018 and August 2019 informed a further period of focused data collection in June 2022, in which two key research participants and the author devised a goal of concrete community benefit: a list of contextually relevant digital privacy precautions and resources. Brainstorming this list during workshops with 18 sex workers provided prompts for participant perspectives. While participants generally preferred VSW, citing STI prevention as a key reason, most resumed in-person sex work after COVID-19 curfews lifted; social risks of digital privacy breach and potential outing outweighed physical risks of contracting STIs. Participants proposed privacy features for mobile applications to make VSW viable and benefit from STI prevention. Their reflections call on tech companies to embed values of informed consent and privacy into platform design, shifting the burden of protecting privacy from individuals to companies. This study addresses a gap in technology-facilitated IPV research, which has concentrated on Euro-American contexts. Participant perspectives can inform action in technology policy sectors to advance criminalised communities' rights to sexual health, privacy, and autonomy.
COVID-19 大流行凸显了虚拟性工作（VSW）的减少伤害潜力，例如与客户进行视频或音频通话。VSW 可以降低感染 COVID-19 和性传播感染（STI）的风险。然而，使用数字技术的性工作者面临着很高的技术促进亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）风险，例如未经同意分发亲密图像。本研究探讨了 VSW 的感知风险和益处，包括 STI 减少伤害的显著性。2018 年 1 月至 2019 年 8 月期间，在达喀尔对自我认同的 cis 女性性工作者进行了人种学访谈和参与式观察，然后在 2022 年 6 月进一步进行了重点数据收集，在此期间，两名关键研究参与者和作者制定了一个具体的社区受益目标：一份相关数字隐私预防措施和资源清单。在与 18 名性工作者一起进行的研讨会上，对这份清单进行头脑风暴为参与者的观点提供了提示。虽然参与者普遍更喜欢 VSW，并将 STI 预防作为主要原因，但大多数人在 COVID-19 宵禁解除后恢复了面对面的性工作；数字隐私泄露的社会风险和潜在曝光的潜在风险超过了感染 STI 的身体风险。参与者为移动应用程序提出了隐私功能，以使 VSW 可行并受益于 STI 预防。他们的反思呼吁科技公司将知情同意和隐私的价值观嵌入到平台设计中，将保护隐私的负担从个人转移到公司。这项研究解决了技术促进 IPV 研究中的一个空白，该研究集中在欧美背景下。参与者的观点可以为技术政策领域的行动提供信息，以促进被定罪社区的性健康、隐私和自主权。
