The uproar over the NDIS and sex work shows society still struggles to see disabled people as sexual beings
Clem Bastow and Ali Schnabel
Explain it to me quickly
Sole trader: why is Lily Allen selling feet pics on OnlyFans?
June 2024
This is how we do it around the world: a sex special
‘Sex work is decriminalised – and my time with Samuel is subsidised by the government’: This is how we do it in Australia
‘Guess what? Mummy is a sex worker’: the sexologist who wants to build a ‘slutopia’ for women
May 2024
Anora review – stellar turn from Mikey Madison in sex work non-love story
Sean Baker’s tragicomedy features Madison as an escort betrayed by a bratty oligarch’s son who she marries in a film that offers a more realistic take than Pretty Woman
‘More like therapists’: adult virgins turn to Nevada brothels for sex – and healing
The oldest profession is helping a generation of young men who have intimacy-stunted lives due to social media and internet porn
Sex work decriminalised in Queensland after decades of campaigning
Advocates fear the hard-won reform could be overturned if the LNP, which voted against the bill, wins government in October
April 2024
Hamburg’s sex workers persecuted under Hitler to be commemorated
Planned memorial aims at ‘dignified remembrance’ of women of St Pauli detained as perverts under the Nazis
March 2024
Women at Cheltenham feel threatened by pop-up strip clubs, says minister
A moment that changed me
A moment that changed me: I discovered my mother was a sex worker
Police examine unsolved murders of women in Glasgow after Packer trial
Violence against sex workers ‘a daily reality’, 20 years after Emma Caldwell murder
February 2024
From the Observer archive
An audience with Cynthia Payne, 1987
Britain’s most famous madam talked cupboards, whips, mild humiliation and the feature film she believed she had inspired. By Emma Beddington
January 2024
How we survive
I was an addict, a prisoner, a sex worker. I thought the world had written me off – but I saved myself
A new start after 60
A new start after 60: I was a secretary – until I stumbled upon an amazing story I had to film
December 2023
Rights and freedom
Woman making Christmas jumpers for UK turns to sex work to pay bills
Story of garment worker’s ordeal in Bangladesh, where she works in a factory producing clothes for brands including Tesco, Matalan and Next, shines light on low factory wages
‘Host clubs’ in Tokyo force women into sex work to pay off huge debts
A ‘vicious’ multibillion-yen system is pushing vulnerable young women who rack up extortionate bills into prostitution
Malawian women forced to sell sex after cyclone destroys crops
In devastating land and livelihoods, Cyclone Freddy pushed more women and girls into prostitution to feed their families
November 2023
Ex-owners of sex work site Backpage convicted of prostitution scheme
France is reckoning with the harms of online porn. But will anything change?