Umeed by Swabhimaan: Covid19 and Virtual Sex Work

Solidarity Foundation is an organization based out of Bangalore and works for the dignity of sex workers, gender and sexual minorities. We interviewed Shubha Chacko, who is the Executive Director of Solidarity Foundation. She has over 15 years of experience in engagement with issues around sexuality and has been closely linked to grassroots level groups. Her three decades of work experience has been varied but within the realm of development, human rights, and social justice. In this conversation of Umeed, we discussed a rather new development in the area of sex work and its impact on sex workers and their rights. This is the development of Virtual Sex Work, which essentially entails providing the service of sex work through a virtual platform. Although having been in existence for while globally, it seems to have (re)surfaced since the incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many sex workers in India have shifted to this virtual mode of practising their livelihood source. Shubha dispels some myths and shares her insights on how this typology of sex work has interacted with sex workers’ privacy, bodily integrity and freedom, and other forms of social and economic transactions, in the context of the pandemic.