ESWA is happy to launch our new beautiful resource! Following the success of our first Sex Work & Tech Tarot Cards, launched during ESWA’s first Sex Workers’ Digital Rights Convening (Madrid, 2024), we’re proud to present the second deck in this ongoing series. The first deck introduced nine key issues shaping sex workers’ digital lives, from shadowbanning and content moderation to surveillance and online payment exclusion, bringing these urgent topics to wider audiences through art and storytelling.
This second deck takes the idea further. Drawing on ESWA’s years of community-led research, it translates our findings and recommendations into accessible, visually engaging tools for learning and advocacy. Between 2020 and 2024, ESWA produced 6 research reports exploring online censorship and digital discrimination, privacy and data protection, and the platformisation of sex work (see our Resources section for all these reports). Each report centres sex workers’ lived experiences and sets out clear, rights-based policy recommendations. With this new deck, we wanted to synthesise those insights, making them easier to share, discuss, and use in collective action.
Created as both an educational and artistic project, this deck is based on the concept of boundary objects. As such, these cards are tools that move between research, activism, and policy to connect communities and foster dialogue. Through this, we aim to combine art, advocacy, technical knowledge, and activism, and democratise complex digital rights debates and experiment with creative ways of distributing knowledge.
Each of the six cards in this deck focuses on one of three key themes: Online Censorship and Discrimination, Privacy and Data Protection, and Labour and Human Rights in Platform Work.
Every theme includes one card outlining the challenges sex workers face and another offering community-driven recommendations for change. Each card also includes a QR code that leads the users of the cards to important resources on the topic of the card for those who want to expand their knowledge. Together, they form the basis of a resource for education, empowerment, and rights-based advocacy.
The artwork, created by Ambrose Treavel, beautifully reflects the diversity, strength, and resilience of the sex worker community. The designs balance seriousness and hope that portray the depth of the issues while celebrating collective resistance and creativity. Wszebor Sienkiewicz, ESWA’s Communications and Campaigns Officer, provided crucial design feedback and refinements that helped bring the deck together.
The project was conceptualised, initiated, and managed by Yigit Aydinalp, ESWA Interim Director, who also led the synthesis of ESWA’s digital rights research and the writing of the card texts.
ESWA owns the intellectual rights of the cards.
This project was funded by the European Artificial Intelligence and Society Fund and Luminate.
We hope you enjoy these beautiful and informative tools. For questions, please contact [email protected].
Download the cards in a PDF format below:
Are you enjoying this resource? Please consider showing your support with a donation!
