A 150 member co-op operating nationally in the United States run by and for current/former sex workers founded in 2016
Our Emergency Fund & Members
We are best know for our 6 year ongoing Sex Worker Emergency Fund and are currently able to assist individuals with sliding scale amounts of $50-$100 depending on the specific situation/individual, availability of funds, location, and volume of requests. To inquire about receiving emergency assistance or promoting a fundraiser please review our guidelines for requests and then get in touch at lysistratamccf@protonmail.com.
Our leaders and membership consist entirely of current and former sex workers who are familiar with the ups and downs of working in the industry as well as the difficulties and discrimination faced by sex workers when we seek to organize to improve our quality of life and working conditions.
Our general membership is made up of ~ 67% Queer and/or Trans members, 79% PoC members, 74% Chronically ill or Disabled members, 62% houseless or housing instable members, and 45% parenting or caregiving members. Every. Single. One. of our members is a current or former sex worker with the majority of us having done mostly in person work, having multiply marginalized identities, and/or having experienced housing or significant financial insecurity at some point during our time in the industry.
(As a non-501c3 entity contributions or gifts made to us are NOT deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes. If you'd like a tax deductible option please reach out to rsn@rougesupportnetwork.org before donating to arrange contributing through a fiscal sponsor.)
A little bit more about us:
The Lysistrata Mutual Care Collective and Fund was founded in Brooklyn 2016 in response to the seizure of Backpage and the Election of Trump to Presidential Office. In 2018, we grew to support needs and partner with organizations nationally during the passage of SESTA/FOSTA and the entire shutdown of Backpage. Since then, we've developed a reputation for being one of the longest standing, consistently, and sustainably operating public facing online funds to operate nationally in the United States with an ongoing cash assistance resource that has operated without major pause for 5-7 days a week on a mostly volunteer run basis even through the upheaval of the pandemic.
At the end of 2020, we kicked off a restructuring process with the goal of being an organization operating with ongoing meaningful input from our participants in our cash assistance program as well as an organization offering broader services, network capabilities, and more diversity of tactics in our responses to the myriad of intersecting issues our community has faced.
As of the end of 2022 we reached a mid point in this restructuring process with the adoption of an ~150 general membership made up of sex workers who have been participants in cash assistance program. With inspiration from partners like Whose Corner is It Anyway, these members now participate in paid votes about changes in our approaches to organizing and service provision, paid creative workshops/submission, paid skill building opportunities, and paid movement education opportunities with the goal of sparking more local organizing and advocacy and access to opportunities through online resources, especially for sex workers who have disabilities and live outside of major metropolitan areas.
Through this process of building the national network of partners that has grown to become the Rouge Support Network and adopting our general membership we are working to find ways to make the Emergency Fund more accessible to vulnerable street based workers as well as seeking ways to compile regional SW friendly services and community events to be able to offer longer term networking and support to new members and people we have assisted with funds.
We have now been operating for over 6 years. We have operated through our own core members housing/income instability, cross country moves, worsening chronic illness/disability and through large scale community crisis including the passage of SESTA/FOSTA, the shutdown of Backpage, and the ongoing Covid pandemic. Through it all, we are still providing funds nationally without shut down or pause and have provided frameworks for several similar local funds both across the US and internationally. While mutual aid funds have a longstanding history among communities of marginalized sex workers, (especially in India, Africa and among QTPOC communities) we are widely regarded to be one of the first, longest standing, and sustainable public facing online financial solidarity resources of this type to operate in the US.
As we see how our world changes through this current upheaval we are laying plans to be a part of creating longer term structural change that provides ongoing funding mechanisms to both our group and others like us who intentionally exist and provide services outside of existing non-profit frameworks that still benefit from and are often responsible for upholding and continuing already existing systems of inequity.