Respectability politics has long cast a heavy shadow over the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. For those of us organizing at the intersections of sex work, Black liberation, trans justice, and bodily autonomy, this shadow is more than metaphorical. It’s a material barrier and systemic obstacle, a locked door to funding, to inclusion, to legitimacy. Respectability politics polices not only what is said and how it’s said, but who is even allowed to speak, survive, and thrive.
As someone who has lived, organized, and now funds at these intersections, I write this with the urgency of someone who has seen how these politics kill visions, silence movements, and perpetuate harm — even in the name of “justice.”
At Third Wave Fund’s Sex Worker Giving Circle (SWGC), we champion the voices that frequently hit roadblocks in our movements, and we call it out. We’ve got to name the truth: sex worker-led organizing is routinely expected to sanitize, shrink, and assimilate itself into frameworks that were never designed with us in mind. These frameworks often demand narratives of redemption, respectability, or reform that evoke pity rather than power. We’re told to tone it down, clean it up, make it make sense for people who’ve never had to trade their body, their gender expression, or their intimacy for survival.
And in exchange, we might get a grant. We might get a seat at the table, but only if we don’t rock the boat. We might get funded, but only if we perform our pain and pleasure in the “right” way.
But what does that performance cost us?
The Tax of Respectability
In the philanthropic landscape, sex worker-led organizations are often asked to do what others aren’t. We must prove we are not “too risky.” We must provide receipts for respectability, not just metrics. This is one small reason why SWGC utilizes a constantly evolving and interrogated “low-barrier” application process. We must center storytellers that align with a funder’s risk management plan, not our community’s liberation goals.
That tax — that additional labor — is not neutral. It’s rooted in white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness. It assumes that those closest to harm are incapable of articulating or leading the solutions to that harm. It perpetuates a cycle where funders pour money into research about us, but rarely into efforts led by us. Where the bodies of sex workers are sources of inspiration, curiosity, or saviorism, but not deserving of agency, infrastructure, or care.
It also reinforces the false binary of the “deserving” versus “undeserving” sex worker. If you’re college-educated, if you’ve left the industry, if your story ends in transformation or trauma — you’re palatable. But if you’re still working, still surviving, still resisting — suddenly you’re too complicated, too political, too much.
Respectability politics conditions funders to equate safety with distance from lived experience. But what gets lost when we sanitize our stories? What truths die on the cutting room floor?
Risk Isn’t the Enemy — Disconnection Is
Philanthropy often talks a good game about equity, justice, and “centering the margins,” but when it comes time to move money, fear takes the wheel. Conservative funders worry: What if our grantees get arrested? What if a board member doesn’t understand this work? What if we lose donors? What if we get it wrong?
But here’s a more urgent question: What is the cost of avoiding risk? Playing it safe in this moment — when trans folks, sex workers, migrants, and people living with HIV are being legislated out of existence — is the risk. It is a risk to our collective liberation, our interdependent futures, and our moral clarity.
Risk assessment looks different for folx living within the margins of the margins. Sex workers exist across ALL movements, and from my experience have a more nuanced lens on interacting with what most people (especially in philanthropy) might label as “Risky”.
When funders avoid risk, they lose more than reputational capital. They lose connection to the most radical, imaginative, and necessary edge of our movements. They lose the opportunity to be in authentic, accountable relationships with people who know how to survive systems that philanthropy only writes white papers about.
They lose proximity to truth in the name of privilege and capital. And when you lose proximity to truth, your strategy is compromised.
What Would It Mean to Fund Without Preconditions?
Funding sex worker-led work without preconditions would mean trusting our grantee partners. It would mean refusing to make trauma porn a prerequisite for funding. It would mean shifting from “prove your worth” to “what do you need?”
It would mean following the lead of programs LIKE the Sex Worker Giving Circle at Third Wave Fund; it means giving multi-year, unrestricted support to groups who are already leading the work — not waiting for them to prove levels and levels of legitimacy.
It would mean choosing discomfort over detachment.
It would also mean acknowledging that sex worker-led organizing isn’t ancillary to movements for gender justice, reproductive justice, or racial justice — it is those movements. The fight for bodily autonomy doesn’t stop at abortion. It doesn’t stop at gender-affirming care. It doesn’t stop at labor rights. It includes the right to trade sex, to define your labor, to demand dignity.
If you “can’t” fund without preconditions, this is where intermediary funders (like Third Wave Fund) can really be of benefit to all parties.
Where Do We Go from Here?
This may come across as a rant– but it ain’t. This is not a call-out. This is a call-in to those of us responsible for stewarding funding to these communities— with clarity and care.
We need philanthropy to do more than update its language. We need it to change its posture. We need funders to get closer to the ground, to trust the leadership of people who live what they’re funding, and to let go of the paternalism that frames sex workers as beneficiaries instead of experts.
We need to decolonize professionalism. To unlearn the idea that political polish is more valuable than community power. To remember that our movements were birthed in bathhouses, bars, and back alleys — not boardrooms.
As a former fellow and advisor of the SWGC at Third Wave Fund, I’m proud to now be a full-time staff member as the Program Associate. The SWGC is one model of what it looks like to redistribute resources in ways that center sex worker-led, community-rooted solutions. But we need more. We need a field-wide reckoning with how funding practices continue to replicate the very harms they claim to redress.
We need to be unbought, unbossed, and unbowed — in our giving and in our organizing.
So, to my sex worker kin: you are not the problem. You are the blueprint.
To my fellow organizers: keep pushing. Keep dreaming. Keep disrupting.
And to my fellow funders: be honest about your fears. Then move anyway.
Let’s fund like it.
#SexWorkIsWork #FundUsLikeYouWantUsToWin #LiberationNotLegibility
Carlton V. Bell II “cj” (they/them) is a Southern producer, director, and grassroots cultural organizer who’s passionate about resourcing and building power for artists/and arts organizations led by folx living within the margins of the margins. They have a firm belief that culture/art is the missing piece to our liberation strategy. Carlton is a former fellow and advisor for the Sex Worker Giving Circle at Third Wave Fund as well as a former member of Third Wave Fund’s Advisory Board. Currently they serve as SETC’s VP of Finance, Program Associate of the SWGC at Third Wave Fund, Director of Development for Write It Out, and Producing Fellow at The Tank. They are also the Co-Founder of Birmingham Black Repertory Theatre Collective.
carltonvbell.com | @itscjbell | | @3wave | thirdwavefund.org/sex-worker-giving-circle
Image credit: Forward Together – “Black Trans Femme Beautiful” by Ebin Lee
