On day six of our ‘Sixteen Activists or Organisations Around the Globe Fighting to End Digital Violence Against all Women and Girls‘ campaign, Maedb Joy discusses the violence of shadowbanning and cultural erasure, combatting sex work stigma with political performance art, alongside the trials of building a radical cultural movement.
Maedb Joy is the founder and artistic director of Sexquisite Events, an award-winning performing arts company platforming sex worker artists across cabaret, theatre and nightlife. Maedb started Sexquisite in her second year of drama school during a pop-up performance module. At the time, no one there knew she had a background in sex work, so instead of speaking from that experience, she framed it as something she was “passionate” about. Maedb explains it “felt safer to advocate than to disclose.”
Around that time, her best friend – the only other sex worker she knew – was studying human rights law. She told them about legislation like FOSTA-SESTA in the US, which stopped sex workers from advertising online and pushed people into far less safe working conditions. She remembers feeling shocked that something so violent could happen to a community without the world paying attention. Maedb points out the “irony is that now, years later, we’re seeing something disturbingly similar happening in the UK with the Online Safety Act.”
At the time, Maedb was already writing, performing poetry, and making theatre, so she put out a call online to find other sex worker artists. To her surprise, she received a response, though sex worker artists “publicly out” were scarce back then so it felt like “finding a needle in a haystack.” Such desire for anonymity has shifted dramatically, with Sexquisite inundated with applications from sex worker artists. Maedb likes to think Sexquisite has “helped spark a cultural shift toward people owning their sex worker history without shame.”
Ironically, the Sexquisite Instagram account was shut down by Meta last week, just as UNite’s 16 Days of Activism Against Digital Violence was launching. An organisation that simply celebrates s** workers’ performance art is now being treated as though it were a criminal enterprise. Such deplatforming is widespread in this sector, affecting people engaged in entirely legal forms of work, from webcamming to dancing in strip clubs. The consequences can be severe, including loss of income, increased poverty, and being pushed into riskier forms of work. In Maedb’s case, it has meant the theft of her political voice and platform, while diminishing cultural diversity. Who gets to be artist is hence being regulated by Big Tech and the laws which crminalise sex*workers visiblity online, such as the US FOSTA-SESTA Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act.
In this interview, Maedb talks about their own personal story with intimate image abuse, the violence of shadowbanning, combatting sex work stigma with political performance art, necessary political changes, alongside the struggles and joy of building a cultural movement.
What motivated the decision to start Sexquisite?
A big part of why I built Sexquisite is because growing up, I always felt misunderstood. Performance has always been how I process things and combat misunderstanding. When I was younger, it was leaving letters and poems for my mum after arguments so she’d understand how I was feeling. Later it was public speaking competitions in school where I’d indirectly address girls who’d been horrible to me. Now, it’s getting on stage and talking about the ex who forced me to stop sex work in order to access his love.
Sexquisite grew from that same instinct, to tell the truth, to be witnessed and to build community. It’s about visibility, solidarity and shifting how sex workers are perceived, not through theory or debate, but through art, expression and collective power.
The first Sexquisite event wasn’t just a show, it was a space to start a conversation. We paired performances like monologues, cabaret acts, and poems with a mid-show Q&A with the artists. I wanted to challenge stigma, spark dialogue, and create a place where sex workers could show up as their whole selves, creatively and politically.
How does digital violence manifest towards sex workers?
Digital violence shows up in so many ways for sex workers, but one of the biggest issues for the community Sexquisite represents is online erasure.
Most of us are juggling dual identities. We’re musicians, poets, dancers, actors, event producers, creatives, and we also have experience in sex work. Those identities blend together, shaping our creative output and practice. But the second a platform even suspects sex work, we get censored. Our posts disappear, our accounts get shadowbanned. Years of work can just vanish.
And because we rely on the internet to survive in our creative industries, to promote shows, sell tickets, book jobs, connect with audiences, that kind of erasure doesn’t just silence us, it removes our ability to build a career that isn’t dependent solely on sex work.
It’s constant restrictions, hoops to jump through and that feeling of always being one deleted account away from losing everything you’ve built.
Alongside that doxxing, content being stolen, financial discrimination etc are all ways that digital violence manifests towards sex workers.
What has your experience been like working to build a creative platform that advocates for sex workers in the performing arts space? Have you encountered any specific challenges or barriers in this work?
My experience building a creative platform advocating for sex workers in the performing arts has shifted a lot over time. In the beginning, it was incredibly difficult. I would call venues and say I wanted to programme a feminist cabaret, and people were excited, we’d get as far as pencilling in a date. But the moment I mentioned it was platforming sex workers, suddenly the date wasn’t available anymore. Some very well-known queer venues did that, which was especially disappointing because you’d expect solidarity, not gatekeeping.
As Sexquisite grew, gained recognition, and started selling out shows, attitudes changed. Now venues reach out to us, which is great, but it’s also revealing. It’s like institutions only want to support you once you’ve already proved yourself, and the stigma still sits underneath that transaction.
In the early days, there were fears that the show would be protested or shut down. We’ve had events cancelled because the venue was “too close to a school,” which is wild. I’ve had to explain more times than I can count that what we do is theatre, there’s poetry, there’s comedy, there’s storytelling, but even then, it shouldn’t take palatable art forms to make sex work feel “acceptable.” The dancing is valid on its own.
Licensing and regulation made it obvious how much the system pathologises sexual labour. A venue will happily host a performance with nudity under a theatre licence before 11pm, but the second you mention sex workers, the rules feel different.
Now we’re moving into screen work, and that comes with a new layer of challenges. Live performance is hard enough, but with TV there are literal gatekeepers. The people in those positions rarely come from our world, and often don’t understand the nuance, politics or lived experience behind what we’re creating.
Despite all of this, what keeps us going is the community and the audience. We’ve built something that clearly resonates. Sexquisite has grown through live shows, and now through the podcast, which allows us to expand the conversation beyond the stage and challenge stigma in a different format.
There have been a lot of barriers, stigma, censorship, respectability politics, but we’re still here, still growing, and still proving there is space for sex worker-led art at every level of the creative industry.
How does resistance to digital violence materialise within Sexquisite, and what impact do you think this has?
Resistance to digital violence shows up in Sexquisite in quite a practical and strategic way. Right now, we’re working with Decrim Now on a campaign challenging the Online Safety Act, because so many people in our community have been directly affected by it. It’s not just impacting people’s ability to work safely in the sex industry it’s also affecting sex workers who run creative businesses, performance careers, online platforms, or completely separate entrepreneurial projects. When your account is removed or restricted because of stigma, it affects every avenue of income you have.
We’re currently doing research and development workshops, gathering lived experiences, and building a larger campaign with an accompanying report. I can’t share everything yet, but the aim is to make noise, challenge policy and platform decisions, and centre the people who are most affected rather than speaking about them from a distance.
Alongside campaigning, a huge part of our resistance is simply building and protecting community spaces, both online and offline. Online platforms help us connect, organise, build audiences and support one another, but those spaces don’t feel stable anymore. When you know your account or your community hub could disappear at any moment, it creates a constant sense of vulnerability.
So, part of our work now is thinking about sustainability. How do we build networks and infrastructure that can’t be removed with a single report button? How do we make sure people can still be reached, supported and seen?
Is there adequate visibility of sex worker voices within narratives of image-based sexual abuse and violence towards women and girls?
No. I don’t think there’s adequate visibility of sex worker voices in conversations around image-based abuse. And I say that from personal experience.
When I was around sixteen or seventeen, my ex-boyfriend uploaded nude photos of me onto an escort site, along with my family home address and my phone number. At the time, I was at college and about to go on stage as the lead in a matinee performance. My phone suddenly started blowing up with calls from men asking to book me, and that was how I realised something was wrong.
He did it because I didn’t reply to his messages. He chose an escort website deliberately, because he knew I had a history with sex work and wanted to weaponise that against me. It wasn’t just a violation, it was an attempt to shame me, endanger me and strip me of my agency.
When the police got involved, they said there was nothing they could do because they “couldn’t prove” it was him, even though he was the only person with those images. That moment confirmed something I’d already suspected, when you’re a sex worker or someone associated with the sex industry, you’re treated as less deserving of protection. The stigma means you’re seen as choosing your own harm, or somehow responsible for it.
So no, sex workers are not centred in these narratives, despite being disproportionately targeted. Our experiences are treated as an inevitable consequence rather than a form of violence.
That’s why projects like Image Angel feel so important. They’re created by sex workers, for sex workers, with understanding, care and urgency. We need approaches rooted in experience, not judgement, and we need legal systems and platforms that actually protect us.
Revenge porn legislation is relatively new, and even now I’m not convinced it’s being applied in ways that include or safeguard our community.
There’s still a long way to go.
What needs to change on adult platforms and on a societal level to address digital sexual violence in the sex work community?
There has to be real accountability for people who steal, share or weaponise sex workers’ content. At the moment, the consequences rarely match the harm. Image theft, doxxing and digital exploitation can destroy someone’s safety, livelihood and mental health, yet the response from platforms and systems is often passive or non-existent. We need meaningful consequences, including legal action and sentencing, for people who engage in digital violence against sex workers. The harm is real, and the response needs to reflect that.
Platforms also need to take responsibility. It’s frustrating, because we know the technology exists, tools that prevent screen recording, content scraping, unauthorised downloads or non-consensual resharing are already being used in other industries. These companies are quick to use technology to restrict sex workers, shadowban us, or remove our income streams, yet when it comes to protecting us, suddenly the capabilities disappear.
There’s an imbalance: there are endless rules limiting how sex workers can exist online, but very few limiting the people who target, abuse, exploit or harm us. That dynamic needs to shift. Protection should be prioritised over censorship.
Ultimately, what needs to change is the mindset. Sex workers deserve safety, dignity and digital rights, not surveillance and punishment. Until platforms, policy and society recognise sex workers as people with agency rather than as a risk category, digital violence will continue to be minimised or ignored.
What are your hopes for ending digital violence toward women and girls and what role will Sexquisite continue to play in that work?
My hope is simple, that one day digital violence isn’t something women, girls or sex workers have to navigate or survive. I want a digital world where safety is the default, not something you have to fight for. Where our bodies, identities and work aren’t used against us, and where existing online doesn’t come with fear attached.
For Sexquisite, our role is to keep building community, visibility and solidarity. We’ll continue creating spaces where sex workers are centred, respected and protected, whether that’s through live performance, our podcast, campaigns or online platforms. Because we’re stronger when we show up together, and change happens when we refuse to be silent or isolated.
