Sex Work, Autonomy, and Cooperative Refusal

Josephine West’s report looks at platform sex work as a site of both control and resistance. Digital platforms offer tools like screening and safety features, yet they also concentrate power, extract high fees, and expose workers to risks such as deplatforming, doxing, and image-based abuse. Against this, West traces how sex workers are not only resisting but actively redesigning the system—building cooperative platforms, mutual aid networks, and worker-led technologies. Drawing on anti-work and xenofeminist theory, the report frames this as a politics of refusal. Namely, it discusses rejecting alienation, reclaiming data and infrastructure, and experimenting with democratic governance. What emerges is not a clean alternative, but a set of grounded practices that push back against platform domination while imagining new forms of autonomy.

West, Josephine. Sex Work, Autonomy, and Cooperative Refusal. New York: Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, 2026.

Download Report