What is ESPLER?
The Erotic Service Providers Legal, Educational, and Research (ESPLER) Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for the rights, safety, and dignity of erotic service providers. Founded in 2009, we seek to empower the erotic community and advance sexual privacy rights through legal advocacy, education, and research. Our efforts include impact litigation, policy statements, and voicing concerns in political arenas to create change. Through educational trainings and outreach, we aim to address discrimination against erotic service providers and the greater erotic community. Additionally, we strive to archive and evaluate research related to the sex worker community, building on this history with inclusive and respectful studies relevant to erotic service providers and the larger erotic community.
Our Vision
We envision a world of sexual liberty where our “sexual privacy rights”, as defined under federal and state constitutional, criminal, and civil law, includes the right of adults to partake in consensual sex regardless of status or circumstance including marital status, sexual orientation, sexual preference, sexual identity, or remuneration; and, regardless of such status or circumstance, adults are able to partake in sex under equal protection of the law, and free from discrimination.
Our Mission
ESPLER is a diverse community-based erotic service provider led group which seeks to empower the erotic community and advance sexual privacy rights through legal advocacy, education, and research. In our legal advocacy, we seek to create change through a combination of impact litigation, policy statements, and voicing our concerns for our community in political arenas. Through educational trainings and outreach, we will empower and capacity build to address discrimination of erotic service providers and the greater erotic community. Lastly, we strive to archive and rate much of the research which has been done by and of the sex worker community, and build on this history with research which seeks to be increasingly inclusive, respectful, and ultimately, relevant to the erotic service providers and the larger erotic community.
Our Values
Education: We seek to educate the public, politicians, and academicians about the true social and economic costs associated with the criminalization of adult consensual sex.
Empowerment: We seek to empower the voices of those who work as erotic service providers as well as the voices of those in the larger erotic community.
Integrity: We seek to remain true to supporting our constituency – erotic service providers and the larger erotic community – and to do it with honor.
Justice: Every person, including erotic service providers and the larger erotic community, must be enfranchised to basic human rights such as the right to legally work in the profession of one’s choice, including sex work; and, the right to privacy, including the right of adults to legally engage in consensual sexual relationships, regardless of remuneration.
Leadership: We demonstrate leadership by posing legal challenges to unjust laws prohibiting prostitution; while alternatively, proposing just laws to legitimize prostitution; and, evaluating the scientific methodology and techniques applied to sex worker research to ensure scientifically sound and unbiased results.
Respect: We extend our deep sense of self-respect to each other and to the sex industry and the larger erotic service provider community.
Accountability: We are accountable to each other, and the larger erotic service provider community, to accomplish concrete results while displaying respect and integrity.
Innovation: We are innovative when seeking and applying new ideas to accomplish our goals, and to bring education, empowerment, justice, leadership, respect, and accountability to erotic service providers and the larger erotic community.
Advisory Boards
We currently are hosting Advisory Boards for those who consider themselves one of us and would like to do more for our community.
Contact the Research Advisory Board
info@esplerp.org