When Hope* booked in for an appointment with her usual GP to get her usual script refilled, she didn't expect to leave the clinic feeling shamed and degraded.
She had been a patient of the same doctor for some time, but what she did for a living had never come up during appointments.
This time, as well as getting a refill for low-dose sleeping medication, which he usually gave her "without batting an eyelid", she also needed something else.
"I said to him 'I also need a sexual health check and a certificate of it to show my work. I'm a sex worker – I need it so I can work in a brothel.'"
Within a split second, Hope said everything changed – his mannerisms, the look in his eye.
"He told me 'you don't seem like you'd do that' or 'you look too smart to be doing that'," she said.
"He became immediately uninterested in having me as a patient. He just gave me a whole big lecture and wanted to harp on about safe sex and misusing drugs."
The GP refused to refill the script she had been taking for months out of concern she might "misuse and abuse" the medication.
Laws force sex workers to 'operate in the shadows'
Hope's experience comes as the largest survey of sex workers in Queensland has revealed more than 70 per cent of workers face "daily and systemic" discrimination and vilification across key areas such as healthcare, housing and banking.
The survey also found there was an "extremely high" rate of unreported discrimination, with 91 per cent of workers choosing not to report their experiences due to barriers in reporting and fears they would face further stigma.
When it comes to healthcare, nearly 60 per cent of sex workers reported discrimination by GPs and doctors.
A further study, led by the Centre for Social Research in Health, found 31 per cent of health workers self-reported they would behave negatively towards sex workers due to their occupation.
The survey of more than 200 workers, conducted by advocacy groups Respect Inc and Decrim Queensland, is part of a submission to the Human Rights Commission to overhaul the state's anti-discrimination act.
In 2020, a nation-wide survey of nearly 650 sex workers run by Australia's peak sex worker organisation, the Scarlet Alliance, and the Centre for Social Research in Health found 96 per cent reported experiencing stigma and discrimination related to their work within the last 12 months.
A further 34 per cent indicated this happened "often" or "always", while 91 per cent reported negative treatment by health workers.
It comes after the state's Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman referred Queensland sex work laws to the law reform commission for review in August last year and requested it recommend a framework for a decriminalised sex work industry in a bid to bring the state in line with "most other states".
Queensland looks set to follow in the path of several states, including Victoria which recently moved to fully decriminalise sex work.
'Hung out to dry'
Respect Inc Queensland coordinator Elena Jeffreys said while her organisation hears concerning stories from workers every week, she was shocked at the findings.
"It dials right back to really deep-seated mythologies about sex workers as vectors of diseases and dangerous.
"We have a major problem in Queensland, not just with our treatment but the understanding of who should and shouldn't be protected under anti-discrimination is really offensive and it puts our whole community in really precarious situations."
Some forms of sex work are legal in Queensland but operates under complex laws that are tightly regulated by police, with the majority of workers forced to work illegally due to laws they say leave them unsafe.
This includes contacting a colleague to let them know they are safe after a client leaves a booking.
Queensland is home to just 20 licensed brothels across the entire state – the same number Respect Inc estimate would exist in a single electorate of Sydney.
The rest of the industry, accounting for between 80 and 90 per cent of sex workers, work outside of the licensed brothel sector in workplaces that are not eligible to be licensed or, as independent operators, working alone out of homes and hotels.
The anti-discrimination act uses the term or attribute "lawful sexual behaviour" to describe sex work.
This language excludes the vast majority of sex workers who are forced to use unlawful strategies from making discrimination complaints.
"The bottom line is sex workers are not protected from discrimination in Queensland and that's because the attribute is a barrier," Ms Jeffreys said.
Advocacy groups have called for this attribute to be changed to "sex work" and "sex worker".
'They only see sex and not the person'
The housing industry is another sector rife with discriminatory practices, the submission found.
Queensland is the only Australian state that gives accommodation providers the power to legally evict sex workers, refuse them accommodation and demand more money if they believe the property is being used to sell sex.
The submission has called for section 106C of the anti-discrimination act, which allows lawful housing discrimination against sex workers, to be repealed.
Under current laws, workers can be discriminated against in roles that include working with children, which has left those studying education locked out of employment.
It is an exclusion Ms Jeffreys described as "beyond offensive" that harked back to age-old misconceptions that sex workers are "inherently dangerous people".
Hope said Australia was still a long way from shaking off old-fashioned stereotypes and damaging stigma.
"They just see the job and not the person. Or they only see sex and not the person," she said.
"There's so many parts to me and people need to see the whole person, not just sex."
The review into Queensland's sex work legislation is expected to be finalised by November, while reforms to anti-discrimination laws will be finalised by June.
The office of the Queensland Human Rights Commission has been contacted for comment.
*Name has been changed to protect identity
