RIA Under the Magnifying Glass

RIA (Ready, Inspire, Act) is an organization dedicated to supporting survivors of the sex industry, offering services aimed at transforming lives. They provide social services, including free New Age energetic therapy, to help those who have exited or are trying to leave sex work. Their website, readyinspireact.org, presents their mission as one of empowerment and healing.

While this mission sounds noble, it raises critical questions about who is responsible for the push to decriminalize sex work, how RIA fits into the broader conversation, and whether their financial backers influence their stance.

The Origins of RIA

RIA House, Inc. was founded in December 2012, when a small group of local women gathered to learn about the buying and selling of people for sex and how they could organize to help. Conducting a community readiness assessment in early 2013, they identified gaps in services for women involved in the sex industry across MetroWest and Central Massachusetts.

By August 2013, RIA officially became a 501(c)(3) public charity organization, using funds from local individuals, clubs, and churches to hire their first part-time staff member. This person led women’s support groups in downtown Worcester and Framingham—a milestone that helped shape the organization.

Since then, RIA has expanded its funding sources, including federal funding, private foundations, and generous donors, allowing them to open office spaces and strengthen their service model. In 2015, they launched their signature program, Sisters Leading Sisters, and by mid-2016, they had multiple offices across the region.

In January 2021, RIA rebranded to RIA, Inc., aiming to refine their mission and expand their expertise in supporting survivors. Their story reflects passionate dedication but also raises concerns about the influence of their funding sources and the perspectives they promote.

Who’s Behind the Push for Decriminalization?

RIA shares a perspective with many decriminalization advocates: that the demand for sex work must be stopped. Their immediate impact is focused on harm reduction. Their perspective is shared by billionaire Swanee Hunt, a figure whose interests shape their approach. While their hearts may be in the right place, their approach raises concerns about the true motivations behind their advocacy. Many of RIAs supporters, including former sex workers and trafficking survivors, advocate fiercely for decrim.

Their stated vision is:

“A world where people's bodies are not victimized, exploited, bought, or sold for the sexual gratification of another person.”

However, sex work cannot be eradicated, only managed. Ending demand is impossible, and the exchange of resources for sex is a natural human behavior—something ingrained in biology. We must accept that sex work will always exist and that it should be as safe as possible. 

Brothels and Labor Outsourcing**** [needs adjustment]

Many brothels function as labor outsourcing operations. A common setup involves a massage parlor in the front and a residential house in the back, where workers sleep. This blurs the line between the workplace and home—an arrangement that isn’t normal in other industries. Imagine being required to live at your job. Yet, for many sex workers, this is the reality.

Despite these conditions, RIA does not advocate for ending labor outsourcing in brothels. Instead, they focus on providing resources and services for workers already in these situations. What does this mean?

The Power Dynamics of Sex Work

RIA’s vision suggests that sex work is an inherently unnatural exchange. But what matters isn’t just the existence of the exchange—it’s who holds the power in it.

RIA’s stance acknowledges that when women have children, men often become the primary breadwinners, reinforcing a system where economic necessity can push women into sex work. Barring the structural inequalities at play, sex work is a practical solution for women’s financial needs.

Women should have the power—the person who owns the body, not the brothel owner, manager, or third-party profiteers. This libertarian perspective asserts that if a woman wants to trade sex for rent, she should be able to do so on her own terms.

A Complicated Ally

I’ve attended RIA’s support group, I found its focus was on drugs, alcohol, and housing—but not sex work. Many sober, healthy, happy adult women do not have these issues, there is no need to pathologize the sex worker.

Still, RIA offers services that genuinely help people, and that’s worth recognizing. The people involved are kind, passionate, and deeply committed to their cause—many of them survivors themselves. But their funding, their billionaire backers, and their ideological foundations make them a complicated ally in the fight for true worker autonomy.

It’s a reminder that in a world shaped by corporate interests and private wealth, even organizations with the best intentions are still operating within a system built by the rich. RIA may be part of the matrix we all live in, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept its premise without question.

RIA says sex trafficking is not trafficking if voluntary, but voluntary or not, it speaks to an illegal business model of exchange. Trafficking used to be a movement of labor, a rotation of sex workers. RIAs vision is to end supply in demand, which redirects the support in an unproductive way. A client is not necessarily exploitative, 

Final thoughts

RIAs vision enables a litany of new problems, not limited to blackmail in the political arenas (e.g., Jerry Springer)

RIA does not give sex workers or their clients data privacy. In the modern world your small business data is everything. It's what allows these big tech companies to have power over our lives. The implications of techno feudalism is not addressed with RIA. Human mating behavior and the economics that surround it could be privatized.

RIA doesn't stop brutal multi-million dollar brothel cartels from running in the US. Partially because of how they define sex trafficking. It only allows them more freedom to operate. So basically unregulated brutal capitalism. God forbid a non-profit the anti-capitalist.

RIA openly admits it wants to destroy our small businesses. RIA can hurt the individual independent sex worker. No matter how they may look publicly.

In RIA research they don't ever study one of the most fundamental and important questions communities need to think about when partial decrim happens. Who are the major brothel owners in sex work in Massachusetts. Who are the major owners and who are the workers within that that brothel system. Although it is illegal it's not enforced and or monitored by any kind of regulatory body.

No major Women Org. have been invited to study this bill Red FLAG

 So I'm just trying to bring up a lot of concerns I have with this decrim bill that RIA has designed. Call your local Women’s Orgs. ask about this.