About Ugly Mugs

Safety for Sex Workers in Ireland

UglyMugs.ie is a not-for-profit technology initiative that improves the safety of sex workers in Ireland and reduces crimes committed against them, by bringing workers together to share information about potential dangers. We support the right of sex workers to engage in their work as safely as possible. We believe in the full decriminalisation of sex work.

Ugly Mugs History

UglyMugs.ie has been online in its current format since 2009.

The practice of sex workers sharing information with each other to try to stay safe is not new, it is probably as old as sex work itself, but UglyMugs.ie is a very modern manifestation of this concept.

The word "mug" in English can mean face, and when we say "ugly mugs" we are saying ugly faces and we mean bad people. The first so called "ugly mug" schemes were started in the late 1980s by organisations in Australia and then the UK. They would put warning notices up in their drop-in centres or distribute warning leaflets to workers on outreach.

"Ugly mugs" isn’t the only term used to describe such schemes. In North America, the term “bad date lists” is often used.

Whilst some customers of sex workers are abusive, most people who abuse workers are not customers. This is why we prefer the term "ugly mugs" to "bad date list".

When sex work went online, warnings about dangers then started getting posted online. We ran an Ugly Mugs message board from the early 2000s and grew this into a standalone full service ugly mug scheme in 2009. What we did in Ireland with UglyMugs.ie is utilise technology to take ugly mug schemes to a new and more advanced level. We were the world's first online ugly mug scheme and thus we are also now the world's oldest online ugly mug scheme.