Sex work is real work according to Teen Vogue and ACLU and it’s time to finally have it legalised across the globe or completely decriminalised. We’re at that stage in politics that a blog post like this that will discuss why I think sex work is not empowering and is not real work will get you ridiculed, shamed and ostracised.
It’s not a popular opinion. Liberal and choice feminists promote the idea that “my body, my choice” so whatever girls and women do with their bodies is nobody else’s business but theirs and sex work for some is liberating and empowering because they’re reclaiming their bodies.
Lines like, “Who are you to tell me what to do with my body?” and “Stop shaming women!” are so often repeated that we’re conditioned to think that sex work is a choice and therefore is a legitimate way to make money. So, if you truly cared about sex workers’ safety, you should decriminalise and legalise sex work completely.
Before I learned about the theory of radical feminism, my position on sex work has been somewhat liberal because I’m practical. Prostitution will always be around. Sex sells and human nature will always want to capitalise on what sells in order to gain whatever material things people want. It was something I wouldn’t ever consider doing myself however I understood why others would do it, specifically people who were desperate and poor. Someone close to me worked in the sex industry and she told me that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world so there was no shame in it. While there is no reliable proof of this marketing slogan that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, I would have to agree that there is no shame in it… when your reasons are to survive, put food on your table and keep a roof over your head. But for those who had other options, for those who were privileged enough to have other jobs, I have to admit that I judged them. For me, it didn’t make any sense why anyone would willingly choose it as a profession when they had other options. I saw it for what it was—which was exploitation but I thought at the end of the day, it’s their choice. I now know that this was a mistake as well as many others who have exited the sex industry because it doesn’t take into account the harmful effects prostitution has on others who may not have had a choice.
“I didn’t always hate prostitution. It started as an exercise in reclaiming power over my body, giving me the role of puppet master and casting johns as my paying audience”
Emily Eveland wrote in an article published on Narratively. She talked about how she got started and it’s a painful read for me as her personal choice was a choice a few women I care about have made.
I had a friend who was troubled when we were in our teens. Daddy issues, mommy issues, drugs and she placed her value completely in her sexuality. She was a few years younger than me and I took it upon myself to be like her older sister/protector. I tried to guide her and I pushed her to pursue education or develop other skills. We were both hopeful for her future. But then, I moved to Ireland and she didn’t really have anyone to support her and let her know that there were other options. She turned to sex work and she was also heavily into drugs. She passed away last year from a heart failure after giving birth to her 3rd child at 26. Reading Emily’s article reminded me of my late friend and how she moved from one relationship to the next, not really having a place to call home and using her body so she could have something to eat.
“I had nothing left. The end of my relationship with Beth and the hiatus from my career exposed me to a hideous truth: I had been trapped in a trauma cycle dating back to my youth. The hands that typed out Craigslist ads, the legs that spread in strangers’ cars, and the mouth that took in wrinkled flesh – those things weren’t mine. They belonged to my past. They belonged to the part of me that still felt voiceless, choiceless, and desperate for something resembling love from men who had none to offer.”
“My freedom was a facade. I hated myself. I hated the warm PBRs and the cheap tequila shots and the grape-flavored blunts. I hated the fat men who grunted when they fucked. I hated Professor Mike and the man in the white truck. I hated blowjobs and anal beads and high heels and my bruised body. I hated the motels. I hated the anarchists and their glorification of hooliganism, shoplifting and prostitution. I hated Aaron and his stolen flank steaks and his complacency and ignorance and immaturity. He was nothing but another john. I gave him sex in exchange for safety. I was trudging through life with Newports dangling from my lips and thousands of secrets swirling through my head, half-dead.”
Emily Eveland, “I Thought Sex Work Would Be Empowering and Feminist. I Was Dead Wrong.” accessed on Narratively, 2020
The other person I knew who worked in the sex industry turned to prostitution because she was in extreme poverty and had no opportunities to make money as she had no educational qualifications. As soon as she made enough money though, she found other ways to make ends meet. She was the breadwinner in her family and she paid for all her family members including relatives’ school fees.
“I want them to have the right education so that they won’t have to turn into prostitution like I did”, she said.
Hence this is one of the factors that helped shape my position on if I considered sex work as real work.
Let’s define what “work” is.
Work, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary’s definition is an activity that a person engages in regularly to earn a livelihood.
Is sex work real work? Is sex work empowering?
If we go by the simple definition provided by the dictionary, it would be yes, it is by definition, work. However, the question is phrased wrong here.
Should sex work be considered real work in our society and should it be considered empowering?
No. It has always been a no for me even before I discovered radical feminism. I knew the harmful effects and it didn’t sit right with me.
“In the transgender community prostitution is glamorized. In a world where trans women of color are murdered by men of our own race and class with impunity, where men will fuck us in private but act like they never knew us in public, where we are rejected from jobs, housing, and cut-off from our families and communities, I understand why prostitution made us feel powerful. In many ways, being a prostitute is a complete rejection of all we’ve been through: fuck the man that won’t hold my hand in public, I’ll charge him instead. Fuck my family for rejecting me, fuck that job for firing me, I don’t need them anymore. The whole world can reject me and it doesn’t matter because I could make it on my own. Not to mention, for those of us not independently wealthy, usually our only option for transition related medical care is through prostitution — whether we like it or not.
But the reality of being a transgender prostitute was not so simple. What started out as empowering in my mind quickly became a trap I couldn’t escape. The longer in the trade, the harder it is to leave. I’ve been raped more times than I can count.”
Esperanza Fonseca, “A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work”, accessed on Medium, 2020.
Esperanza Fonseca, a Latina trans woman wrote in graphic detail her experience in the sex industry and her analysis from a socialist and transgender perspective.
“Prostitution has never existed without violence, slavery, patriarchy, and class oppression. “
“Prostitutes experience violence primarily because the relationship between the prostitute and the client is necessarily antagonistic. The “session” between a prostitute and her buyer is always a power struggle between the man and the woman, the buyer and the bought. Any prostitute knows this intuitively: clients want us to do more for less money, we want to do less for more money. This isn’t dependent on the disposition of the client: the structural positions of the buyer and the bought necessitate these interests. While you can say this antagonism does exist in all labor under capitalism, the difference is that when the power struggle is enacted in such a tangible way during sex, a sex that most in the trade were coerced into by material conditions, sexual violence is a necessary component of the equation. Every interaction as a prostitute is to fight a battle on the terrain of our own body: the prostitute is fighting for her right to bodily autonomy and the client is fighting for his entitlement to her body.”
Esperanza Fonseca, “A Socialist, Feminist, and Transgender Analysis of “Sex Work”, accessed on Medium, 2020.
People who loudly advocate that sex work is real work so it should be decriminalised or legalised completely say it is the stigma of sex work that makes it dangerous. This is false. It is not the stigma that makes it dangerous. It is the males who are violent because they feel entitled to women’s bodies that are dangerous, whether as a buyer or as a pimp because the sex industry is inherently violent.
Read Sabrinna Valisce’s full account here on what it was like under Prohibition and Decriminalisation in New Zealand. She was working as a prostitute and campaigned for full decriminalisation until it was fully decriminalised in 2003. She soon realised this was a failed model and now campaigns for the Nordic Model.
When punting is legal the police cannot automatically arrest the punter as they could do under the Nordic Model. They must have cause for arrest, requiring statements and witnesses to a crime, of which punting does not count. For the private escort this is unlikely. For the street worker this is too risky. For the brothel worker this is blocked by the brothel system itself. In the fifteen years since the PRA police reports have not increased. This comes as no surprise to those of us who currently or previously worked in New Zealand’s sex trade.
It is important to understand what a pimp is in NZ. By law this crime ceases to exist. Brothel owners, escort agency owners, agents, sex trade advertising platforms and other third party profiteers are all legal entrepreneurial businessmen. When a story comes out of a gang prostituting women, provided they are paying taxes this is fully legal.
Proponents of full decriminalization like to pretend that women get to experience greater autonomy and agency but nothing could be further from the truth. With brothels deciding income they set the prices for the whole trade. Private and street workers must now compete. Bizpimps also decide shift start and finish times, how many shifts per/week, and how many women will be in competition each night. Shifts can be up to 17 hours long, though are usually 10-12. Street and private workers must offer longer and more inconvenient hours to make an income.
Sabrinna Valisce, “Full Decriminalization in New Zealand“, accessed on Space International, 2020.
Researchers published a study in 2012 that investigates the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows into high-income countries such as Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. The study concludes:
- Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.
- The effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries. Because trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation requires that clients in a potential destination country have sufficient purchasing power, domestic supply acts as a constraint.
- Criminalization of prostitution in Sweden resulted in the shrinking of the prostitution market and the decline of human trafficking inflows. Cross-country comparisons of Sweden with Denmark (where prostitution is decriminalized) and Germany (expanded legalization of prostitution) are consistent with the quantitative analysis, showing that trafficking inflows decreased with criminalization and increased with legalization. (Accessed 2020, Harvard Law and International Society)
In countries where prostitution is legal like the Netherlands, sex trafficking is the most common form of human trafficking. According to publication the Victims of Human Trafficking Periodical Report 2012-2016, there are approximately 3,000 victims each year.
Below is a statistic on prostitution in the world globally.
In 2016, according to a study from the UN International Labour Organisation, there were 4.8 million adults and 1 million children who were victims of forced sexual exploitation. 99% of the 4.8 million adults and children were female.
See more evidence on the consequences of legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution.
Knowing that the sex industry has plenty of issues including violence, sex trafficking, girls & women including trans women being raped and taken advantaged of who do sex work, do you think it should be a legitimate job for anyone you know?
If sex work was real work and if it truly is empowering, do you think it should be promoted as a legitimate career pathway to young girls? Knowing that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world for women who didn’t have many options tens of thousands of years ago, do you think it would be a sign of progress for us to promote providing sexual services as a means to live instead of providing people with better opportunities?
If it’s not focused on your pleasure and you get nothing out of it except money, is it really empowering? Did it contribute to reclaiming your bodily autonomy? Do we want to live in a society where women are objectified and dehumanised because our bodies are used as commodities? Is it really empowering to have someone use your body only for their sexual gratification?
Sex work should not be lauded or glamorised. Sex work is not empowering. We should provide exit strategies and support for people who work in this industry so they are safe while still in the industry but I don’t think this should be legalised altogether seeing as we have an abundance of issues that can be pinned down to using our bodies as commodities. So far, The Nordic Model where it decriminalises the sex worker and criminalises pimps is the only model that addresses the issue in trying to help end sex trafficking. It is far from perfect and it may need to be amended to account for sex worker’s safety as well as proper implementation of support groups and strategies to help them find alternative ways to earn money.
We need a proper restructuring in society for us to not even consider sex work as a more financially rewarding endeavour.
We all deserve better, we can all do better. Women before us fought to smash the patriarchy. Modern feminists now think being the driver of your own sexual exploitation is them taking ownership of their bodies because “fuck patriarchy”. The truth is, they’re the ones being smashed by patriarchy. Prostitution or sex work doesn’t empower anyone but the one who pays and the pimps.
11 Comments
Hey, guy here. I’m glad to hear some sensible ideas for once. Imo, if any “regular job” paid as much or more than what women (and men I suppose) got paid for sex work or what they earn in a year, most people would always choose the regular job and not “sex work”. Yes the same can be said for shitty job like McDonald’s but that even furthers the point that there’s people that are forced into situations and jobs because of many factors, but that if those factors didn’t exist, they would never choose a demeaning or shitty job. Do we see the upper middle class and women who come from wealthy families ever go into prostitution? No. Why? Because nobody chooses that “job”. It’s something you’re forced into by circumstance. Yes you may be making the “choice” to do sex work instead of min wage jobs, but the only reason is because it pays better. Barring that, no human would ever choose to have their bodies objectified. Also, I’m curious on the stats of female prostitutes who “serve” other females. Anyone know? Also, I have to say sexual and physical contact is something every human needs, but that doesn’t mean it should be legalized. Like if you have a baby but never hold or love on or cuddle thag baby, they can actually die. And if they don’t, once they hit adolescence and adult hood, they’re often seriously emotionally damaged. Just wanted to throw that out there as someone said that the idea of human sexuality is not a need, as any physical contact is but especially sexually. Guys are weird. Idk why but we just are.
As a sex worker, let me clarify a few things:
I am not from an extremely poor background. I have a degree. I had a well-paid job before I started.
I earn, on average, approximately £100’000 per year for doing 5 days a week. I work in a parlour, and I don’t do any private work, so if I’m not in work, I don’t have to “take my work home” as many others who earn this sort of money would have to do. Most of my clients are regulars that are very respectful. I ALWAYS have the right to say no, and have gained way more confidence to use that right since starting this role. I can take time off whenever I need/want. I choose my own hours. I set my boundaries on what I will/will not do with clients. I am in control of every situation with every client, and if at any point for any reason I wish to stop the service, I can and will.
You are focusing too much on those that are in very bad situations such as those who have been forced into this line of work, either through trafficking or through such low income and opportunities that they have little other choice to get by (which, don’t get me wrong is really bad, and I wish this line of work would be a choice for everyone). But there are also PLENTY of sex workers who actually do this through choice. It IS empowering, and definitely a real job. I go to work, I do a job, I get paid (a LOT), I go home.
I have met some amazing people through this job, both fellow sex workers and clients alike.
“I am not from an extremely poor background. I have a degree. I had a well-paid job before I started.
I earn, on average, approximately £100’000 per year for doing 5 days a week.”
Cool, you are totally unrepresentative of the vast majority of women in prostitution around the globe. The article focuses on those in “bad situations” because those women account for upward of 90% of women in prostitution and we won’t apologise for standing in solidarity with these women and refusing to allow them to be erased by individualistic and delusional neoliberal narratives.
Why do you love and choose to “work” in an industry that you yourself admit if largely populated with unwilling trafficked or impoverished women? The world doesn’t revolve around you. We create laws and engage in social justice to protect the lives of the most vulnerable, not the egos of the most privileged.
The laws will never change the system. Look at drugs. People do them whether criminalised or not. The world is filled with trauma and addictions and sex is one of them. I don’t see why people waste their time trying to change the laws, I think time is better spent focusing on the root causes by working with the men to connect with themselves and working with society to change women’s financial opportunities in other jobs
Think about the privilege that you have. You have the privilege to come from a not extremely poor background. You have had the privilege to get a degree. You had the privilege to have a well paid job before you started sex work. You have the privilege to make 100,000 E per year working 5 days a week. You have the privilege to work in a parlour and therefore not have to take your work home “as many others who make this sort of money would have to do”. You have the privilege to always be able to say no. You have the privilege to take time off whenever you need or want. You have the privilege to chose your own hours. You have the privilege to be able to set boundaries with your clients. You have the privilege to be in control of every situation with every client and you have the privilege to stop the service whenever you need. You have the privilege to go home and leave work at home. You have the privilege to meet some amazing people through your “job”.
But the truth is that most women who are a part of this industry, do not have the privileges that you have. They do not have the same opportunities. They are in far worse situations than you. What makes you think that you and people like you are the norm for sex workers? You come from a selfish, self-centered, and privileged perspective if you think that everyone else has had the same opportunities and privileges that you have.
Please, have a reality check before saying ignorant in thoughtless things.
I agree with Isabelle
You have a degree and had a well-paid job but then you decided to get involved in sex work? While you are likely a troll, if you are being truthful, ask yourself why you would do this. You have other options and yet you’ve decided to degrade yourself everyday just so you can earn extra cash. Sad.
Yes! I 100% agree. This is an amazing take. Just to add on, it is important to think about who sex work was made for and benefits most. Because it isn’t women.
Sex work is not empowering it’s literally giving males what they want but this is just my opinion you’re feeding the patriarchy
Agreed. I rode on a false sense of empowerment for years, and actually I think it was rooted in wounds around feeling desired, and being able to make lots of money fast (very privileged position). It all feeds the men’s perspective that sex is something they can get on tap.
Here’s the thing –
The patriarchy, capitalism, the ruling class, the Jeffrey Epstein type douchebags who exploit human beings for their personal gratification, have to re-label prostitution ‘sex work’ in order to strengthen the level of cognitive dissonance that’s required in order to believe that the person they’ve purchased for two hours actually fancies them.
Clients must fool themselves into believing they’re having sex rather than engaging in a glorified form of masturbation. They cannot allow the reality to seep in – that the prostitute may secretly find them repulsive. That the prostitute may hate the transaction. That the prostitute feels degraded, violated and emotionally damaged, and might be ‘choosing’ that form of exploitation over a life of poverty or avoidance of murder by a pimp.
Sex can never be work, just as love, friendship and romance can never be work. Clients will always be abusers.