A job like any other job?
I’m taking a brief break from my blog hibernation (what, you hadn’t noticed?) to point out a great post by Monica at $pread Blog. She makes a very important – yet very simple – point that I think is a source of a lot of misunderstanding and frustration in discussions about sex work.
So here is another article about sex work and the economy. I hate the fact that this article exists, because I hate the fact that this bizarre cottage industry exists, this examining of sex work from the vaguely liberal viewpoint of “it’s just like any other business.” Okay, hurray for you, you don’t think sex workers are the sole agents of civil disintegration. That’s great. It’s a real pleasure to encounter an article that doesn’t make some snide remark about prostitutes being diseased and pathetic, and I mean that sincerely.
But sex work is not just like any other business. It’s not that it’s fundamentally so radically removed from other types of physical/emotional work, but it is criminalized and stigmatized, which means, no, unfortunately, it is not like being a massage therapist or a yoga instructor or an acting coach, or whatever pleasant and expendable profession to which it might be compared. “I just want to acknowledge it as regular work” is a misguided if genuine claim, and I’ve come up against it several times when dealing with journalists, and I’m getting really weary of it. This type of inquiry doesn’t allow for the reality of sex work: the arrests, the fear of being outed, the unregulated working conditions, the lack of health insurance or unemployment benefits, the extortion at the hands of club managers or pimps. We need OSHA just as much as other laborers.
I often object when anti-sex work proponents say imploringly, “The pro-porn lobby says it’s just like any other job, but it’s not!” – because this statement is so often followed by, “At other jobs, men aren’t paying for access to women’s bodies!” Which always makes me roll my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to forestall the inevitable ulcer that I will one day develop.
No, sex work is not like any other job – but that’s not because of something inherent to the work itself. Instead it’s because of the negative stereotypes that people project onto sex workers and the fact that the work is stigmatized and often criminalized. The source of the difference is external, not internal. Which is great, because external conditions can be fixed. And which is bad for abolitionists, because it means you can’t just say “it’s bad, get rid of it” and wipe your hands of the issue. It means if you treat sex workers like shit, the problem is yours.
The anti-sex work side – and, let’s be honest, most people, with the media being a cabal of top offenders – can’t get past the sex aspect of sex work, whereas the sex workers’ rights movement focuses on the work aspect. That’s why you so often hear “sex workers’ rights” hand-in-hand with “labor rights.”
I have heard the “acknowledge it as regular work” line from plenty of self-identified progressives and I always shake my head (and take another deep breath) because it’s like, hello, privilege talking! When sex workers are no longer arrested for doing their jobs or for advocating for their own rights, disbelieved because of their job when they are sexually assaulted (or the charge reduced from rape to “theft of services”), assumed to be addicted to drugs, assumed to have been sexually abused as children, expected to answer countless personal questions on demand, seen as unfit parents, fired from non-adult industry employment because of a past job in the adult industry, disallowed to speak for themselves, seen as unable to make their own decisions, excluded from discussions about policies that will directly impact their lives, equated with garbage, seen as good enough to jerk off to but not good enough to respect as a equal human beings, used as the source of cheap jokes when they are murdered, seen as easy targets by violent criminals because who cares about sex workers anyway? – then, and only then, will sex work being a job like any other job.
Hi Amber
I’m one of the bloggers this post links to, presumably because I quote a statistic that 95% of British street prostitutes use heroin or crack.
A couple of points to note here. One, I am not coming from the moralistic political right. Mine is a socialist blog, well beyond what would be classed as far left in the US. I am openly for the legalisation of sex work.
Two, the figure quoted explicitly refers to street prostitutes, not sex workers in general. I don’t know the situation in your country, but in Britain, street prostitution is the lowest rung of the sex work ladder.
I’m not talking about telephone sex workers, lap dancers, porn actors or whatever, but specifically the women I see streetwalking in inner London.
The post you link to refers explicitly to a situation in which five street prostitutes in a provincial English town were murdered by the same John. Four of the five were heroin users. That’s just a statement of fact.
For the record, I live in one of the poorest districts of London, a couple of minutes walk from a major streetwalker strip. The majority of those women are very obviously substance abusers.
So my point is, I’m not a Christian fundamentalist jumping to conclusions. I’m a leftist who is hard-headed enough to look at the facts. And if we are going to get anywhere on this issue, there’s no point in denying realities.
And if we are going to get anywhere on this issue, there’s no point in denying realities.
The problem is that street sex workers represent only a tiny fraction of the overall sex industry, even in Britain. People read those stats and don’t understand that they only represent that small fraction of the totality of sex work and they construe your “reality” as the reality, when that is not the case, at least, not within the framework Amber is discussing the subject here. 95% of all sex workers in your country are not users of heroin or crack (or any other drug). Your article is therefore catastrophically misleading because you fail to provide any context for your statistics.
Excellent post, Amber, as always.
yeah, context matters. On this side of the pond, a similar study was done on street level workers, and of the 200 or so interviewed, 90% said they wanted out.
At which point, everyone, including the media, took that stat and applied it across the board…strippers, porn performers, pro dommes, phone sex people, nude models, erotic massage people, EVERYTHING…suddenly, the number for the whole of the sex industry was 90%….based on the study of 200 street level workers in San Francisco.
And that statistic is used repeatedly to dismiss any sex worker who doesn’t hate it when they speak. It is used to hamstring the Sex Workers Rights Movement. It is used, basically, to shut sex workers up when they attempt to speak for themselves.
Its right damn annoying, really.
Excellent post, Amber.
This statement: “I’m a leftist who is hard-headed enough to look at the facts. And if we are going to get anywhere on this issue, there’s no point in denying realities.”
Makes it sound like any of us who are disputing what you say, ARE NOT looking at the facts. Please. You stumbled onto an activist’s website, dude. Might want to acquaint yourself with your surroundings before you go charging in.
Do me the courtesy of at least reading the bloody post before commenting on it, Alexa. It says 95% of *street prostitutes* use hard drugs. Got that? 95% of street prostitutes, *not* 95% of sex workers.
How the fuck is that ‘catastrophically misleading’? In what sense does that sentence ‘not provide context’? I couldn’t have made it any clearer, could I?
If you can’t read what I write accurately, I somehow fail to see how reasoned debate is possible here.
Excellent, excellent post, Amber. You are so dead on. I just want sex work to be like any other job, but until we move past a place where sex workers are considered less than people, it won’t happen.
In what sense does that sentence ‘not provide context’? I couldn’t have made it any clearer, could I?
Actually, yes, you could have.
The point I was making is that, when someone reads your article, they assume that your presentation of those statistics reflects the situation across the spectrum that is all sex workers, not just the streetwalkers. Since you don’t bother to explain that streetwalkers represent only a tiny fraction of sex workers overall, the uninformed (i.e., the average reader) will assume that 95% of all sex workers are strung out on drugs. Do you not see how that is misleading? Even though, within the context of your specific story those figures may be accurate (and I don’t doubt that they may be), the average reader isn’t going to realize the limitations inherent in your story and will misinterpret them. This goes to the larger point that Amber is making in her post here.
One thing I think that’s important to realize is that when a lot of people hear “prostitute” or even “sex worker,” that automatically equates in their mind with “street-based prostitute.” A lot of people don’t even know there is any other type of prostitution (much less the spectrum of different things the term “sex work” refers to).
Wow, Amber—awesome collection of links backing up your point!