re: my ramblings while watching a tv show about sex workers…(TW: violence against women, sexual assault)
…so glad this show isn’t totally biased. they are discussing high end escorts and “street” prostitutes. many of the high end escorts spoke of their “privileges,” i.e. they are middle class, highly educated, etc.
many of the “street” prostitutes speak of cohersion, and being introduced to prostitution as children. everyone interviewed was a survivor of CSA. they were also all from impoverished communities, and under educated, if you will.
It sounds biased to me, tbh. These two examples of sex work - high end escorts and abused street - are overwhelmingly the ones presented and held up as the two “types” of sex work that exist. And I mean, were any of the people interviewed not cis?
There is significant intersectional relevance to how education and class impacts on who ends up street working but the thing about CSA always makes me feel pretty squiffy. It continues to promote this idea that abuse and rape doesn’t happen in upper class families, contributing to the invisibility of it, and is also tied to classist ideas about lower income families being less capable of good parenting, of being more deviant as people.
It also disregards how class grooming plays a part in WHO TALKS OPENLY about the rape and abuse they may have experienced. That factors in here too. Which is not to say families and class environments of people from particular class backgrounds place any less pressure to be silent about abuse on survivors, but the class assumptions from outsiders - that abuse happens more to people of certain class backgrounds - can contribute to whether or not survivors talk about it later.
one important statement made: “prostitution is not homogeneous.”
This is actually the thing. It really isn’t. Even where sex work is taking place in the same way - like street or brothel or escort - individual experiences vary wildly.
Presenting sex work as a high-end choice escort vs drug-addled coerced street walker dichotomy is nowhere near truly representative of the wildly varied ways sex work takes place, for why, in what circumstances, by whom etc etc. Yet literally everyone who doesn’t work sex seems to believe it is only in these two, distinct and specific ways. That does not help sex worker’s rights because there’s a vast, enormous range of people in the industry experiencing in a multitude of other ways.
Which is not to downplay the seriousness of the issues faced by those who are coerced into the industry. But such people are only ever used in a tokenistic fashion to support anti-sex work agendas and their actual needs as humans and labourers are disregarded in favour of using them as tragedy porn to provoke contemptuous pity in “normal” people.
And, again, the idea you could get a group of women from any background together and not have stories of violence, sexual abuse and assault disregards the role that violence plays in women’s lives. Abuse does not inevitably lead to a certain type of sex work and the idea that it does is sooo problematic esp as it plays into ideas of survivors as forever tainted by the abuse they experienced; class and other intersectional factors have a bearing on what type of sex work someone may do; they also have an impact on disclosure.
i feel like every pro-sex work discussion i’ve ever read begins by focusing on sex-workers who have masters degrees, worked in corporate America, and had choices before engaging in sex work. it seems that sex-workers who do not have such privileges, who are forced into sex work as children or adults, who have abusive pimps, etc, are overlooked…they carry a double stigma. they are disenfranchised in general and they are sex workers.
I absolutely agree that pro-sex work arguments by those outside the sex industry are focused on that bullshit, as do many of the sex workers from that particular background and it is immensely problematic, silencing and marginalising of everyone else. It is not useful to sex worker’s rights, not at all. I really resent those sex workers who sell that line too and it’s not even that they imagine their experience is true of everyone, it’s that they usually quite intentionally want to distinguish themselves from the rest of us, dodge the stigma of just being an average dirty whore.
However from within the sex worker’s rights movement, the focus is really, really different. The focus is on labour rights, OH&S, on the diversity of our experience and the ways in which that needs to be catered to.
The reason the general public hears more from high-end escorts is because they tend to be white, cis, straight (appearing) women with educations and so are therefore a “sexier” and more palatable/accessible subject for media focus. Same is true of pretty much anything. And their focus on the pleasure they have in sex work is more compelling to the average joe for pretty obvious reasons. When women talk a lot about how much they love sex - sex with men - people are bound to listen.
But sex worker’s rights organisations - which tend to be pro-sex work in that they’re focused on meeting the actual current needs of actual labourers in the actual industry - are not about that.
But they struggle and plead for funding whilst any abolitionist organisation only has to cry “oh the poor victimised exploited womens!” and fists of money are thrown at them.
And those organisations are NOT focused on the actual needs of actual sex workers.
luckily, a few organizations were highlighted, one being HIPS (shout out to DC!) who provides clean syringes, HIV education, safe sex materials, and also helps sex-workers transition out of sex work if they so choose. they also have awesome things like knitting clubs!
the show discussed disability too, and what it means to live as a differently abled person with obvious sexual desires: the social stigma of being disabled in general, and the reality of being “desexualized” if you will. did you know that in The Netherlands, a disabled person can get a government grant to purchase sex up to 12 times a year?
In Australia we have Touching Base which is a referral org between PWD and sex workers who can provide services to them; they also do a training program for sex workers who want to work with PWD. Unfortunately, we don’t have government grants like that though I think they’re an amazing idea. Check out the doco Scarlet Road, which is on a friend of mine, Rachel Wotton, who has been providing services to PWD for quite some years and has done a lot of amazing work around it.
the above is a response to my ramblings about a show i watched on sex-work.
i wish that i could find the actual show, so that everyone could watch it! it was good.
Presenting sex work as a high-end choice escort vs drug-addled coerced street walker dichotomy is nowhere near truly representative of the wildly varied ways sex work takes place, for why, in what circumstances, by whom etc etc. Yet literally everyone who doesn’t work sex seems to believe it is only in these two, distinct and specific ways. That does not help sex worker’s rights because there’s a vast, enormous range of people in the industry experiencing in a multitude of other ways.
Which is not to downplay the seriousness of the issues faced by those who are coerced into the industry. But such people are only ever used in a tokenistic fashion to support anti-sex work agendas and their actual needs as humans and labourers are disregarded in favour of using them as tragedy porn to provoke contemptuous pity in “normal” people.
i love these paragraphs that Better Than You wrote, they are so true and so typical of so many tv shows, etc. my ramblings do not do it justice, but this show really did attempt to approach sex work from a sex-positive and pro-sex worker stance. their presentation/discussion of the “less privileged” (if you will) sex workers, was a critique of the idea that sex work is homogenous (i.e. everyone is educated, wealthy, with many choices, etc.) there was definitely a call for safer conditions for all sex workers, not necessarily rescue. it was great that they highlighted HIPS, as that organization strives to assist sex workers with whatever they need, whether it’s a safer work environment or transition into another job. they strive to empower not shame or rescue.as a side note, i’m going to follow Better Than You. because their blog looks rad.
Affirming radness.
