[Content note for mentions of violence, sexual assault, and murder]
This is a transcript of a panel I gave earlier this year – I was very fortunate to do so as voices like mine who speak from the experience of someone still within the industry, and also a queer, disabled, woman of colour in the industry, are overlooked in mainstream discourse pertaining to sex work as we do not fit the false dichotomy of destitute trafficked woman or heavily privileged handmaiden of the patriarchy. I, along with very many other sex workers, am a person trying to exercise as much autonomy over my life under a capitalist kyriarchy as possible. Sex work remains fairly unique among forms of employment as the very act of making a living through sexual labour is heavily stigmatised.
There are other stigmatised activities and traits that, whilst also not uncommon in the rest of the population, seem to be attributed disproportionately to sex workers, like drug use or mental illness. Neither of those necessarily affects a sex workers’ agency but mainstream discourse manipulates both of those things to be synonymous with removal of agency. Being anything less than the proverbial happy hooker is an excuse to target our livelihoods. I fell into the trap of pretending that the sex industry and those in it contain no flaws in order to deflect criticism.
This is also something I’ve also noticed in queer activism, where the visible (which really means that done by white, cisgender and middle class activists with lukewarm liberal politics) activism seems keen to push an assimilist idea that LGBTQ individuals are ‘just like’ straight people and erasing those who do act on stigmatised activities like drug use and non-monogamy. This kind of activism is productive as it removes any excuses from our detractors about why our lifestyles are harmful, but it does so at the expense of sections of our communities.
I was so scared of any imperfection being used as a justification to crack down on sex workers that I glossed over and denied that there are sex workers who use drugs and/or are mentally ill, including myself, and actually, we shouldn’t ever deride anyone for either of those things. Being forced not to address issues, including exploitation and abuse that happens in any capitalist industry, can only do us harm, yet we are forced to by those claiming to have our best interests at heart; an insulting and infantilising notion in itself, that relies on the tired old trope that we are incapable of making our own decisions, apparently blinded by false consciousness. I felt a pang of guilt writing this, as if I am betraying my sex worker siblings by admitting fault, but I feel the need for labour rights and protection must override the corner we are backed into.
Whilst I acknowledge that the sex industry and those in it are not perfect in terms of cultural norms and popular morality, the research – and I use that term loosely – used to justify and perpetuate harmful stereotypes of sex workers and the industry is very rarely presented without bias or agenda. Words like ‘trafficking’ are applied solely in their most negative terms (in the 2003 Sexual Offences Act it can simply mean sex workers moving freely to seek different work) to maximise scare potential.
Goldstein’s widely cited study* of sex workers claimed that all of its ‘subjects reported some form of drug use, with 72 percent having used heroin, 93 percent having used marijuana, and 83 percent having used cocaine’. Damning evidence, right? There must be something deeply wrong with the sex industry if we’re all resorting to drugs. Except all of the sex workers interviewed were ‘contacted through the New York State Office of Drug Abuse Services’, thus meaning that they had already been caught with drugs and a survey didn’t even need to be taken at all. Note that the terminology is ‘used’ rather than ‘addicted to’. To top it all off, the study had a sample of just sixty.
The results of such distorted and biased data being used to justify a need to abolish the sex industry, are measures that include the Nordic model; a system that claims to criminalise the buyers of sex but not providers (though this isn’t exactly the case off paper). The Swedish government has proclaimed – despite the model apparently existing for the protection of sex workers – that the Nordic model has increased stigma towards sex workers, which they view to be a good thing. In practice this horrifically resulted in, this being just one case amongst many, a sex worker losing custody of her children to an ex-partner who had a record of domestic abuse. The judge awarding custody believed her to be delusional and an unfit mother for being a consenting sex worker and would rather they be cared for by a man who the state knew was capable of doing great harm to them. This sex worker was later murdered by her ex-partner.
Yet the increased stigma is continued to be lauded as a victory for the Nordic model.
This stigma is so pervasive that I am terrified of any interaction with the police, even in a setting where sex work is semi-legal. I wouldn’t report a work-related assault to them and view them as more dangerous than my own potential clients. Carceral feminism, that being feminism that advocates for more inclusion of the patriarchal state to – what they call – end demand for sex work, would force sex workers to be under the constant gaze of the police. We are so marginalised that police can commit acts of violence against us with minimal accountability. In countries, like the USA, that criminalise most aspects of sex work, the law upholds oppressive systems, with disproportionate numbers of poor people and/or people of colour ending up incarcerated for selling sexual services.
Going back to Goldstein’s study, the other non-numerical information he managed to find implied that drug use among sex workers is a class, rather than professional issue. The sex workers with drug addictions worked very sporadically and their addictions tended precede their work, and higher paid sex workers showed little or no interest in drugs. The stigma of drug use itself is highly classist – to talk in stereotypes for a second, society and media do not treat a working class person of colour smoking weed the same to a white, middle class person with a respectable career doing so. Bankers and CEOs doing drugs aren’t considered to be unravelling the moral thread of society, but somehow working class folk doing so are.
Even clients perpetuate this stigma, a lot of them don’t want to be ‘that guy’ who ‘exploits’ a drug addicted sex worker, seeing the choice of going into sex work as being a monochrome issue rather than something a lot more nuanced.
It’s worth mentioning that I am currently relatively privileged over sex workers who don’t work independently and the minority of us who work outdoors. There is an additional stigma attached to those two things which do make clients perceive you differently.
In summary, the way that stigma affects the sex working community makes working incredibly dangerous.
We’re categorised into good hooker and bad hooker tropes with an entire industry created to patronise and save the former, except the woefully misinformed measures put in place to save us actually make things worse and drive us to state apparatus who can abuse us due to the stigma we face, because of all of these things we are forced to either alienate important subgroups of our community or risk giving the rescue industry more ammunition to attack us with. Stigma is the root of most of the harm done to us and only in removing it can we progress as a movement.
*I’m unable to find the original text that cited the methodology, if anyone can link it to me that would be wonderful!
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