sex workers essay

What It Is Like to Be a Sex Worker And whether we should approve.

Jeannette Cooperman

Editor’s note: Tracy’s surname is a pseudonym, as are her relatives’ first names.

It is the oldest profession, I say. No, someone reminds me, hunting is the oldest profession. Exactly. But if the quarry is willing, is the hunt ethical? I cannot decide. Does a woman have the right to sell her body freely and legally? Models do. Lady Gaga sells her vocal cords. LeBron James sells his height. In a world that tells us to forge a personal brand and sell ourselves, surely a woman skilled in the art of physical pleasure ought to be able to use that talent to make a living?

Those appalled by that proposition say the act is too intimate. What innocence I have left wants to agree. But all told, I suspect such a transaction is less intimate than a hopeful first date or a thorough physical exam. Certainly, it is less intimate than writing a memoir. And with criminal penalties lifted, sex work would be cleaner and safer.

I want to approve. It seems cooler, more modern and relaxed. But like abortion, this issue renders me a hypocrite: I say yes for everybody else and breathe relief that it never had to be me. There but for the grace.

Feminist scholars, it turns out, are as ambivalent as I am. Though there are plenty of trans and male sex workers, this is still a predominantly female industry, and the practice does seem to perpetuate the objectification of women. It also excuses and accommodates just about anything men do to gratify their ostensibly overwhelming sexual desires. The transaction erases the need for respect, deference, consideration, permission.

Those appalled by that proposition [of sex work] say the act is too intimate. What innocence I have left wants to agree.

I turn back and forth in the wind. Finally, I ask Tracy Shellington, a former sex worker, if she will talk to me. She is wary at first, not sure of my purpose. Nor am I. Is it prurience? Curiosity? Female solidarity? I have no agenda, I explain; I just want to know what her experience was like.

“Wow,” she says, sounding relieved but a little daunted. “It’s a lot. I did it for a long, long, long time.”

We start at the beginning.

“Silent all these years.”

Tracy’s friends walk a few paces ahead in a bubble of intimacy, whispering about her. Finally, they turn and announce rather grandly that she can come with them if she likes. There is this house on the next street where an old guy pays them to look at dirty pictures and touch him.

Relief floods her— you, too? Her uncle Billy started making her do that when she was five. He would pick her up to come play with his daughter, and Tracy would pray the whole car ride that maybe this time they really would get to play house with Ginny’s little toy kitchen. Instead, he would hurry upstairs, and in half a minute she would see him standing at the top of the steps buck naked. Sometimes she and Ginny both had to touch him. Sometimes just her. It lasted till she was nine—that was the year her aunt divorced him.

Now, though, she is much older. Fifth grade. And at least this guy is gonna pay them. “Sure,” she says brightly. “I’m in.”

They troop down to the man’s basement, him a little slower because he is missing the lower half of his leg. She tries not to stare at the waist belt that somehow holds the prosthetic calf in place. The basement goes dark, and the movie projector crackles. Naked bodies writhe on a sheet tacked to the wall. Then comes storytime: He flips through big picture books explaining what the kids are doing to each other. Afterward, he lies down and has the girls take turns touching him.

This part, Tracy is used to. The new part is that he kisses her down there. “You feel that, nasty girl?”

Weeks go by. He owes them a fortune , more than a hundred dollars! The other two girls are on free lunch and Tracy, whose mom works, is on reduced lunch. So she and her friend’s bold little sister, Deb—who has no idea what really goes on at that house—decide to go get the money.

The police officers question Tracy separately. They know , she is sure of it, so she lets the story tumble out. When they drive her home and come inside with her, she wants to die.

Nobody is home. Bored, they start ringing doorbells, then Deb sasses an irate neighbor and he calls the cops. “He owes us money!” Deb says, indignant. When the cops ask why, she shrugs and says, “We do the dishes?”

Her mom drops into a chair, crying.

“Would you like to prosecute?” one of the officers asks.

“You bet I would!”

At the station, a bland lady takes down the details. “Where did you think he was going to get all this money?” she asks. “Did he ever give you any money? Did you notice what his furniture was like?” Maybe she is trying to warn Tracy, smarten her up. But the questions only make it feel even more shameful, like she is lying.

The girls have told the police where everything is—the books, the movie reels, all the pictures, even the huge one inside his closet. Peering outside the interview room, Tracy sees officers carrying box after box down the hall.

Tracy’s father grew up in an alcoholic home and became a drugstore cowboy, robbing pharmacies for a fix. “I didn’t exactly feel like he didn’t love us,” she will say later. “He just got put away somewhere in my head where, if I see him, great, if I don’t, great.” Her grandpa taught her all the important stuff anyway—how to tie her shoes, how to ride a bike….

Unlike her mother, exhausted and martyred, and her grandmother, a proper Southern lady, Grandpa never tells Tracy to sssshhhh . He is sweet—and, she will realize years later, drunk most of the time. Out in the garage, they sit side by side listening to Jack Buck announce the Cardinals game, and Grandpa sips the “cough syrup” he hides out there, winking that this is their little secret, so Grandma will not worry about him being sick.

Tracy’s mom works days at a utility company, nights at the tavern around the corner, where the fringe benefits are free booze and the guys she brings home afterward. Come morning, she forces herself awake at sunrise and takes three buses to work. “You kids quiet down,” she is always saying, and Tracy, wide-eyed and sensitive as a fawn, understands that she is a burden.

An auto mechanic woos Tracy’s mother to Minnesota. There, he beats her and ogles Tracy’s sister. One day, the girls come home to a locked door, curtains drawn, and the new boyfriend upstairs (with, it turns out, a wealthy older man). In a white-hot rage, their mother packs them up, calls her employer in St. Louis to get her job back, and rents a U-haul.

“Forget this ,” Tracy thinks. “ My turn.” She has been used by men, and she has watched her mother be used by men, and she has picked up their little secrets, what they want and like. Now she is fifteen, with a brand-new hot figure, and she intends to play them.

She waitresses at the Lucky Dog Saloon on Broadway and drinks on the East Side, or in a little sundress on the Admiral cruise ship. When a nice guy asks her out and she says no, it feels like a Wonder Woman superpower. Invincible, she starts working the street for cash. The “girlfriend experience” pays better, but you have to dress up and smile, giggle at their jokes, let them touch you all sorts of ways, and it takes forever . She wants to be done, grab the cash, go get high. For a sex worker, she decides, faster is better.

She has been used by men, and she has watched her mother be used by men, and she has picked up their little secrets, what they want and like. Now she is fifteen, with a brand-new hot figure, and she intends to play them.

Her first pimp, Corky, sells her crack cocaine. The first time she shoots it into a vein, the euphoria takes her prisoner. In time, the track marks make it harder to work; guys will not pay as much if you are that messed up. Another worker hides the abscesses on her legs with gartered fishnet stockings.

“Get beaten for it

Drugged for it

Paid for it

Make a life of it.”

—Cassandra Troyan in Freedom & Prostitution

The stroll moves. First it is on Washington Avenue, then on Cherokee, and when that gets too hot, it shifts over to Chippewa. The strategy is to work the side streets: The tricks have to circle the block, but the cops keep their eyes trained on the main drag.

Because her mom lives on one of those side streets, Shellington has to make sure to quit before sunrise. The tricks are like vampires anyway—sunlight makes them nervous. One winter night, the sky looks like smudged charcoal, and the air is icy. What time is it? she wonders, suddenly nervous. Nights are long in winter—fewer people are out, and the whole process is slower and more cumbersome, all those heavy clothes. She walks east and sees a cop, so she ducks down a side street, and a customer spots her.

“I saw you the other day,” her mom says casually the next time they are together. “I was waiting for my bus, and I seen you get in a car, and I kept waiting for the car to go by.” She meets her daughter’s eyes. “I wondered all the way to work if that would be the last car you would ever get in.”

Another day, Shellington’s mom hands her a note and says, her voice harsh with distress, “Would you please call this guy back so he stops calling me?” Shellington has given her mom’s number to a few longtime customers—the ones she needs to keep close, because they will put a little cash on her account the next time she lands in prison. “If I hear another trick say how he just wishes you’d get off the drugs,” her mother exclaims. “It takes everything I have not to say, ‘Keep your hands off my daughter. You know damn well if she did all those things you wish she’d do, she wouldn’t be with you.’”

By now, a cop can bring Shellington in just for walking —this is called a demonstration charge—because she has a prostitution charge on her record. They do street sweeps, too, four or five guys on their walkie-talkies, and load up the paddy wagon. Some nights, social work students from Washington University wait for the women at central booking. After taking a quick survey about condom use and violence, they offer tips, like keeping a condom tucked inside your cheek or using certain defense tactics. Shellington is startled by their kindness—and what seals it is when they hand out jumbo-sized Snickers bars. Coming off the streets and off the dope, that candy bar tastes like filet mignon.

After one arrest, Shellington, now twenty-seven, tells the correctional officer she started drinking hard at fifteen.

“You don’t look old enough to drink now ,” the woman exclaims. “How on earth did you manage to order alcohol at fifteen?”

Some nights, social work students from Washington University wait for the women at central booking. After taking a quick survey about condom use and violence, they offer tips, like keeping a condom tucked inside your cheek or using certain defense tactics.

“My mother was the bartender,” Shellington tosses back, hurt that the woman does not believe her.

The look on the correctional officer’s face stings, but only for a second. She has no room left for more shame.

She is thirty-one, biding her time in an honors center, and her mom is visiting. They watch a tv crime show about somebody being molested. At the commercial break, Shellington’s mom blurts, “Why didn’t you ever tell me Billy was molesting you?”

Shellington freezes like she is nine again. “ What ?” she says, like, “ What on earth are you talking about?” Her mom looks confused, tries to ask again. Ginny, it turns out, is in therapy now. After the divorce, Billy married a woman with two daughters, and she kicked him out fast. “I bet he was molesting them, too,” Shellington’s mom says.

“Sure,” Shellington agrees. They watch the rest of the show in silence.

Another worker nicknames her “Payday,” teasing that “Tracy makes them think they are fucking kings. And then they file Chapter 13 in the morning.” She knows how to make men want her. And despite the risks, she finds sex work comfortable. There is camaraderie on the street. Roles are well-defined; everybody obeys a common code. In the larger world, she has not experienced that.

The ease can blow up fast, though. A urine test after yet another arrest indicates that she is pregnant, and she winds up in the workhouse with no prenatal care and a full-blown heroin habit. Her mother has just been diagnosed with cancer. Her child will be a ‘trick baby,’ a term she wants to spit on.

As soon as she gives birth, she is shackled to the bed again. She will have twenty-four hours with her son before the Mennonites pick him up. She nurses him for the first time, then tentatively rubs his back, and he burps. Anxious, she looks over at the correctional officer, who has kids of his own. “Sounded like a good one to me!” he reassures her. Relieved, she holds the baby close, cooing to him and patting his soft skin. He dozes. When his eyelids flutter open, he nestles at her breast. By the time someone comes to take him away, they have found their rhythm.

“Lay me down, pretend I’m real I’ll give you all the love I’m paid to feel.”

—from the song “I Can’t Go Home Again”

“John-shaming”—publishing names to discourage anyone from buying sex—seldom lasts long. In 1979, New York City mayor Ed Koch tried reading the names aloud on the radio. The John Hour lasted less than two minutes—and only aired once.

Shellington hates the practice anyway: “They’ll just want to go somewhere darker, more deserted.” Or they will stop reporting possible cases of trafficking. Right now, one of the best sources for law enforcement is the guys who call in, saying, “I’d swear she was only fifteen” or “She didn’t speak English, and she seemed scared.”

“You don’t want to hurt the families,” argued one man, adding that besides, going to a prostitute was “natural.” Who was the victim?

When police in Kennebunk, Maine, released a long list of prominent citizens charged with patronizing a prostitute, a wiseguy printed up T-shirts that read, “I’m not on the list. Are you?” Many were, and they were steaming mad at the violation of privacy. “You don’t want to hurt the families,” argued one man, adding that besides, going to a prostitute was “natural.” Who was the victim?

Because this supposedly victimless crime has to be conducted in dark alleys and cul de sacs, sex workers are easily hurt, cheated, exploited by their pimps, shamed by polite society, killed without consequence. Criminologist Steven Egger includes sex workers in his list of the “less-dead,” people whose deaths or disappearances are barely noticed. Shellington tells me she did time with a woman who “barely got away from a serial killer. They didn’t believe her ’cause she was a hooker. Down the line, he killed three or four people. My friend Erin was picked up and taken to some abandoned building and held there for a few days. She ended up figuring out who the guy was, but they ignored her because she was a prostitute. That guy went on and killed more people, too. Sam threw herself off I-44 to escape somebody she thought was going to kill her. Sandy, they found in a wooden box off I-70.”

The man parks under an I-55 overpass and takes off all her clothes—but does not even unzip his pants. He stretches Shellington’s body across the front seat, and she feels his hand tighten around one of her ankles, and her heartbeat turns staccato. Hiding any reaction, she coos, “Oh, baby!” and stretches her arm back languidly, thinking I’m only gonna have this one chance. Bringing the other leg up, she throws the door open, flips herself out backwards, and takes off running. She sees she is trapped—running straight toward a fence—so she launches herself over the barbed wire and up the hill and now she is standing stark naked on the shoulder of I-55. She thinks of Sandy, her soft body crammed in that wooden box. Then she looks back and sees the guy climbing the hill.

A cab pulls alongside her, and a man in a business suit beckons her into the back seat, asks where she would like to be dropped off, and hands her his jacket to cover herself. Nobody says much; it is quiet and calm— like he is an angel or something, she thinks.

Criminologist Steven Egger includes sex workers in his list of the “less-dead,” people whose deaths or disappearances are barely noticed.

Now she tries even harder to stay away from the dark edges of the city, especially the riverfront, where the nervous ones always want to head. One guy scares her so badly, she pulls out strands of her hair, strewing her DNA all over his car.

I force myself to imagine it: A car jerks to a stop. The window rolls down. A face, hard to see in the dark; a voice, rough or scared. You hop in, they speed off—it all has to happen so fast, too fast to assess weirdness or danger, even if you could. And then you are locked into the car—

“And you start thinking, Something’s wrong. This guy’s not right, ” Shellington says. “But you can’t freak out; you’ve got to play it cool, so they don’t know you know. If somebody’s got an icepick above your head, you’re thinking, If I make him come, is that when he’s going to start stabbing me? Or if I don’t, is that when he’ll start?

This job she dove into because she wanted control has left her vulnerable in almost every way.

“If they want to know if prostitutes are positive, they should test the Vice cops.”

—Margo St. James

Would decriminalizing sex work ease some of the danger and exploitation? Shellington shrugs. “I mean, some of it. But there would still be the underbelly.” She says she is sure there are women who freely choose this work as a profession, who were never abused or made to hate themselves, whose bodies are not whiplashed by drug cravings. “I just haven’t met them.”

Yet in a Dutch survey , sex workers cited the hours (convenient for single mothers or graduate students), autonomy, flexibility, and income. Quite a few said they enjoyed the work.

This is why I cannot decide what to think about sex work: It exists in such radically different forms, hinged to class and circumstances. I have no trouble smiling at (and envying) the skill and sensuality of a courtesan with spirited self-confidence and a thorough understanding of human nature. Even after two decades of a good marriage, I sometimes feel clumsy in bed, uncertain in technique. Imagine knowing exactly how to seduce in any situation—how to amuse, arouse, drain away tension or sadness; when to retreat into mystery; when to be bold.

I watch young cam girls who have the resources and tech savvy to pull off touch-free, virtual sex work. More power to them. They are taking revenge for centuries of objectification by flipping it: If this is all I am to you, then pay for it. A century earlier, they would have been expected to use the same wiles to marry a man with money—and cast out if they chose a bohemian poet instead.

In the Seventies, Margo St. James, a self-described prostitute and feminist activist, hosted the glitzy Hooker’s Ball in San Francisco. She used the proceeds to fund a nonprofit called COYOTE, Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. In 1976, COYOTE filed a lawsuit against Rhode Island, questioning how much power the state should have to control the sexual activity of its citizens and pointing up the asymmetry in enforcement, with female sex workers arrested far more often than male customers.

The Swedish model reverses the equation, arresting the customers and not the workers. But that, opponents say, just drives demand underground.

So what do we do? Laws against prostitution work about as well as Prohibition did. What about legalizing it completely, as counties have in Nevada? Sex workers there like the additional health screenings and safety but hate all the barriers to entry (no prior convictions allowed) and the loss of autonomy and earning power. With legalization, it is not the customers but the state and the business owners that hold the power.

This February, Amsterdam announced that it was closing the tourist-bait brothel windows in its Red Light District and setting up an “erotic center” in the suburbs. Nearly all sex workers opposed the move, saying they would lose business and pointing out that the visibility of working in a window kept them safer. One study found far lower rates of rape, other forms of violence, and stalking for sex workers in windows than for those using a club, the client’s residence, their own residence, or a private house set up for that purpose.

When Rhode Island accidentally decriminalized prostitution in 2003, courtesy of a legal loophole, rapes against women decreased by thirty percent. The state restored criminal penalties in 2009. In 2008, the statewide total of reported rapes (which are probably a fraction of the total) was 276; ten years later, when prostitution was again a punishable crime, the total was 379.

Dr. Heather Berg, assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University, says “it’s just obvious to me that decriminalization is the only sensible solution. Policing has been a source of violence and compounded risk. Prisons are full of sexual violence. And managers and pimps like criminalization because it’s job security for them.”

Though erasing criminal penalties would not end sex work, Berg thinks “the conditions would absolutely be better. The fastest way to make sure no one is forced into sex work is not piling on laws and regulations but making sure housing, food, and health care are provided.”

They are taking revenge for centuries of objectification by flipping it: If this is all I am to you, then pay for it.

Even well-intended laws can get in the way. Frances Steele, a Wash.U. alum who is now a project coordinator for Decriminalize Sex Work, points out that in many states, possession of a condom counts as evidence in a prostitution charge—a serious disincentive for safe sex. When sex workers band together for safety’s sake, with one person managing or driving them to appointments, that person can be arrested for human trafficking. A 2019 study showed that online sex work sites had decreased the female homicide rate by seventeen percent, but now those sites have been censored, making it impossible to screen clients or compare notes with other sex workers online. Shutting down Craig’s List to thwart the trafficking of minors was a popular political move, Steele says, but “there was coded language online that law enforcement could tap into, and now they’ve actually lost a lot of leads.”

New Zealand decriminalized consensual sex work back in 2003 and saw a significant decrease in trafficking. Sixty-four percent of sex workers found it easier to refuse clients. Fifty-seven percent said police attitudes toward sex workers improved.

Those who call loudest for criminalization are often middle- and upper-class White women, Berg says, “who have a lot at stake in maintaining the nuclear family and preserving the idea that sex is special and private and should be free.” I am not sure what I have at stake, but I do prefer sex that is not transactional—or strung across the workplace like a tripwire. Many of the sex workers Berg interviewed had grown frustrated by all the unpaid objectification: “A woman who worked at Applebee’s got really sick of having to flirt with customers when, if she danced at a strip club down the street, she could make ten times more.”

Any kind of work can objectify; part of what is so explosive about sex work is that it lays that bare.

By the time I talk to Asha Malhotra, I am convinced we need to decriminalize sex work.

“Absolutely not,” she snaps. “It will just give people more of a reason to run girls. It gives them a green light, and it removes our voice.” Her dark eyes hold mine. “Feminists who believe we have equal rights have never been in a position where you have none to begin with.”

Trafficked at seventeen, Malhotra later started a nonprofit called Break Every Chain. She believes that decriminalization, like pornography, will only perpetuate the violence and misogyny written into our culture. Even cam girls do damage, she says, changing how men think about women and about sex.

When Rhode Island accidentally decriminalized prostitution in 2003, courtesy of a legal loophole, rapes against women decreased by thirty percent.

She tells me more of her story, how she was working at a strip club and struggling with substance abuse when she was “picked out” by a man who ran women the way smugglers used to run bootleg whiskey. “They use anything that can separate you from reality and let them manipulate you,” she says: bringing you drugs, pretending to love you, noticing that your beliefs waver, that you feel abandoned by your family, that your heart is broken.

At first she was desperate not just for the money but for the attention, the glamour, the escape. “That fantasy dropped away fast,” she says. “It became rape for profit. I’ve been beaten; I’ve had a gun in my mouth.” When a friend came into the strip club and saw her bruises, he gave her $100 and told her to get on a Greyhound bus. She wound up in St. Louis and never went back.

“The men were just bodies moving on me. Bits of color. They didn’t matter none. Sometimes I just felt like a needle in a jukebox. I just fell on that groove and rode in awhile. Then I’d pick the dust off and drop again.”

—Colum McCann in Let the Great World Spin

We talk a lot about men objectifying women, but to survive sex work, you have to detach. With the exception of a few affectionate regulars, clients are a blur of egos and body parts, all demanding to be sated.

I would like to think I could cut my mind loose, let it drift to a tropical island while my body went through the motions, protect the part that is me. But there is a reason we use the word “intimate.” Sex cuts closer to our core than any other physical act. It can rip away the garb and the façade, break through the boundaries, ease loneliness, soothe anxiety, restore a sense of self. Even its biochemistry is rigged to emotion, to tenderness. Oxytocin floods us after orgasm.

It takes me a while to muster the nerve to ask Shellington if she ever had orgasms on the job. “Yes, I did,” she answers, but the words have a clenched sound, no joy in them. After a pause, she says, “There was some shame. Definitely some shame. It felt kind of dirty.” Disassociating let her feel she was not really part of what was happening. Pleasure, even for a second, tore that curtain.

Purchased intimacy is an odd but widespread phenomenon. People are desperate to open themselves to someone, yet they feel ugly or perverse or ashamed, or their bodies do not work the way they want them to, or they need the confidence of paying, the assurance that they will have the upper hand, the emotional safety of a stranger, the relief of dictating what they need. Maybe they want to practice, or test a quirk of desire. To be flattered. To make someone do their bidding. To avoid vulnerability, the risk of rejection, the chance that they are inadequate. To escape the boredom or emotional fuss of an established relationship. Is this intimacy? They hunger for release, but they could manage that alone. They buy sex to not be alone, Malhotra says. “They want to be wanted.”

I give a little terrier shake, trying to clear my head. “They feel wanted even when they’re paying?”

She shrugs. “They have crappy marriages, and their wives are not respectful or kind.”

Sex workers have told Berg that sometimes this is the only place straight men can be vulnerable: “Something about the power dynamic makes them feel they can relax.”

I hate the implications of that.

“Dammit, Tracy Marie, you know better,” Shellington’s mom used to say. But it was not until she brought a trick home and found her mother lying dead in the hall that the knowledge rose up inside her. “Get out,” she screamed at him, blocking his view of her mother’s body. His eyes on her body would be sacrilege.

From that night on, Shellington worked to get sober. She won back custody of her son. She found work as a customer-service trainer. (“Transferable job skills,” she giggles.). AA was helping her believe in something bigger than herself, bigger than the booze and drugs that cut a jagged line through her family history.

At one of the meetings, a kind-voiced man asked her out.

“Look,” she warned him, “this is how it’s going to be. You’re going to hear a lot of stuff about me, and people will warn you to stay away from me.” He started to promise that he would not listen. “Please,” she said, hand on his arm, “hear me out. Let’s just say, it’s all true. And it’s not anymore.”

A year and a half later, they married.

One night, they were curled up watching Casino , and he exclaimed, “What is the matter with her?” Sharon Stone’s character was gorgeous and smart, yet she kept sneaking off to see some loser.

“She doesn’t know,” Shellington said quietly. “She doesn’t believe who she is.”

Sex workers have told Berg that sometimes this is the only place straight men can be vulnerable: “Something about the power dynamic makes them feel they can relax.” I hate the implications of that.

Since the age of five, abused by a young uncle her family doted on, Tracy Shellington has been terrified that no one would believe her. Even as she tells me her story, she often checks: “You know what I mean?” “If that makes sense?” She is testing my response.

On the surface, our childhoods were so similar—a mother on her own, a stern grandmother, a kindly grandfather going off by himself to drink beer. But my mom stayed home in the evenings, and nobody abused me, and I was shy with boys and finished school. There but for the grace.

Shellington dropped out of high school, but “in eighth grade I would have been voted ‘most likely to succeed’ by a landslide,” she says. “But that’s not how I felt . I was popular and pretty, and I did not cut myself any corners. It had to be the top or nothing at all. But I always had this fear that I was going to get found out.”

When a teacher wrote, “Tracy’s an absolute delight,” she heard, “ Do you feel that, nasty girl ?” Praise and awards seemed unreal, a stage set for a made-up play. Only the dark stuff felt true.

Now, though, the world is right side up again. She is happy in her marriage and beamingly proud of her nearly grown son. She works as a certified alcohol and drug counselor and case manager, pulling anyone she can reach away from the darkness. It is the best job she can imagine.

Another thing she says a lot? “You can live two lives.”

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The word “stories” was used often at the annual NABIP Capitol Conference, held in the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, February 25-28, 2024. I went because I have my own stories of frustration with health care, and because I am interested when someone seems ready to try to make things better in the largely incomprehensible and vaguely menacing system we all rely on.

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Harm Reduction and Decriminalization of Sex Work: Introduction to the Special Section

Belinda brooks-gordon.

1 School of Psychological Sciences, University of London, BirkbeckLondon, UK

2 Department of Criminology, Kingston University, Kingston, UK

Teela Sanders

3 Department of Criminology, Leicester University, Leicester, UK

Introduction:

This special section of Sexuality Research and Social Policy , edited by Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Max Morris and Teela Sanders, has its origins in a colloquium sponsored by the University of Cambridge Socio-Legal Group in 2020. The goal was to promote the exchange of ideas between a variety of disciplinary research fields and applied perspectives on harm reduction and the decriminalization of sex work. The colloquium took place during the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020.

We explore the impact of Covid-19 on understandings of sex work, outline the basic underpinning legal philosophical question, explore the intersectional politics of decriminalization, summarize contemporary international health and human rights campaigns, explore contemporary public opinion trends on the issue, and illustrate the universal principles. Finally, we summarize the special section papers (N=12).

The Covid pandemic provided a lens through which to analyse the changes that have occurred in sex work and sex work research in the past decade and it also exacerbated intersecting inequalities, accelerated many social shifts already in motion whilst changing the course of others. In combination the papers in this special issue examine sex work policy and research across 12 countries in four continents to provide and important space for international and cross-cultural comparison.

Conclusions:

We present the timely contributions of diverse authors and comment on the significance of their research projects which support a decriminalization policy agenda for the benefit of academics, policymakers and practitioners to improve public health strategies and international responses.

Policy Implications:

The research here amplifies the focus on harm reduction and strengthens the case for public policy that decriminalizes commercial sex between consenting adults as the best strategy to reduce harm.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Understandings of Sex Work

A major shift that the pandemic accelerated was the move to online working patterns, a trend that had been occurring in sex work markets over the past two decades (Bernstein, 2007 ; Jones, 2015 ,  2020 ; Sanders et al., 2018 ). This shift included those performing non-contact sex work and those moving into online sex work for the first time, leading to an increase in the marketing of online sex work. Given the economic shock of the pandemic, it was also unsurprising that both online and in-person sex work continued to take place during national lockdowns, despite emergency laws which reportedly sought to restrict social and sexual contact. In the UK context, the economic impact could be seen in the number of people claiming welfare for the first time and the reported difficulty of claiming state benefits (Bambra et al., 2020 ). These are circumstances known to lead to an increase in the proportion of people in sex work, especially when poverty becomes feminized (e.g. Glendinning & Miller, 1992 ). Jobs in service and hospitality sectors were among the most badly hit, at least initially. Some jobs will never return as furlough schemes end, businesses close and more people turn to various types of sex work, whether in-person or online, a framework to ensure that people can work in safety is required.

In addition to lockdowns, curfews, mobility restrictions, physical distancing, mask-wearing, quarantine and self-isolation, other measures were enforced or encouraged in response to COVID-19 and, in part, continue to be our ordinary lives. Framed in terms of necessary public health interventions during the pandemic, lockdown policies adopted in many nation states provided a natural experiment that separated the variable of ‘working in isolation’ and its resulting impacts such as loneliness and mental health deterioration from other variables, such as ‘type of work’, ‘income’ or ‘class’ and enabled a re-analysis of work that has conflated harms and poorer mental health outcomes with sex work per se .

For example, a systematic review of general social isolation and loneliness by Leigh-Hunt et al. ( 2017 ) found associations with poorer mental and physical health was corroborated by cross-sectional research from the COVID-19 psychological well-being study during the first year of the pandemic (Groake et al., 2020 ). These studies show that risk factors for loneliness were younger age group, separated or divorced, greater emotion regulation difficulties and poor quality of sleep due to the crisis, whereas protective factors were higher levels of social support, being married/cohabiting and the companionship of a greater number of adults. It was highlighted by Saltzman et al. ( 2020 ) that, unique to COVID-19, the wide access to digital technology which can buffer loneliness and isolation may also lead to greater mental health problems (Smith et al., 2018 ). Additionally, Sippel et al. ( 2015 ) showed the importance of social networks in promoting resilience to stress and trauma. Indeed, a wide-ranging report by the US Academy of Sciences led to Lancet ( 2020 ) calling for recognition of loneliness as a public health problem. Such highly regarded evidence does by its very existence, in turn, challenge past findings on sex work that have conflated the isolated ways in which sex workers were forced to operate, as a prima facie case that sex work was inherently harmful.

Such findings support and add to the growing awareness of that the ways in which repressive governance has forced sex workers to work in isolation were itself inherently harmful rather that the work itself. This evidence, and the subsequent discourses around sex work, needs to be reassessed in this new context and knowledge. Such reassessment, placed alongside the evidence from public health science that has been established over several decades, shows that criminalization is harmful to sex workers by forging and reinforcing health inequalities, creating contexts for violence and discrimination. Sex workers are disproportionately at risk of violence, sexual, physical and emotional harms, all linked to criminalized frameworks of governance (Rekart, 2015 ; Shannon et al., 2015 ; Goldenberg et al., 2017 ; Deering et al., 2014 ). Platt et al. ( 2018 ) conducted the first systematic review and meta-analysis of qualitative and quantitative studies published from 2000 to 2018 and found that the context of criminalization, including the threat of police arrests, raids and harassment, had significant detrimental effects on individuals (Benoit et al., 2016 ; Krüsi et al., 2016 ). Platt et al. ( 2018 ) document the ill effects of criminalization as evidenced in the 134 studies they assessed noting how sex workers are more likely to work in isolation, be disassociated from their peers and related support and experience barriers to accessing services, with limits of harm reduction. This systematic review overwhelmingly states that the evidence shows ‘extensive harms associated with criminalisation of sex work, including laws and enforcement targeting the sale and purchase of sex and activities relating to sex work organisation’. It is this standard of evidence that needs to be used so that models of work and workspaces can be the healthiest they can be and can be facilitated in a decriminalized framework.

The coronavirus pandemic casts a spotlight on scientific expertise as crucial to effective governance and policymaking, with some scientists becoming well-known personalities and trusted public figures. Importantly, it exemplified that the respect, and even awe in some cases, shown to wet-lab scientists as they isolated genomes, developed vaccines, ran drug trials and discovered mutations across the world was not shown to behavioural scientists. By contrast, social and psychological researchers were questioned, their statistical modelling and hypotheses challenged and their personal lives ‘exposed’ in newspaper stings and criticized by parliamentarians choosing to promote false binaries between economic and social behaviour (as happened to Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College). This attitude, by policymakers and the media, is not unknown to those researching sex work when the rigorous findings of behavioral or social scientists are placed, with faux balance, alongside those of columnists, commentators or others with vested interests. Without the noise, however, that the false equivalence between expertise and commentary brings, the necessary discussion about rights, and the best way to protect them, can move forward with a proper analysis about how people can be made safer.

It is important to note that the news media’s visions of policymakers flanked by scientists and public health experts often followed in the media with powerful life stories and narratives to help the public understand the real-world impact may help critical reflection on the role of ‘expertise’ and its relationship to ‘lived experience’ as it has become an area of mild controversy in sex work studies where confusion can arise of the difference between representativeness to enlighten, and academic research to inform, policy. This is certainly an area where the pandemic parallel can be instrumental in critical reflection on sex work research. The discourses used in such discussions, however, stem from issues that relate back to the Hart-Devlin question.

The Hart-Devlin Question

Policy and academic discussions on sex work are often analogous to the Hart-Devlin debate which, in simple terms, equates to ‘fairness’ vs. ‘ideological morality’. Hart’s influential text of legal philosophy The Concept of Law ( 1961 ) made a distinction between the law and morality, and Hart’s Law, Liberty and Morality ( 1968 ) argued that law exists to protect individual liberty and should not be based on the popular moral consensus in the absence of harms. Devlin’s argument, on the other hand, focused on the role of the criminal law for the enforcement of morals. Devlin’s philosophy of law argued that when a behaviour reached the limits of ‘intolerance, indignation and disgust’, legislation against it was necessary. Discourse around sex work may focus on certain nation or federal states, as laws are changed, but these debates can often be reduced to the philosophical differences between pragmatists and idealists. The debate was prompted by Report of the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution ( 1957 ). The heart of the report was that it was not the task of the state to legislate about morality. Rather, the role of the law, was

to protect the citizens from what is offensive or injurious and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and aggravation of others, particularly those who are especially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official or economic dependence. It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private lives of citizens...

The Wolfenden Report, therefore, divided behaviour into public/private realms; we legislate the former, leaving the latter to individual liberty and decision-making. While happy with the report’s recommendations, Devlin disagreed with the philosophy underpinning it and argued that it was acceptable, even right, for the state to legislate on individual morality (Devlin, 1968 ). He went further to argue that if a culture agrees on a shared morality, and there is agreement on what (most) people hold a deep sense of revulsion for, then it is appropriate to make that illegal. Hart’s response was that we must distinguish between that which ‘harms others’ (public) and that which is ‘private’ and critiqued Devlin’s assumption that all morality — sexual morality, together with the morality that forbids injurious acts such as killing, or stealing — form a seamless web, so that those who deviate from one will necessarily deviate from the whole. It is Hart’s philosophy of the separability of law and morality, alongside a pragmatic approach to policy, which underpins this special section as it takes forward a range of feminist, queer and social scientific concepts and evidence with a focus on harm reduction and decriminalization. Given that the Wolfenden report was successful in partially decriminalizing homosexuality a decade later (1967) in England and Wales, its influence on sex work was less pronounced (see Morris, 2018 ). First, therefore, we explore how this has played out in the intersectional politics of decriminalization as it pertains to intersecting identities of gender, race and sexuality.

The Intersectional Politics of Decriminalization

In the early twenty-first century — with notable exceptions such as New Zealand (see Armstrong; Aroney; Bond, in this special section) — legislative approaches trended toward the increased regulation of sex work. Policy advocacy in this area has focused on nebulously defined areas of concern such as online environments and global trafficking. For example, in the U.S. context, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) criminalized websites advertising any form of sex work (see Blunt & Wolf,  2020 ; Mia,  2020 ). It followed a string of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations which shut down websites including backpage.com and rentboy.com. It is possible that the reason both online sex work and sex trafficking became a focus for carceral intervention is because these could be defined as anarchic spaces — there is no ‘world government’. The internet is a shared network — which circumvents hierarchical organization. Notwithstanding the significance of digital monopolies in tech giants (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft) and global entities such as the UM, these ‘sites’ of sexuality have no identifiable individual in control, which may be a reason that they have been constructed as ‘dangerous’ or ‘shadowy’, and thus deserving of sweeping criminal interventionism. In contrast to such regulatory intervention, which can range from criminalization to legalization, calls for decriminalization recognize both the moral and practical potentials of this ‘anarchism’.

In response to the social problems of harm and exclusion, knowledge production about sexuality through research and policy discourses is always an intrinsically political process (Foucault, 1978 ). Political philosophies of conservatism, liberalism, feminism and so on make different claims about the role of the state in regulating and safeguarding such behaviours. Similarly, anarchism (Goldman, 1969 ) — sometimes referred to as libertarian socialism (Chomsky, 2013 ) — has also informed calls for the decriminalization of other behaviours and identities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people; HIV-positive people (see Ashford et al., 2020 ) and people of colour, who have tended to experience disproportionate incarceration and police violence. The simple slogan ‘defund the police’ used by some Black Lives Matter campaigners, and often misunderstood in this regard, calls for the state to (re)invest resources differently, away from a carceral and militarized state, towards public goods of healthcare and education. However, it is crucial to recognize the interconnectedness of so-called radical policies to decriminalize and deregulate, shifting resources away from the apparatus of the carceral state: courts, prisons, police and military technologies (Davis, 2012 ; Benoit et al., 2019 ). As such, an anarchist interpretation of the state (or, more appropriately, against the unjust, moralizing, centralized state) is key to debates around decriminalization.

Black feminist scholarship has also been central to understanding the ways in which privilege and power intersect (Crenshaw, 2017 ). Alongside healthcare and justice systems, an intersectional lens has also been applied to diverse forms of sex work (Jones, 2015 ; Logan, 2017 ; Morris, 2018 ). For example, focusing on webcamming, Jones ( 2020 , p. 97) has noted how online technologies have expanded work opportunities for groups often excluded from traditional labour markets, including disabled people, LGBTQ people and people of colour, where ‘camming provides a relatively stable source of income in a safe environment for people who face rampant and legally sanctioned discrimination in the economy, as well as in other institutions.’ Therefore, in this special issue, we have drawn attention to the diversity of communities involved in sex work.

Although paternalistic narratives of ‘hidden dangers’ to women and children have existed since at least the early nineteenth century, these have been widely debunked as moral panics and conspiracy theories closely aligned with antisemitism and homophobia (Cohen, 1972 ; Bristow, 1982 ; Morris, 2018 ). Returning to the Hart–Devlin debate and Wolfenden report, it is also important to note that the history of liberation campaigns which have called for decriminalization, legal rights and social recognition often intersect (Chateauvert, 2014 ; Grant, 2014 ; Smith and Mac, 2018 ). For example, the movement for LGBTQ liberation gained global recognition following the Stonewall riots of 1969, where gender and sexual minorities, many of whom sold drugs and sex, drew ‘inspiration from civil rights and women’s rights movements’ to resist homophobic, transphobic and racist policing (Morris, 2019 , p. 1). As she recalls, a decade later, Leigh ( 1997 ) would invent the term sex worker, to be a more affirmative and inclusive term for erotic labour within feminist movements. In more recent decades, however, both the LGBTQ and sex worker rights movements have seen attempts to move towards assimilationism or respectability politics (Chapkis, 2017 ).

As discourse analysts point out, in much of daily life, we speak of abstract concepts such as ‘public health’ and ‘sexual activity’ as if everyone understands terminology in the same way and that these concepts have universal meaning (Willig, 1999 ), so it is with sex work. Different meanings and concepts of what constitutes sex work depend on knowledge, experiences and standpoints. For example, if someone has chosen to do that work and self-defines as a sex worker, then it is their right to define, redefine or reject the terms on which such a label is understood. Beyond that, there are many areas where terminology is more contested. For example, is it ‘stripping’ or ‘lap dancing?’ Is it work carried out for a specific length of time? Recent work on ‘incidental sex work’ (Morris, in this special section) illustrates that men on platforms such as Grindr, who may have exchanged sex for money or goods, question how much or what type of ‘work’ would define one as a sex ‘worker’, as do others such as findommes (see Brooks-Gordon and McCracken, in this special section) who benefit financially from clients but do not identify as ‘sex workers, or people receiving illicit substances for sex at Chemsex parties’ (Brooks-Gordon & Ebbitt,  2021 ; 5). In the criminal law, a subjective test is used, i.e. something is sexual if the person involved defines it as such, as seen in common law cases of foot fetishism (Bainham & Brooks-Gordon 2004 ). In statues (inter alia The Sexual Offences Act, 2003 ), there are definitions about the type of payment that constitutes benefit. A sex worker is therefore someone who benefits financially from labour that their clients perceive as sexual — it is this definition with which we tentatively proceeded and also seek to explore. Sexual minorities have arguably always had to contend with the tensions between ‘fitting in’ with social norms, something which has been characterized as a ‘successful’ strategy for the LGBTQ rights movement, contrasted with forms of direct action which could be characterized as ‘queer’ in the postmodern sense of this term (Adler,  2018 ).

This tension also occurs at the level of ‘identity politics’, where policy is often shaped by which checkboxes a person chooses, or is able, to tick in the clinic or the courthouse. In deregulated spaces such as the internet, much has been written about the expanding variety of expression and identification which move beyond the gender binary or traditional categorizations, definitions and labels of sexual identity (Weeks, 2017 ). For example, how does the state classify and care for those who sell sex incidentally (on platforms such as Grindr or OnlyFans) but would not identify themselves as sex workers (see Morris, in this special section). This trend further complicates an essentialist focus on ‘women and girls’, usually constructed as vulnerable and victimized, and therefore without agency. This too can construct issues around who gets to speak ‘about’ and ‘for’ sex workers, especially when some of those defined as such by law, policy and research may not recognize that designation. It is an issue with a long history within the global sex worker rights movement, dotted throughout history, but emerged in the 1970s from the sex-positive part of the radical feminist movements that gave voice to women’s sexual choices and right to determination over their bodies has a large part to play in our understanding of decriminalization.

In the USA, the setting up of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) by the late Margo St. James in 1973 was a call to arms across the world to galvanize, organize and politicize the issues faced by sex workers. The World Charter for Prostitutes Rights ( 1985 ) further set out the core parameters of laws, human rights demands, working conditions, health, services, taxes and public status of sex work as a benchmark for change (see Pheterson,  1989 ). The early actions were the start of the global sex worker rights movement and coupled with labour right movements that often harboured these issues have been present across much of the globe. Crago ( 2008 ) presented the activities of organizations in Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa and the USA who have been working tirelessly for decades to campaign for (and often provide) public health initiatives and rights for sex workers. Protests against the globe to defend the human rights of sex workers against incarceration, violence, eviction, exploitation, humiliation and extortion have been the work of global organizations such as SWAN (Sex Worker Rights Advocacy Network for Central, Eastern Europe and Centra Asia), ICRSE (International committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe) (ICRSE, 2021 ) and APNSW (Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers). Individual nations have an abundance of service delivery NGOs and activist groups that have decriminalization at the core of their mission (see Jackson, 2019 and ECP, in this issue). We can learn greatly from these collectives and community strategies around the world, such as those explained in India by Dasgupta and Sinha in this issue. Therefore, drawing on Foucault ( 1978 ), this special issue recognizes that ‘policing’ is something which also happens beyond the disciplinary apparatus and machinery of the carceral state: the media and educational and healthcare systems have significant power to shape discourse and ideology in exclusionary ways. The regulatory role of the state also goes beyond punishment, including reforms to welfare and taxation (see Bateman, this issue).

Global Health and Human Rights Campaigns

As we noted above, the COVID-19 pandemic — not unlike the HIV/AIDS pandemic — has brought the importance of global public health to the attention of the media, public and international organizations which have long advocated for the decriminalization of sex work on health grounds. For example, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, has relayed important biological and medical information to global audiences. This gives renewed weight to work done previously by the WHO, particularly to assist with HIV prevention and treatment, and as a means to promote human rights, including for sex workers:

WHO supports countries to address these structural barriers and ensure sex workers’ human rights as well as implementing a comprehensive package of HIV and health services for sex workers through community lead approaches. (WHO, 2021 )

In 2012, the WHO made a clear statement which recommended that ‘countries work towards decriminalization of sex work and urge countries to improve sex workers’ access health services.’(WHO, 2015 ). This was followed in 2016 by Amnesty International, which after comprehensive global consultation adopted a decriminalization policy for sex work, stating that

It recommends the decriminalization of consensual sex work, including those laws that prohibit associated activities—such as bans on buying, solicitation and general organization of sex work. This is based on evidence that these laws often make sex workers less safe and provide impunity for abusers with sex workers often too scared of being penalized to report crime to the police. Laws on sex work should focus on protecting people from exploitation and abuse, rather than trying to ban all sex work and penalize sex workers. (Amnesty, 2016 )

The Amnesty International policy, with its measured and forensic analysis of human rights, was a major boost to sex worker activists and campaign groups across the world, as it endorsed their lived experiences (and decades of campaigning) as a reliable source of evidence to promote legislative and policy change, supporting the work of the WHO. Other organizations which openly support the decriminalization of sex work include the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Human Rights Watch, the Kenya National Human Rights Commission, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Commission of Jurists, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Open Society Foundation, Human Rights Watch (Human Rights Watch, 2019 ) and the South African Commission on Gender Equality. The knowledge, particularly around the implications for safety and human rights, has seen traction in some key global organizations as policies and statements that support decriminalization have been adopted alongside the development of this evidence base. However, there is still a significant gap between policy proposals at the international level, legislators and decision-makers and public opinion. We now turn briefly to consider further where public opinion sits.

Public Opinion Trends Towards Decriminalization

A trend towards social liberalism in public opinion has continued for over 30 years on sexual relationships and sexual behaviour according to the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA, 2019a , b ). The long-term increase in socially liberal attitudes since the BSA began in 1983 and has accelerated recently with this year’s BSA list of questions including the use of pornography and transgender rights. Public opinion on personal freedom and the continued rise of social liberalism extend to a public in favour of decriminalization when polled along scientific principles — even though most polls are carried out when bills are introduced. For example, YouGov polled voters in the USA where New York lawmakers introduced bills on decriminalization and in one of the largest polls on the issue ever, with 175,41 adults polled on the issue of allowing paid sex between consenting adults while maintaining prohibitions on trafficking, coercion and sexual abuse of minors (YouGov, 2019 ). In 2020, the thinktank Data for Progress polled voters aged 18 to 44 years of age, of which two thirds supported decriminalization and across all age groups an outright majority support decriminalization. In the US primaries for President, many of the candidates ran for election on a ticket of decriminalization, as the growing consensus among civil rights; LGBTQ+ and justice and worker/labour rights; immigration justice and women’s groups in the USA recognize that it is the best way to keep people safe as part of an effective anti-trafficking strategy and the best way to service the needs of people in sex work and promote racial, gender and economic justice (Data for Progress, 2020 ). As many campaign groups are beginning to find out, there is solid support for decriminalization. For example, the campaign group Decrim finds that support rises to a 3 to 1 margin in voters of left-leaning views such as democrats in the USA (Decrim, 2019 ). In the UK, more Britons support decriminalization than oppose it, for example in a poll of 2000 people by Survation, 49% support decriminalization of the brothel keeping laws which prevent sex workers safely working together (Each Other, 2019 ). These public insights build on the corpus of research and commentary that reflects the mainstreaming of sexual consumption and labour in the west (Brents & Sanders,  2010 ).

With all the evidence in mind, in this special issue, we ask how rights can be protected within admissive statutes. What would a good sex work law look like? What would be a general framework for policy on commercial sex? The exploration moves to explore how the decriminalization of sex work might work in practice. The aim is to consider new models of practice, problem solving and harm-reduction in a contemporary context. This special issue explores evidence-informed policy proposals which move beyond false debates by focusing on the diversity of sex work, public health and harm reduction and which includes an examination of what policy would look like in a decriminalized context, something which is often speculative, as few countries have adopted this (see Armstrong; Bond, this issue).

Keeping these issues in mind, a special acknowledgement here must go to the work of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective because of their unwavering determination to work with allies such as politicians in 2000+ which saw the passing of law reform to a decriminalized model (see Aroney this issue) and also to the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in Kolkata, India, who have advocated for the rights of the 65,000 sex workers of Sonogachi working against trafficking and HIV since 1992 (see in this issue Dasgupta and Sinha). So, it is well established that decriminalization is the supported model for better health outcomes, reduced violence and is backed by a range of global entities and has been at the centre of grassroots campaigns from the sex work community for some time.

Universal Principles

At the time of writing, we mourned the loss of Margo St James — a sex-positive feminist who pioneered the sex worker rights movement in the 1960s in San Francisco, establishing COYOTE at the start of the modern decriminalization movement across the globe. In her memory, and of those who have gone before and after her, we return to some key principles of rights to reiterate, reinforce and remember as we introduce the articles for this special issue. We hope the special issue will draw out the ways in which structural stigma is experienced and can be overcome (see Bruckert & Hannem, 2013 ; Krüsi et al., 2016 ; Benoit et al., 2018 ) and speak to the debates about how to improve and move forward sex work policies (see Overs & Loff, 2013 ; Abel, 2019 ).

If the underlying point of decriminalization is harm reduction and safety, and the overlying point is the exercise of rights at work, then we need to explore the environment in which this work takes place — and all the papers in this special section do so to a greater or lesser extent. In creating a safe world, there are minimum standards on food, water, air quality and so on. While there are disagreements amongst politicians about how achievable various standards is, there is a level of consensus amongst scientists about what constitutes minimum standards. What would one want to see in a decriminalized working environment where the documented injustices would not prevail (see NSWO, 2020 )? Barriers for entry cannot be set too high; otherwise, they prevent new entrants (especially those who previously worked for larger enterprises to work for themselves). Such barriers can be seen in Nevada, in the Netherlands with the introduction of regulations for licenses that migrants were not allowed to apply for and with the sexual services establishment licenses in the UK (Hubbard & Colosi, 2013 ; Sanders & Campbell, 2013 ; Pitcher & Wijers, 2014 ).

In thinking what needs to be done to obtain rights for sex workers, and improved living and working conditions, there is history on which to build. The consensus around various statements and charters across the globe covers these key rights: the right to associate and organize, the right to be protected by the law, the right to be free from violence, the right to be free from discrimination, the right to freedom from arbitrary interference, the right the health, the right to move and migrate, the right to work and free choice of employment. The global international movement, the Network of Sex Work Projects, promotes these rights which have a set of core foundations: acceptance of sex work as work, opposition to criminalization and support for self-organization and self-determination. As Ostergen ( 2017 ) notes, law reform to decriminalization is one state of inclusive citizenship, and other key elements such as the living wage, improved police relations and inclusive housing are essential. We hope the articles in this special issue continue to build on this existing knowledge regarding what would be the general framework of conditions, rights and principles. The papers we have selected for this special issue focus on both the lived experience of sex work and also the premises on which governance is built.

Summary of Special Section Papers

Comparing sex work with care work, Bateman’s paper calls into question the double standards of ‘radical feminists’ who seek to abolish the former for perpetuating gender inequality but do not demand the abolition of care. She provides a historical overview of how the ‘immodest woman’ has been constructed, contributing to contemporary ‘end demand’ approaches, and how it is ‘whorephobia’—rather than sex work—which harms all women.

McCracken and Brooks-Gordon’s paper explores the nature of online work by financial dominitrices or ‘findommes’ working via video call and webcams. In a large two-stage survey, they investigate the experience of 195 findommes on money-slavery websites and social media. Using netnography as a tool, their analysis reveals how findomme interaction progresses from text-based interaction to virtual face-to-face and voice communication to show financial domination on a continuum from being a lifestyle choice in the BDSM community that reaps financial benefits to a purely economic and legitimate form of commercial labour.

Their findings also show how findommes dictate and create their boundaries and maintain psychological health and enhance our understanding of how the microculture of findomming interacts with other micro-cultures in a paper that adds to the growing body of literature that destigmatizes consensual erotic labour.

Morris combines queer theory with empirical data in the first study of incidental sex work, drawing on mixed methods including interviews with 50 young men who agreed to sell sex on social media platforms without advertising or identifying as sex workers and an incidental survey of 1473 Grindr users aged 18 to 28, in cities across England and Wales, raising important questions about the limitations of identity politics for making sense of the diversity of sex work practices and campaigns for sexual minority rights.

Whitney Berry and Frazer’s paper provides a compelling comparison that sex workers make when a statute changes their everyday lives and lived experience. From interviews with sex workers in the Republic of Ireland following the introduction of punitive legislation, themes emerged that vividly highlight the differences in mental health, police interaction, housing, family relationships, client interaction, discrimination and relationships with other sex workers. Such in-depth analysis provides a rigorous assessment that illustrates that sex work legislation in Eire has failed in a stated mission to improve life for sex workers, and that other options, such as decriminalization, should now be considered.

Bowen and Swindells’s paper combines a survey of 88 sex working members of the National Ugly Mugs in England and with their data on victimization to provide insights on the factors that deter sex workers from involving police as part of their justice-seeking efforts.

The survey results demonstrate a disturbing trend of sex workers feeling alienated and distrusting of police and the courts. The implications of sex workers not sharing information about dangerous individuals with police and choosing not to participate in court processes signal significant flaws in our criminal justice system regarding safe and inequitable access and poses danger to everyone as violent men go free.

Benoit centres the voices of sex workers in her article, using the responses of 57 participants to ask what changes are needed to improve health, safety and rights under a criminalized system in Canada. Findings firmly advocate for decriminalization and for health and welfare policies to shoulder the governance of sex work.

In the European context, Henham’s comparative fieldwork in 2016 draws on interviews and observations of visible sex work spaces across ten cities in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, demonstrating the limitations of simplistic punitive legal or policy approaches noting both unexpected benefits and consequences of different regulatory regimes, alongside how changes which have occurred in the context of COVID-19 may offer an indication of what further criminalization might look like.

In an Asian context, Dasgupta and Sinha combine ethnographic studies between 2009 and 2016 to share findings of the impact of criminalization on sex workers in Kolkata, India. Their article shines a light on the resistance movements led by sex workers who try to mitigate harms through community-based strategies, NGO stakeholders and partnerships and self-regulatory bodies. Estacio, Alibudbud and Zsanila Estacio reflect on drugs users in the Philippines who are engaged in sex work to explore the stigma of HIV, drug use and selling sex. Their results construct an argument that calls for a shift to public approaches and community-based programs to address the needs of this group.

We are very pleased to have three papers which speak from New Zealand — the only country that has decriminalized sex work — where global scrutiny turns to see law reform, implementation and operation in action. Armstrong’s paper draws on the concept of zemiology (social harm), alongside interviews with 46 sex workers in New Zealand, noting how this country provides an exceptional case study to explore how decriminalization has worked in practice to improve the autonomy and quality of life experienced by sex workers. Aroney’s longitudinal research from 2012 to 2019 with a range of stakeholders traces the important journey that saw the development and implementation of the Prostitution Reform Act ( 2003 ) in New Zealand. The focus here is on how and why sex workers and their allies can work together for law reform, with sex workers taking the lead in educating. Bond’s paper coins the ‘Dunedin model’ revealing a specific place in New Zealand and examines what decriminalization can look like under localized interpretations around brothel organization. This paper speaks to the necessity of processes and key stakeholders needed to ensure that decriminalized laws are fully operationalized.

In combination, this special section provides an examination of sex work policy and research across 12 countries in four continents, providing an important space for international comparisons. The research represented here supports calls by global health and human rights organizations for sex work decriminalization as the best strategy to reduce harm.

Acknowledgements

The Cambridge Socio-Legal Group provided support for the seminar; the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology provided the venue for the seminar.

Author Contribution

Each author wrote a section of the first draft, edited each other’s sections and blended them into the final version in an iterative process.

The project was facilitated with a small grant by the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Should Sex Work Be Decriminalized? Some Activists Say It's Time

Jasmine Garsd

LGBTQ, immigrant rights and criminal justice reform groups, launched a coalition, Decrim NY, in February to decriminalize the sex trade in New York. Erik McGregor/Getty Images hide caption

LGBTQ, immigrant rights and criminal justice reform groups, launched a coalition, Decrim NY, in February to decriminalize the sex trade in New York.

Sex work is illegal in much of the United States, but the debate over whether it should be decriminalized is heating up.

Former California Attorney General and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently came out in favor of decriminalizing it , as long as it's between two consenting adults.

The debate is hardly new — and it's fraught with emotions. Opponents of decriminalization say it's an exploitative industry that preys on the weak. But many activists and academics say decriminalization would help protect sex workers, and would even be a public health benefit.

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Queen honors activist who fought to decriminalize prostitution.

RJ Thompson wants to push back against the idea that sex work is inherently victimizing. He says for him it was liberating: Thompson had recently graduated from law school and started working at a nonprofit when the recession hit. In 2008, he got laid off with no warning and no severance, and he had massive student loan debt.

Thompson became an escort. "I made exponentially more money than I ever could have in my legal profession," he says.

He says the possibility of arrest was often on his mind. And he says for many sex workers, it's a constant fear. "Many street-based workers are migrants or transgender people who have limited options in the formal economies," he says. "And so they do sex work for survival. And it puts them in a very vulnerable position — the fact that it's criminalized."

Thompson is now a human rights lawyer and the managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. It's among several organizations that are advocating bills to decriminalize sex work in New York City and New York state. They already have the support of various state lawmakers .

TED Radio Hour

Juno mac: how does stigma compromise the safety of sex workers.

Due to its clandestine nature in America, it's extremely hard to find reliable numbers about the sex trade. But one thing is for sure: It's a multi-billion-dollar industry. In 2007, a government-sponsored report looked at several major U.S. cities and found that sex work brings in around $290 million a year in Atlanta alone.

Economist Allison Schrager says the Internet has increased demand and supply. "Women who pre-Internet (or men) who wouldn't walk the streets or sign with a madam or an agency now can sell sex work, sometimes even on the side to supplement other sources of income," she says.

So what happens when you take this massive underground economy and decriminalize it? Nevada might offer a clue. Brothels are legal there, in certain counties.

In Shrager's book, An Economist Walks Into A Brothel , she investigated the financial workings of the Nevada brothel industry. She found that on average it's 300 percent more expensive to hire a sex worker in a Nevada brothel than in an illegal setting. Shrager thinks it's because workers and customers prefer to pay for the safety and health checks of a brothel.

"Sex work is risky for everyone," she says. "You take on a lot of risk as a customer too. And when you're working in a brothel you are assured complete anonymity. They've been fully screened for diseases."

Goats and Soda

Legalizing prostitution would protect sex workers from hiv.

But many activists and academics say decriminalization would help protect sex workers and could also have public health benefits.

Take the case of Rhode Island . A loophole made sex work, practiced behind closed doors, legal there between 2003 and 2009.

Baylor University economist Scott Cunningham and his colleagues found that during those years the sex trade grew. But Cunningham points to some other important findings : During that time period the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by over a third. And gonorrhea among all women declined by 39 percent. Of course, changes in prostitution laws might not be the only cause, but Cunningham says, "the trade-off is if you make it safer to some degree, you grow the industry."

Rhode Island made sex work illegal again in 2009, in part under pressure from some anti-trafficking advocates. That's the thing: The debate about sex work always gets linked to trafficking — people who get forced into it against their will.

Economist Axel Dreher from the University of Heidelberg in Germany teamed up with the London School of Economics to analyze the link between trafficking and prostitution laws in 150 countries. "If prostitution is legal, there is more human trafficking simply because the market is larger," he says.

It's a controversial study: Even Dreher admits that reliable data on sex trafficking is really hard to find.

Human rights organizations including Amnesty International support decriminalization. Victims of trafficking might be able to ask for help more easily if they aren't afraid of having committed a crime, the groups say.

Cecilia Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC, an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York. Erik McGregor/Getty Images hide caption

Cecilia Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC, an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York.

Former sex worker Cecilia Gentili says she might have been able to break free much sooner had it not been for fear of legal consequences. She left her native Argentina because she was being brutally harassed by police in her small town. She thought she'd be better off when she moved to New York, but as a transgender, undocumented immigrant, she says she had few options.

"Let's be realistic," Gentili says, "for people like me, sex work is not 'one' job option. It's the only option."

Gentili says that when police busted the drug house in Brooklyn where she was being held, she debated whether to ask for help. She figured she was in a very vulnerable position, as a trans, undocumented person. She stayed quiet.

These days Gentili is the director of policy at GMHC , an HIV/AIDS prevention, care and advocacy nonprofit in New York. She's advocating for New York City and state to decriminalize sex work.

Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York. Jasmine Garsd/NPR hide caption

Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York.

But many believe the sex industry is just fundamentally vicious and decriminalizing it will make it worse. Rachel Lloyd is the founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services , a nonprofit for sexually exploited women in New York. She says there's nothing that will equalize the power unbalances in the sex industry.

"The commercial sex industry is inherently [exploitative]," she says. "The folks who end up in the commercial sex industry are the folks who are the most vulnerable and the most desperate."

When she was a teenager, Lloyd sold sex in Germany, where it's legal. But she says that didn't make it any less brutal for her.

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"Those power dynamics of exploitation were still there," she says. "When ... legal johns came in, they were the ones with the money."

Lloyd says she doesn't want sex workers to be persecuted or punished. But she doesn't think men should be allowed to buy sex legally. She says that would be condoning the same industry that brutalized her and the women she works with today.

But decriminalization activists say that sex work has and always will exist. And they say bringing it out of the shadows can only help.

Read more stories from NPR Business.

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Don’t Fully Decriminalize Sex Work

More from our inbox:, how to persuade joe manchin, a parole in the brink’s robbery case, college is worth it.

To the Editor:

Re “ Only Full Decriminalization Will Help Sex Workers ,” by Cecilia Gentili (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 18):

I’m a transgender woman and sex trade survivor who, like Ms. Gentili, was forced into prostitution because of economic coercion. However, I fundamentally disagree that expanding the rights of pimps, brothel owners and sex buyers will keep women like us safe.

When I began my gender transition, circumstances forced me into prostitution for survival. Sex buyers dehumanized and treated me like a fetish and commodity. Pimps threatened me. I wanted to leave prostitution but, like most in prostitution, couldn’t.

“Full decriminalization,” or what we call the “exploitation model,” throws our fate into the hands of the free market and under the control of a multibillion-dollar industry placing profit over people. This untenable “solution” would only exacerbate the problem and offer no exit services.

There’s a better way. The “equality model” decriminalizes people exploited in prostitution and provides exit services. And it still holds pimps, brothel owners and sex buyers accountable. Expanding the rights of those who profit and benefit from our exploitation won’t make us safer. Decriminalize people exploited in prostitution, not the people exploiting them.

Esperanza Fonseca North Hollywood, Calif.

At Covenant House we empathize greatly with Cecilia Gentili’s experience of being mistreated as a sex worker when she was merely trying to survive. That is why Covenant House, an organization that helps homeless young adults, supports the Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act , which would ensure that no person is arrested for selling sex in New York.

However, Ms. Gentili’s advocacy efforts to fully decriminalize prostitution, including for clients and promoters, go too far and endanger vulnerable young adults. Already, recent public messaging that prostitution is a victimless crime has led to an uptick in the number of pimps who wait down the street from our Covenant House shelter, preying on our most vulnerable youth.

Decriminalization provides increased incentive for pimps to lure in primarily Black and brown young people in poverty, L.G.B.T.Q. youth who have been kicked out of their home, those who have aged out of foster care and homeless youth. Our goal should be to protect these young people, to lift them up and help them pursue the great promise of their lives.

The bill that Ms. Gentili supports, Stop the Violence in the Sex Trades , will gut the anti-trafficking laws of New York and will encourage travelers from around the world to come to New York to buy the most vulnerable among us.

Nancy Downing New York The writer is executive director of Covenant House New York.

To put an end to Senator Joe Manchin’s selfish demands, President Biden needs to put him in a room with Greta Thunberg for half a day.

Judith Hurd Bernalillo, N.M.

Re “ Brink’s Robbery Participant, Now 77, Is Granted Parole ” (news article, Oct. 27):

The New York State parole board’s grant of David Gilbert’s parole should be hailed as a welcome example of the recognition of his 40-year rehabilitation.

Mr. Gilbert was a participant in a robbery that left two police officers and a Brink’s guard dead. He has accepted responsibility for the tragic consequences of his crime and repeatedly expressed his profound remorse. At the age of 77, he poses no threat to the safety and security of anyone.

People change over time. Our system of criminal justice also must change. The impact of mass incarceration must be addressed and remedied, especially for communities of color and the families of those jailed. This grant of parole to David Gilbert, who has a demonstrated record of nonviolence and helping and mentoring others who are jailed, should be celebrated.

Martin Garbus New York The writer is a civil rights and First Amendment lawyer.

Re “ College Degrees Are Overrated ,” by Peter Coy (Opinion, nytimes.com, Oct. 18):

Mr. Coy’s claim may be fashionable in some quarters. But it’s just plain wrong, and it does a disservice to those considering the many available postsecondary education pathways.

Income and job security are almost perfectly correlated with a college education. On any measure of social wellness that demographers can devise, college graduates are better off than people who don’t go to college. Research shows that college graduates are healthier, happier and live longer than those who don’t go to college.

Mr. Coy’s essay also sets up a false dichotomy between earning a college degree and preparing for the workplace. Employers value the critical thinking skills fostered by a liberal arts degree. There are low-cost community colleges and their many occupation-oriented programs. And there is the American Council on Education’s Apprenticeship Pathways project dedicated to expanding the range of alternative educational experiences eligible for college credit.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. Education does not necessarily mean career success and high income, but it’s generally the way to go.

Terry W. Hartle Washington The writer is senior vice president of the American Council on Education.

• Covid-19 and the Social Sciences
• Covid-19 Fieldnotes from Our Grantees

The Covid-19 Pandemic Endangers Sex Worker Health and Safety, Underscoring Need for Structural Reforms

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected people across all walks of life, among them sex workers. In this essay based on their SSRC-funded research, Denton Callander, Étienne Meunier, and Mariah Grant examine how the pandemic has impacted sex workers in the United States, analyzing the role stigma plays in heightening the health, social, and economic threats posed by the pandemic. To ameliorate sex workers’ conditions, the authors argue for decriminalizing sex work and providing long-term support.

In 2020, a new program of research known as Sex Work & Covid-19—or SW-C19 —was established to collect evidence of the pandemic’s impact on sex workers. This collaborative enterprise involved researchers, sex workers, activists, advocates, and some who represented all of these categories. More than simply describing how the pandemic has affected sex workers, we wanted to understand why things have played out as they have and, importantly, what support sex workers identify as critically needed now and in the future.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected sex workers?

In August last year, we sat down with Sam, a multiracial nonbinary sex worker based in New York City, to conduct an in-depth research interview via videoconference. This interview was one of 21 separate interviews carried out last year, which we hoped would provide one kind of empirical foundation upon which to build a better understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic and sex work.

“It has pretty much obliterated my work,” Sam described. “My dungeon was shut down back in March, so the physical space where I usually do my sex work is shut down because of Covid.”

After conducting dozens of interviews, Sam’s story was all too familiar. As understandings of SARS-CoV-2 transmission developed and public health orders to control its spread were implemented, in-person sex work became a difficult and potentially dangerous gig. Sex work venues were ordered closed, client interest decreased, and sex workers worried about acquiring or transmitting the virus.

Aligning with what was shared during the interviews, through a separate analysis of one of the world’s largest sex work websites, we found that many sex workers discontinued in-person work in the pandemic’s first four months. 4 Denton Callander et al., “ Investigating the Effects of Covid-19 on Global Male Sex Work Populations: A Longitudinal Study of Digital Data ,” Sexually Transmitted Infections 97 (Feb. 17, 2021): 93–98. While discontinuing in-person work can reduce Covid-19 risk, it also denies sex workers an important source of income. Some of the people we interviewed used sex work to supplement pay from other jobs, but for many it was their primary or sole source of income. Many of these people could simply not afford to just stop work.

Unfortunately, income loss and other effects of the pandemic can force sex workers to make an impossible choice between their health and meeting basic needs. “If I have to eat or I don’t have any lodging or any means of taking care of myself,” explained Rochelle, a Black transgender female sex worker and health promotions officer, “that might be a chance I’m willing to take, even though it jeopardizes my safety.”

Looking across interviews, we identified prominent threats to the health and safety of sex workers as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. By no means exhaustive, these include:

• Covid-19 infection risk owing to intimate sexual contact;
• food insecurity, housing instability, and houselessness owing to lost income;
• decreased access to physical and mental health services owing to reduced services and fears of mistreatment;
• increased mental health challenges owing to social isolation and reduced service access;
• increased risks of violence from seeing clients in unvetted spaces (e.g., motels) owing to financial need, housing instability, and sex work venue closure; and
• increased health risks from engaging in sexual practices that would otherwise be refused (e.g., condomless sex) owing to financial need.

The pandemic’s impact on the general population is best understood from an intersectional perspective, 5 Lisa Bowleg, “ We’re Not All in This Together: On Covid-19, Intersectionality, and Structural Inequality ,” American Journal of Public Health 110, no. 7 (2020): 917. and this is true for sex workers as well. 6 Nicole F. Bromfield, Meg Panichelli, and Moshoula Capous-Desyllas, “ At the Intersection of Covid-19 and Sex Work in the United States: A Call for Social Work Action ,” Affilia 36, no. 2 (2021): 140–148. Indeed, we observed that the effects listed here were most pronounced among sex workers of color, transgender and migrant sex workers, and those of lower socioeconomic status.

Why has the Covid-19 pandemic endangered sex workers?

While sex workers have been negatively affected by the pandemic, those in other employment sectors ( especially leisure, tourism, and entertainment ) have also faced their share of challenges. On the surface this comparison may seem reasonable, but it ignores an incredibly important distinction: Sex work is highly stigmatized.

Stigma enacted against sex workers is a pervasive social force that predates Covid-19 by millennia and can be applied to explain why individuals and societies treat sex workers differently from, for example, restaurant servers, taxi drivers, or social scientists. In simple terms, because sex work is commonly perceived and portrayed in our societies as immoral, deviant, and dangerous it marks those associated with it as worthy of derision, fear, or pity, all of which drives and is driven by laws and regulations of sex work.

In the context of Covid-19, stigma offers a compelling explanation for the pandemic’s unique and disproportionate effects on sex workers. While stigma impacts all sex workers, we found that things are much worse when sex work stigma intersects with racism, sexism, transphobia, classism, and other forms of oppression.

Criminalization of sex work in nearly all parts of the United States represents a structural form of stigma that impacts sex workers relative to the pandemic in several ways. First, criminalization prevented the majority we interviewed from accessing government-sponsored financial aid. Further, early reports of sex workers’ explicit exclusion from some aid programs discouraged applications to others. Compounding the pandemic’s financial effects, those of lower socioeconomic status were hardest hit and experienced cascading threats to their basic needs like food and housing.

Second, criminalization also acts as a barrier to providing sex workers with health insurance. 7 Michael L. Rekart, “ Sex-Work Harm Reduction ,” The Lancet 366, no. 9503 (2006): 2123–2134. While not pandemic-specific, uninsured sex workers we interviewed reported stress and anxiety from fears of being diagnosed with Covid-19 and the resulting out-of-pocket medical expenses. This concern resonated with migrant sex workers especially. Third, some of the peer-support workers and sex worker activists with whom we spoke advised that criminalization impeded programs to negotiate housing for sex workers during the pandemic, especially for those who are transgender.

The fourth effect of criminalization was articulated by Cathy, a Native American cisgender female sex worker based two hours west of Boston. “When Covid first started, there was nobody outside,” explained Cathy, “so I guess it made it look even more suspicious with people driving around and then the girls walking around.” Sex workers of color or lower socioeconomic status are overrepresented among those who operate in public places like street corners and parks. They are also more visible than other kinds of sex workers—and made hypervisible during the pandemic—and this visibility can expose them to disproportionate policing and diminishing safety.

Identifying all sex work as trafficking is another form of stigma that negatively affects access to mental and physical health care. Specifically, some sex workers we interviewed were afraid of attending health services lest they be flagged for involvement in human trafficking, a particular fear among migrant sex workers. Among others, fears of being treated differently by service providers because of their sex work also impeded service access, further demonstrating stigma’s pervasive influence.

What can be done to support sex workers in the Covid-19 pandemic?

With mounting evidence from our team and others, now is the time for researchers, policymakers, funders, and activists to work together toward meaningful change.

To that end, our research lends support to a number of structural reforms that could assist sex workers in this new Covid-19 era. Centering the needs of sex workers themselves, we recommend the following:

• Decriminalize sex work. Many of the pandemic’s effects unique to sex work are fostered by its criminalized nature. Decriminalizing sex work would not only address many barriers that exacerbate the pandemic’s harms but also stands to improve health and well-being in many other domains . As decriminalization gains traction in some parts of the United States, rigorous and community-centered social research can help advance this important work, including by highlighting the pandemic-specific effects and implications.
• Support sex work organizations. We find that the pandemic’s worst effects are often ameliorated by social support from sex work communities. Continuing a tradition of public health engagement, 8 Rekart, “Sex-Work Harm Reduction.” sex work organizations have responded to the pandemic with “safer sex work” guidelines, 9 Denton Callander et al., “ Sex Workers Are Returning to Work and Require Enhanced Support in the Face of Covid-19: Results from a Longitudinal Analysis of Online Sex Work Activity and a Content Analysis of Safer Sex Work Guidelines ,” Sexual Health 17, no. 4 (2021): 384–386. financial aid programs, housing and food initiatives, education and support forums, distribution of risk reduction equipment , and other important programs. Dedicated public funding would help expand this work in the United States, which researchers can support through data-driven advocacy and rigorous evaluations of impact.
• Redevelop anti-trafficking initiatives. Human trafficking is an important issue, but current training for health and support services problematically ignores the nuances of consensual sex work while enforcement initiatives largely capture sex workers and not traffickers . Redeveloping these initiatives with recognition of consensual sex work and centering sex workers as partners in the fight against trafficking would address barriers to care illuminated by the pandemic, support the destigmatization of sex work among service providers, and could even help advance anti-trafficking work. 10 Erin Albright and Kate D’Adamo, “ Decreasing Human Trafficking through Sex Work Decriminalization ,” AMA Journal of Ethics 19, no. 1 (2017): 122–126.

Supporting sex workers long-term

While vaccines offer a hopeful future end to the Covid-19 pandemic, sex workers continue to be affected in ways that cannot be resolved with a shot in the arm. Indeed, many of the pandemic’s most pressing effects on sex workers—especially socioeconomically and in terms of mental health—are likely to endure well into the future.

Relative to individually focused interventions and initiatives, structural reforms are typically much more difficult to achieve. This truth notwithstanding, they are also often the most impactful. In focusing on structural reform, we wish to recognize the long-term implications of the pandemic. Further, focusing on structural change acknowledges that if not addressed, the same conditions that have made the pandemic so harmful to sex workers will continue to plague their health and safety.

Stigma remains a persistent threat to the health and safety of sex workers, the significance of which is reignited by Covid-19. As stigma intersects with other forms of oppression, sex workers who are particularly vulnerable to social marginalization are also the most at risk. Destigmatizing sex work within a framework of intersectionality is a daunting and seemingly endless journey, but it is essential that we carry on by centering diverse sex work communities and working together to address the individual and structural challenges illuminated by but certainly not unique to Covid-19.

Banner photo: Juno Mac/ Flickr .

References:

Denton Callander

Denton Callander (he/him) is a Canadian/Australian researcher based in New York City who studies sex, sexuality, and sexual health. He is an associate research scientist with the Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Columbia University and a senior research fellow with the Kirby Institute for Immunity and Infection in Society at the University of New South Wales.

Étienne Meunier

Étienne Meunier (he/him) is a sociologist studying the sexual cultures and sexual health of sex and gender minorities with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Mariah Grant

Mariah Grant (she/her) is a human rights and migration specialist based in Washington DC who focuses on migrant and sex workers’ rights, freedom of movement, and labor exploitation. As the Research and Advocacy Director of the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, she oversees advocacy efforts and development of original research.

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This essay may be found on page 209 of the printed volume.

Sex Work is Real Work, and it's Time to Treat it That Way

Sex workers aren’t always a part of the conversation about police brutality, but they should be. Police regularly target, harass, and assault sex workers or people they think are sex workers , such as trans women of color. The police usually get away with the abuse because sex workers fear being arrested if they report. If we lived in a world that didn’t criminalize sex work, sex workers could better protect themselves and seek justice when they are harmed. 

Protecting sex workers from police violence is just one of the reasons we need to decriminalize sex work. It would also help sex workers access health care, lower the risk of violence from clients, reduce mass incarceration, and advance equality in the LGBTQ community, especially for trans women of color, who are often profiled and harassed whether or not we are actually sex workers. In 2020 the call for decriminalization has made progress, but there are still widespread misconceptions about sex work and sex workers that are holding us back. Some even think that decriminalization would harm sex workers. That isn’t true. 

Here are five reasons to decriminalize sex work that would protect sex workers, help hold police accountable, and ensure equality for all members of society, including those who choose to make a living based by self-governing their own bodies.

Decriminalization would reduce police violence against sex workers

Police abuse against sex workers is common, but police rarely face consequences for it. That’s partly because sex workers fear being arrested if they come forward to report abuse. Police also take advantage of criminalization by extorting sex workers or coercing them into sexual acts, threatening arrest if they don’t comply. Criminalizing sex work only helps police abuse their power, and get away with it. 

If sex work were decriminalized, sex workers would no longer fear arrest if they seek justice, and police would lose their power to use that fear in order to abuse people.

Decriminalization would make sex workers less vulnerable to violence from clients

Like the police, sex workers’ clients can also take advantage of a criminalized environment where sex workers have to risk their own safety to avoid arrest. Clients know they can rob, assault, or even murder a sex worker — and get away with it — because the sex worker does not have access to the same protections from the law. 

Sex workers became even more vulnerable to abuse from clients after the passage of SESTA/FOSTA in 2018. The ACLU opposed this law for violating sex workers’ rights and restricting freedom of speech on the internet . SESTA/FOSTA banned many online platforms for sex workers, including client screening services like Redbook, which allowed sex workers to share information about abusive and dangerous customers and build communities to protect themselves. The law also pushed more sex workers offline and into the streets, where they have to work in isolated areas to avoid arrest, and deal with clients without background checks.

Decriminalization would allow sex workers to protect their own health

Sex workers sometimes go without medical care out of fear of arrest or poor treatment by medical staff if it comes out that they are a sex worker. And because the law doesn’t treat sex work like a real job, sex workers do not have access to employer-based health insurance, which means that many cannot afford care. 

Criminal law enforcement of sex work comes with unjust police practices, like the use of condoms as evidence of intent to do sex work. As a result, some sex workers and people who are profiled as sex workers may opt not to carry condoms due to the risk of arrest. This puts them at risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Decriminalization would advance equality for the LGBTQ community

Sex work criminalization laws impact the whole LGBTQ community because members of the community — particularly LGBTQ people of color, LGBTQ immigrants, and transgender people — are more likely to be sex workers . The passage of anti-sex work laws like SESTA/FOSTA harms the community by dramatically decreasing incomes, which further marginalizes members of the trans community, people of color, or those with low incomes to begin with. 

Trans women of color feel the impact of criminalization the most, whether or not we are sex workers. Police profile us and often press prostitution charges based on clothing or condoms found in a purse. We can’t go about our lives without fear of being targeted by police. 

If sex work is decriminalized, police would have one less tool to harass and marginalize trans women of color. Sex workers, and especially trans women, would be more able to govern their own bodies and livelihoods. Decriminalizing sex work would promote the message that Black trans lives matter.

Decriminalization would reduce mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system

The criminalization of sex work feeds the mass incarceration system by putting more people in jail unnecessarily. Those incarcerated tend to be trans and/or people of color, two groups that are already disproportionately incarcerated. One in six trans people have been incarcerated , and one in two trans people of color. 

Incarceration is violent and destructive for everyone, and even more so for trans people. While incarcerated, trans people are often aggressively misgendered, denied health care, punished for expressing their gender identity, and targeted for sexual violence. 

An arrest on charges of sex work can result in life-changing consequences that last long past the end of a sentence. A criminal record can prevent you from accessing an accurate ID, jobs, housing, health care, and other services. It can also lead to deportation for immigrants. Members of the trans community and sex workers already face discrimination in many of these systems. A criminal record further marginalizes and stigmatizes being trans or engaging in sex work. 

Decriminalizing sex work would be a major step toward decarceration and reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. It would keep sex workers from being harmed by the collateral consequences of a criminal record. It would help prevent the marginalization of sex workers and destigmatize sex work.

How to decriminalize sex work

The ACLU has supported decriminalizing sex work since 1973, and it became an official board policy in 1975. Since then, affiliates across the country have advocated for decriminalization at the state level by striking down laws restricting sex workers’ rights, such as condoms-as-evidence laws.

The fight continues in 2020, with active decriminalization bills in several state legislatures and advocates pushing elected officials like district attorneys to take pledges to not prosecute sex work. At the federal level, Congress has introduced the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act , which would study the effects of SESTA/FOSTA. There is a chance for progress if we educate each other on sex workers’ rights and pressure elected officials to decriminalize.

Sex workers deserve the same legal protections as any other people. They should be able to maintain their livelihood without fear of violence or arrest, and with access to health care to protect themselves. We can bring sex workers out of the dangerous margins and into the light where people are protected — not targeted — by the law.

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26 Sex Work, Gender, and Criminal Justice

Ronald Weitzer is a Professor of Sociology at George Washington University.

• Published: 01 July 2014
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This essay examines key dimensions of contemporary sex work as they relate to gender and the legal system. Theoretical perspectives and empirical research on street and indoor prostitution, stripping, and pornography are reviewed. In most places, the law and criminal justice system focus on women working in these sectors, with much less official attention to male and transgender sex workers. Scholarly research on male sex work has expanded in the past two decades but remains but a fraction of the academic literature. The essay concludes with a discussion of two recent, divergent trends in state policies: increased criminalization and legalization.

26.1. Introduction

Sex work involves the exchange of sexual services or erotic performances for material compensation and includes pornography, commercial telephone sex, erotic performances (stripping, webcam), and prostitution. Depending on the society in question, these practices may be legal or illegal. Where legal, they are subject to some type of government regulation, such as restrictions on eligibility and location. Unlike predatory crimes with a clear victim, illegal sex work involving adults generally entails exchanges between willing buyers and sellers, which leads some members of the public to view it with a measure of moral ambivalence or tolerance.

This essay focuses on prostitution—and, to a lesser extent, pornography and stripping—with special attention to issues of gender and criminal justice. In addition, it documents some important international trends in state policy. These trends are not uniform, as criminalization has intensified in some societies just as legalization is being embraced by others ( McCarthy et al. 2012 ; Weitzer 2012 ). Importantly, under both trends it is typically women who are the focus of new legislation and enforcement practices. While the new laws are usually gender-neutral, they are drafted with women in mind: law enforcement (under criminalization) and implementation of regulations (under legalization) is usually directed at female rather than male sex workers. Male clients of female sex workers are targeted in some nations but not in others, while male and transgender sex workers are almost entirely neglected in the law-in-action.

This essay begins with a review of major theoretical perspectives on sex work and then addresses gender issues. It argues that gender is all too often taken for granted in this scholarly work in part because of its focus on female sex workers and male customers and the general neglect of male and transgender sex workers and female customers. Additional research on these latter actors will help clarify both the ways in which sex work is gendered and the ways in which it is experienced similarly irrespective of gender. The essay concludes with a discussion of the legal context in the United States as a point of departure for considering broader international trends in legislation regarding sexual commerce. In doing so, the essay examines research bearing on two trends—increased criminalization and legalization.

26.2. Competing Theories

Three main theoretical perspectives have been applied to sex work. The oppression paradigm holds that prostitution reflects and reinforces patriarchal gender relations. Advocates of this paradigm argue that sex work is harmful both instrumentally and symbolically. Instrumentally, exploitation, subjugation, and violence against women are viewed as inherent in sex work ( Jeffreys 1997 ; Farley 2006 ). Symbolically, the very existence of commercial sex is seen as implying that men have a “patriarchal right of access to women’s bodies”: Men can pay for sex or sexual entertainment from women who otherwise would be unavailable to them, thus perpetuating their subordination ( Pateman 1988 , p. 199). Oppression writers typically use dramatic language to highlight the plight of workers (sexual slavery, prostituted women, survivors) and to emphasize the notion that sex workers are victims of male exploiters and misogynists ( Jeffreys 1997 ; Farley 2006 ). Oppression theorists typically describe only the worst examples of sex work and treat them as representative, and they tend to ignore counterevidence to the paradigm’s main tenets ( Weitzer 2010 ). Female sex workers who claim they have agency or view their work positively are discounted by advocates of this paradigm. Male and transgender sex workers are ignored as well.

The empowerment paradigm is radically different. It focuses on the ways in which sexual services qualify as work, involve human agency, and may be empowering for workers ( Delacoste and Alexander 1987 ; Chapkis 1997 ). Advocates argue that there is nothing inherent in sex work that would prevent it from being organized like any other economic transaction (i.e., for the mutual gain of buyers and sellers alike). Apart from its material rewards, some types of sex work provide greater control over working conditions than many traditional jobs, and this work can enhance workers’ sense of self-worth. However, the positive potential of sex work, from the worker’s perspective, is diluted when it is outlawed, marginalized, and heavily stigmatized.

Few empowerment writers argue that sex work is empowering without qualification; rather they argue that it can be validating under the right circumstances. Writers in this camp highlight benefits and success stories, without claiming that these are typical. For instance, one analyst argues that sex work can be liberating for those who are “fleeing from small-town prejudices, dead-end jobs, dangerous streets, and suffocating families” ( Agustín 2007 , p. 45). A few writers go further and make bold claims that romanticize sex work. Chapkis (1997 , p. 30) describes a “sex radical” version of empowerment wherein sex workers and other sexual outlaws “embrace a vision of sex freed of the constraints of love, commitment, and convention” and present “a potent symbolic challenge to confining notions of proper womanhood and conventional sexuality.” Paglia takes issue with the very notion that commercial sex is an arena of male domination over women:

The feminist analysis of prostitution says that men are using money as power over women. I’d say, yes, that’s all that men have . The money is a confession of weakness. They have to buy women’s attention. It’s not a sign of power; it’s a sign of weakness. (Paglia, quoted in Chapkis 1997 , p. 22)

The empowerment paradigm is particularly salient when the discussion moves from mainstream, heterosexual sex work to alternative genres. Research on gay and transgender sex work highlights the ways in which the work can be identity-affirming for individual workers (and customers) and for these marginalized populations more generally. For example, pornography made by and for women and stripping by female dancers for female audiences can help to replace traditional and heteronormative ideals of sexuality with a woman-centered alternative ( Bakehorn 2010 ; Frank and Carnes 2010 ). Similarly, gay male pornography can help affirm the consumer’s sexual orientation. Thomas (2010 , p. 84) argues that gay pornography is “one of the few venues for seeing gay sexuality presented in a positive light.” Also, it is held in much higher esteem in the gay community than heterosexual pornography is within that population: Gay pornography has “achieved an almost respectable position in gay life” ( Thomas 2010 , p. 83).

Transgender sex workers report that prostitution can provide a haven from societal rejection and may foster a sense of pride in their identity. A Brazilian study of transgender women reports that prostitution provided a “sense of personal worth, self-confidence, and self-esteem” ( Kulick 1998 , p. 136). These transgender women sold sex for emotional and sexual fulfillment as well as income. A recent study ( Cortez, Boer, and Baltieri 2011 ) that compares Brazilian transgendered and male sex workers finds that the former are more successful in creating strong social bonds with other workers and in fostering a shared identity. In focus groups in San Francisco, researchers discovered that “sex work involvement provided many young transgender women of color feelings of community and social support, which they often lacked in their family contexts”; moreover, it gave these workers a “sense of independence and non-reliance on others (i.e., managers, coworkers) who might express discrimination or harassment” ( Sausa, Keatley, and Operario 2007 , p. 772). For these populations, sex work can contribute to a larger identity politics that challenges conventional heterosexual norms and helps to empower otherwise marginalized groups.

Yet both the empowerment and oppression paradigms are deeply flawed. While exploitation and empowerment are certainly present in sex work, neither paradigm reflects its rich diversity and the implications of such variation for the participants. An alternative perspective, the polymorphous paradigm ( Weitzer 2009 , 2010 ), highlights the wide variety of occupational arrangements, power relations, and personal experiences among those involved in sexual commerce. Sex workers differ in their reasons for entry, dependence on third parties, relations with clients, risk of victimization, contacts with the authorities, job satisfaction, public visibility, and impact on the surrounding community. Recognizing such diversity as a starting point, researchers can then identify the determinants of these varying outcomes.

Polymorphism is superior to the other two paradigms because empirical research amply demonstrates the variegated nature of sex work and because this paradigm encompasses everything highlighted in the other two paradigms (see Vanwesenbeeck 2001 ; Harcourt and Donovan 2005 ; Shaver 2005 ; Bradley-Engen 2009 ; Weitzer 2009 ; Attwood 2011 ). Because the oppression and empowerment paradigms are one-dimensional, they are clearly unsuited to the sociological task of identifying the structural conditions responsible for the uneven distribution of key outcomes—such as agency, exploitation, victimization risk, and job satisfaction. The polymorphous prism is well suited to precisely this kind of analysis.

26.3. Gender

In the popular imagination, sex work is perceived through a single-gender lens: Women sell sex or erotic performances, and men are the buyers. When people think of strippers, pornography stars, and prostitutes, they typically think of women. It is true that the mainstream sex industry is highly gendered in this way, and it is important to examine why so much sex work is performed by women. This gender imbalance clearly reflects traditional gender relations (i.e., men’s sexual objectification of women) that some women capitalize on, and the existence of sex for sale provides men with an avenue for reaffirming their masculinity, although this is hardly the only motivation for buying sexual services or erotic performances ( Milrod and Weitzer 2012 ). The gendered character of the sex industry is also evident in its power structure: Many of the owners and managers of sex businesses are men who exercise control over female employees and profit from their labor. Finally, it is likely that many of the women working in the sex industry would not do so if other jobs, paying the same as sex work, were available to them. In each of these ways, it is clear that gender inequality is deeply inscribed in the world of sexual commerce.

But it is also important to recognize that many sex workers are male or transgender. Male prostitutes, pornography actors, and strippers service or perform for women or for other men, and together these men constitute a sizeable proportion of the sex worker population. Yet, far less research has been conducted on them than on their female counterparts. While research on male prostitutes has grown somewhat in recent years ( West 1993 ; Browne and Minichiello 1996 ; Aggleton 1999 ; Uy et al. 2004 ; Smith, Grov, and Seal 2008 ; Logan 2010 ; Walby 2012 ), hardly any research has been conducted on male commercial strippers or pornography actors ( DeMarco 2007 ; Abbott 2010 ).

Even scarcer are studies that systematically compare male and female workers in the same occupational sector, research that can be particularly revealing. For example, a recent study of male and female independent escorts reports greater similarities than differences between them. Both groups placed a high value on working independently, rather than for an agency, and both were committed to condom use with clients. But the women charged much more for their services and also experienced greater stigma than the men, largely because sex work is “more socially acceptable within the gay community” ( Koken, Bimbi, and Parsons 2010 , p. 229).

A unique comparison of male, female, and transgender prostitutes in San Francisco identifies a number of significant differences between the three groups ( Weinberg, Shaver, and Williams 1999 ). The women in the study were more likely than the men or transgenders to have been coerced into prostitution and to have pimps, and the men experienced more sexual satisfaction at work than the female prostitutes, although the three groups reported similar levels of overall job satisfaction. Another study, of 100 street workers, finds that males were the least likely and females the most likely to have experienced assault and rape, while the transgender workers fell in between the other two groups in rates of victimization ( Valera, Sawyer, and Schiraldi 2001 ).

Research on strippers shows that female audiences tend to act more aggressively toward male dancers than is allowed in clubs featuring female dancers before a male audience—social control is more lax when men dance for women—but also that male dancers grapple with the same stigma and objectification as their female counterparts ( Dressel and Petersen 1982 ; Montemurro 2001 ). Men who strip for male audiences experience less stigma but the same challenges in maintaining boundaries vis-à-vis their male patrons ( DeMarco 2007 ).

Sex tourism also differs by gender. A study in the Dominican Republic reports that male prostitutes (known as “beach boys”) felt free to be seen in public (relaxing, partying) with female tourists, whereas female prostitutes used public space solely to solicit men ( Herold, Garcia, and DeMoya 2001 ). The male prostitutes were more likely to form relationships with female tourists over an extended period of time, but the female workers were more dependent on prostitution for their livelihood and felt more stigmatized by the local population. The beach boys often had other jobs, and they and the female tourists defined their relationships not as prostitution but as “romance tourism” ( Sanchez Taylor 2001 ). Yet these relationships have all the hallmarks of sexual commerce, provided that the man receives at least some material compensation (meals, gifts, money, lodging). Similar kinds of relationships, short and long term, have been observed among gay male tourists and local male sex workers in the Caribbean, Thailand, and other places ( Padilla 2007 ).

Much more comparative work of this kind is needed to document the ways in which the gender of the sex worker and of the customer influence both the social organization of sex work and the modal experiences of the participants. At this point, we know that female, male, and transgender sex workers share certain commonalities (e.g., negotiating transactions, managing clients, dealing with risks, coping with stigma), but they also appear to differ to some extent in the meanings they attach to commercial sex and in their modal experiences with clients and third parties. Additional research on male and transgender workers, as well as female clients, will help clarify the ways in which sex work is gendered as well as its more universal dimensions.

Like academic research, public policy and law enforcement largely focus on women in the sex industry, either as offenders or victims. Although most laws are written in a gender-neutral fashion, they are applied to female sex workers much more than to men. Arrests of male prostitutes are a minority of total prostitution arrests, for instance. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (2010 a )   Uniform Crime Report , males comprised 31 percent of those arrested for prostitution-related crimes in 2010 and 30 percent in 2009, which included solicitation, pimping and procuring, and owning or managing a place where prostitution takes place. Because these figures aggregate all of these activities, the percentages of men arrested for prostitution (i.e., solicitation) per se are not reported. We do know that most of the arrests of prostitutes take place outdoors. Having said that, females are more likely than males to be arrested in indoor locations, such as a massage parlor or a hotel where an escort agrees to meet an undercover officer posing as a client. Because national-level figures are not broken down by type of offense, we do not know either the number or the gender of persons arrested for pimping, procuring, or running a brothel. The conventional wisdom is that most of these third parties are males. Similarly, it is often assumed that the majority of persons involved in sex trafficking are male. An analysis of data from 2008–2010 by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics lends credence to this view: 82 percent of 385 suspected sex traffickers were male ( Banks and Kyckelhahn 2011 , p. 6). But worldwide, women are certainly not absent from the ranks of those who recruit or manage prostitutes, nor do they necessarily treat the individuals under their control better than male managers.

26.4. Victimization

The research literature draws three main conclusions about the risk of victimization. First, male sex workers are less likely than their female counterparts to experience violence while at work or to be controlled by pimps or other third parties ( West 1993 ; Aggleton 1999 ; Weinberg, Shaver, and Williams 1999 ). Second, transgendered workers report more frequent victimization than male sex workers ( Valera et al. 2001 ; Cortez et al. 2011 ); and third, indoor sex workers in developed countries who have not been coerced into prostitution are much less likely than street prostitutes to experience assault, robbery, rape, threats of violence, or murder. Street workers experience more frequent and more severe victimization over time, whereas some indoor providers report never having experienced violence on the job. This was the case for 78 percent of indoor workers in a British study ( Sanders and Campbell 2007 ). Similarly, about two-thirds of a Dutch sample of prostitutes ( Vanwesenbeeck et al. 1995 ) had never experienced physical or sexual violence on the job (most of the remainder had experienced violence infrequently). The Dutch sample included both street and indoor workers, so it is likely that the number experiencing violence would be even lower if the sample was restricted to the indoor population. Studies that directly compare indoor and street prostitutes tend to find substantial differences in victimization rates. A British study of 115 street and 125 indoor prostitutes ( Church et al. 2001 ), for example, asked whether they had ever been robbed (37 versus 10 percent, respectively), beaten (27 versus 1 percent), or raped (22 versus 2 percent) while working. Although random sampling was not possible in these studies, the common finding of significant street-indoor disparities lends credence to the general conclusion that “street workers are significantly more at risk of more violence and more serious violence than indoor workers” ( Plumridge and Abel 2001 , p. 83).

Indoor prostitution tends to be safer for two reasons: (a) It allows for more thorough screening of clients than is possible in street encounters, and (b) third parties may be present and willing to intervene in the event of trouble with a client. Street work involves very brief transactions that give workers little opportunity to assess a prospective client’s temperament. By contrast, indoor workers (whether independent or working for an agency) typically put clients through an elaborate screening process—requiring information about the person’s employer, a home address, social security and phone numbers, a referral from another sex worker, and completion of an online questionnaire. The Internet facilitates this screening, and a client’s responses can be confirmed with an online search and return phone calls. Such personal information helps to weed out both predators and police officers. A study of call girls finds that, as a result of phone screening, these workers develop “a sensitivity to detecting potential danger in the caller’s attitudes, manners, tone of voice, or nature of the conversation” ( Perkins and Lovejoy 2007 , p. 51). People who work for an agency routinely check in with a manager by phone before and after a visit and use code words if they sense trouble. In addition, compared to street customers, a larger proportion of indoor clients are regulars, who tend to be low risk ( Lever and Dolnick 2010 ).

For those who work in group settings—in brothels, massage parlors, saunas, bars, and strip clubs—the presence of managers and colleagues may offer additional safety; their very presence may preempt altercations with a customer, and they can intervene if a customer becomes unruly. Many erotic businesses also have video surveillance and alarm systems. Sex workers who work in bars and clubs have time to screen prospective customers; conversing over drinks allows them to judge the client’s character. Indoor sex work is by no means risk-free, but there is no doubt that it is generally safer than the streets.

26.5. The American Legal Context

In the United States, prostitution policy is largely devolved to the states. Federal law bans interstate transportation of a person for the purpose of prostitution (the 1910 Mann Act), sex trafficking is outlawed under the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and minors are banned from pornography under a recordkeeping requirement (the 2257 rule) whereby producers must verify the name and age of everyone depicted in sexually explicit material. Aside from these few national statutes, prostitution law is determined by each state, and decisions regarding pornography (i.e., whether it is legally obscene) are determined at the municipal level, under the doctrine of local “community standards” (there is no national obscenity test in the United States: municipal juries decide whether a work violates local community standards). All states prohibit solicitation for prostitution as well as pimping, procuring, operating a brothel, and running any other business that offers or allows sex for sale. The exception is Nevada, which since 1971 has permitted rural counties to license and regulate brothels. All prostitution is outlawed in Las Vegas and Reno, however, and in the counties where brothels are legal, other types of prostitution are prohibited.

In 2010, 62,668 Americans were arrested for prostitution offenses ( Federal Bureau of Investigation 2010 b ; the figure combines arrests for solicitation of customers; for owning or managing a place where prostitution takes place; and for procuring, pimping, or transporting a person for the purpose of prostitution; however, these statistics do not include figures on arrests of customers). Arrests are sporadic and selective in most cities, but in others they are more sustained and may have the effect of displacing street prostitution to another locale ( Scott 2001 ). Efforts against indoor operations are less common because they typically involve considerable planning and resources. In some departments, vice officers routinely monitor the Internet for the purpose of arresting individual prostitutes or shutting down escort agencies and massage parlors. Other departments prefer to target enforcement at the street trade ( Weitzer 1999 ).

Police agencies that conduct undercover stings sometimes cross the line of propriety. Officers involved in operations targeting massage parlors in Lynnwood, Washington, for example, allowed masseuses to masturbate them prior to making an arrest, while state police officers in Pennsylvania and vice officers in Louisville, Kentucky, and Spotsylvania County, Virginia, received oral sex prior to arresting the masseuses and parlor owners ( Weitzer 2012 ). In these and similar cases, the police claim that masseuses are savvy in detecting vice cops and thus some sexual contact is necessary to affect an arrest ( Almodovar 2010 ). But other police departments have strict policies prohibiting any sexual contact between officers and masseuses and rely instead on a verbal agreement of payment for sex.

Strip clubs are regulated by municipal laws in the United States. Undercover police officers occasionally visit the clubs to determine if anything unlawful is taking place—such as violations of rules regarding attire and physical contact between dancers and patrons. Police also look for signs of prostitution on the premises. A larger issue is the claim, made by officials in many cities, that strip clubs have “adverse secondary effects” on surrounding communities. Among the alleged effects are increased crime and disorderly conduct in the vicinity of a club. Although this claim is frequently made and used as a basis for prohibiting clubs in some jurisdictions, supporting evidence is lacking. Some carefully conducted studies, matching locales with and without strip clubs, report either no difference in crime rates or less reported crime in the strip club areas ( Paul, Shafer, and Linz 2001 ). A study of Charlotte, North Carolina, documents more crime in the immediate vicinity of bars and gas stations than in the area near strip clubs, and in Fort Wayne, Indiana, calls to the police in areas hosting strip clubs were no higher than in matched areas without such clubs ( Linz 2004 ). Looking only at reported sex crimes in a matched-area study of four Ohio cities, Linz, Yao, and Byrne (2007) find that there were no sex crimes near most of the strip clubs; where crimes occurred near clubs, there was a higher incidence in locales with fewer clubs. A study of San Diego, California, reports identical findings for areas with peep shows ( Linz, Paul, and Yao 2006 ). The researchers explain these findings in terms of club owners’ interest in maintaining a lawful business and the special security measures they employ both inside and outside their clubs to preempt problems with patrons and thwart criminal activity outside.

26.6. Recent Trends: Increasing Criminalization

Internationally, there have been two divergent trends in state policies toward sex work over the past two decades: increased criminalization and decriminalization/legalization. Those who champion the oppression paradigm, sketched above, have been in the forefront of an international campaign to outlaw currently legal forms of sex work and to intensify sanctions against already illegal forms. Recall that under the oppression paradigm, all types of sex work are regarded as harmful to the participants and to the larger society. Current efforts to expand criminalization echo earlier attempts, in the 1980s in the United States, to ban pornography ( Vance 1986 ). This effort met with some success during the Reagan administration, as indicated by the Justice Department’s increased prosecution in the late 1980s of pornography distributors accused of peddling obscene materials ( US Department of Justice 1988 ). Under the Clinton administration, prosecutions shifted toward child pornography, but under the subsequent Bush administration, adult pornography was targeted once again. The Obama administration has followed the Clinton model of focusing on child porn, not adult obscenity.

Much of the recent shift toward greater criminalization in the United States (and some other nations) has been driven by antitrafficking policy. Beginning with passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, the trend has been one of construing all types of sex work through the trafficking prism. The Bush administration (2001–2008) conflated sex trafficking with prostitution in general; some officials even argued that most prostitutes were trafficking victims. Rejecting the idea that legalization might help to reduce abuse, a State Department “fact sheet” claimed that legal prostitution “creates a safe haven for criminals who traffic people into prostitution” ( US Department of State 2004 , p. 2). Subsequently, the Bush administration began to float the idea that many of those who work in pornography and at strip clubs had been trafficked as well.

The Bush administration was heavily influenced by lobbying from prohibitionist activists who subscribe to the oppression paradigm. These activists enjoyed unparalleled access to state officials, testifying at Congressional hearings and networking at private conferences with government officials; government reports privileged their views, citing their work and providing links to their websites; and lucrative grants were awarded to the preeminent prohibitionist groups in the United States ( Chuang 2010 ; Weitzer 2011 ). There was thus a remarkable convergence between the dominant forces in the trafficking movement and the state during the Bush presidency. Over a short period of time, activists’ claims and demands were almost fully institutionalized in government policy and enforcement practices ( Weitzer 2007 , 2011 ). Other groups working against trafficking—those that did not accept the conflation of sex work with trafficking and advocated a more targeted approach—were completely marginalized by state officials ( Soderlund 2005 ; also see Goździak this volume).

A key part of the criminalization trend has been a robust crackdown on the clients of prostitutes. This is known as attacking “the demand.” The targeting of customers is a policy first adopted by Sweden in a 1999 law. The law punishes clients but not prostitutes on the grounds that clients are predators and women are victims who should be rescued rather than prosecuted. The rationale for the new law is described in a government publication:

In Sweden, prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation...which is harmful not only to the individual prostituted woman or child, but also to society at large...Gender equality will remain unattainable as long as men buy, sell, and exploit women and children by prostituting them. ( Ministry of Industry, Employment, and Communications 2004 , p. 1)

These declarations show that the 1999 law was firmly rooted in the oppression paradigm: Male domination is seen as the root cause of prostitution.

Some other nations have followed Sweden’s lead. In 2006 Finland passed a law outlawing the buying of sex from a trafficked person, and in 2009 Norway and Iceland enacted legislation similar to Sweden’s. In the same year, England and Wales passed a bill criminalizing those who buy sex from an individual who has been coerced into prostitution by a third party. The Finnish and British statutes construe the purchase of sex as a strict-liability offense: The client’s knowledge of the prostitute’s circumstances is irrelevant. In each case, advocates of the measures drew inspiration from Sweden, and the Swedish government has trumpeted the law’s success internationally. The available evidence, however, does not show that prostitution has been reduced in Sweden but instead that it has migrated into more clandestine and riskier settings ( Scoular 2004 ; Dodillet and Östergren 2011 ).

Not all anti-prostitution activists favor the Swedish approach; some continue to press for the criminalization and punishment of all parties involved in sex for sale, not just the clients. This is the prevailing approach in the United States, where increased penalties for purchasing sex run parallel to continuing enforcement against the prostitutes themselves. The official targeting of clients is evident in legislation reauthorizing the original 2000 trafficking law. The 2005 reauthorization bill, for instance, allocated $25 million per year for increased prosecution and programs, such as re-educational “john schools,” directed at those who purchase sex.

John schools are day-long seminars for men arrested for soliciting a prostitute. The program involves lectures on the harms of commercial sex, with the goal of preventing reoffending. About forty American cities operate such programs ( Ohtake 2008 ). Almost all of the men who have ended up in john schools were arrested on the street, not indoors. A comparison of men arrested for soliciting a prostitute who attended the city’s john school and men who did not attend the school found no difference in recidivism ( Monto and Garcia 2002 ). About 1 percent of both groups were rearrested for a prostitution offense, suggesting that the arrest itself is the key deterrent. Men arrested in cities without john schools are similarly unlikely to be rearrested for a prostitution offense, a pattern that suggests that the school experience per se does not serve as a significant deterrent ( Weitzer 1999 , pp. 97–98).

26.7. Recent Trends: Decriminalization and Legalization

The second and opposite trend in sex work legislation involves decriminalization and legalization. Several nations have recently decriminalized prostitution and third-party involvement in it (removing these from the criminal law) and legalized sexual commerce (imposing specific regulations on actors and enterprises). The few existing studies of legal prostitution systems indicate that many of the harms often associated with prostitution are at least partly due to its illicit status and may be alleviated when it is decriminalized and regulated by the state. Where it is illegal, prostitution is set apart from legitimate work, actors are marginalized and reluctant to report crimes to the police, and the authorities provide little if any protection.

The legalization and regulation of prostitution in some nations shows that criminalization is not the only option. It may be difficult for residents of nations where prostitution is illegal to imagine circumstances under which it can become normalized, but that is one of the goals of legal liberalization. The ideal situation is described by Overall (1992 , p. 716): “It is imaginable that prostitution could always be practiced...in circumstances of relative safety, security, freedom, hygiene, and personal control.” Most existing legal prostitution systems have registered at least some success in achieving one or more of these goals for at least some categories of sex workers ( Weitzer 2012 ).

Prostitution is legal and regulated by the government in more places than is commonly thought, and in some other places it is tolerated and regulated despite being technically illegal (e.g., Belgium, Thailand). Several Australian states decriminalized or legalized at least one type of prostitution in the 1980s (Victoria), 1990s (Queensland, New South Wales), and 2000s (Northern Territory, Tasmania). These jurisdictions vary in whether third-party involvement is permitted (e.g., running a brothel or escort agency), whether street prostitution or only indoor prostitution is allowed, and in other respects ( Sullivan 2010 ; Weitzer 2012 ). Legalization has also taken place in the Netherlands (in 2000), Germany (in 2002), and New Zealand (in 2003). Regulations vary from place to place, but a common objective is harm reduction—that is, lowering the risk of victimization, improving health, and reducing third-party exploitation. Government regulations dictate the type of prostitution allowed, who is eligible to work in the sex industry, the rights and responsibilities of workers and business owners, methods of licensing and governing businesses, special taxes, health and safety requirements, advertising restrictions, the location of establishments, and periodic inspection of premises. The regulatory apparatus in some contexts is extensive (e.g., Nevada) and compliance can be quite expensive (e.g., exorbitant licensing fees in Queensland). In other places, the controls are much more limited (e.g., Germany, New Zealand).

The available evidence suggests that prostitution, when legalized and regulated by the government, can pay dividends, although this is certainly not guaranteed. Nevada legalized brothel prostitution in 1971 and currently has about thirty such brothels scattered around its rural counties (but not in Las Vegas and Reno). These legal brothels “offer the safest environment available for women to sell consensual sex acts” ( Hausbeck and Brents 2010 , p. 272). Research on other legal prostitution regimes also documents certain benefits, including enhanced health and safety ( Weitzer 2012 ). In Queensland, Australia, for example, a government agency reports, “There is no doubt that licensed brothels provide the safest working environment for sex workers in Queensland...Legal brothels now operating in Queensland provide a sustainable model for a healthy, crime-free, and safe legal licensed brothel industry” and are a “state of the art model for the sex industry in Australia” ( Crime and Misconduct Commission 2004 , pp. 75, 89). In most of these cases, brothels have screening procedures, surveillance, and alarm buttons that reduce the chances of abuse by customers and allow for rapid intervention in case of trouble.

A comparative analysis of legal and illegal prostitutes working in Tijuana, Mexico—where about 1,000 women are licensed to operate legally—identifies several advantages of legal sex work ( Katsulis 2008 ). Legal status, in itself, has a multiplier effect, providing workers with a set of protections as well as a broad sense of empowerment. The legal regime is associated with improved working conditions, job satisfaction, and self-esteem; decreased victimization risk; a “barrier against police harassment”; and a “sense of legitimacy and community” and social capital among the legal workers ( Katsulis 2008 , p. 77). Illegal workers in Tijuana, by contrast, are subject to fines or incarceration and are at higher risk of police harassment and violence; they have less stable support networks; and they are about twice as likely to have been assaulted, robbed, or kidnapped as legal workers. A major evaluation in New Zealand, where prostitution was decriminalized in 2003, reports that more than 90 percent of sex workers interviewed were aware that they had legal and employment rights under the new law ( Prostitution Law Review Committee 2008 ); two-thirds felt that the law gave them more leverage to refuse a client or his requests; and a majority (57 percent) felt that police attitudes had changed for the better since passage of the law. This assessment is confirmed by other research ( Abel, Fitzgerald, and Healy 2010 ) that finds legalization has achieved many of its objectives and that the majority of sex workers are better off than they were under the previous system.

The argument here is not that legalized prostitution is preferable, across the board, to criminalization, but instead that legalization can be superior. What is crucial are the specific kinds of regulations in place and the degree to which they are enforced. Legalizing prostitution is one thing; implementing and enforcing regulations in accordance with a new law is another and has presented serious challenges in many nations postlegalization. Common problems include (a) difficulties getting prostitutes and business owners to comply with the law, (b) eliminating parasitical third parties, (c) preventing the growth of an illegal sector alongside the legal sector, and (d) in some places, unrelenting demands from social forces that seek to tighten restrictions or repeal the law entirely. These and other unforeseen challenges have arisen in most newly legal prostitution systems, taxing policymakers and enforcement agents. There are some exceptions (Nevada, New Zealand) where the aftermath of legalization was relatively smooth, but elsewhere (e.g., Germany, Australia, the Netherlands) the implementation of legal arrangements has been buffeted by unanticipated problems, including the persistence of illegal prostitution parallel to the legal sector—a two-tiered situation that has been difficult to resolve (see Weitzer 2012 ). Such problems are not unique to prostitution postlegalization but apply to other vices as well, as illustrated by the recent challenges (in implementation and oversight) facing the twenty states that now allow medical marijuana in the United States ( Geluardi 2010 ).

Although the laws and regulations in these systems are framed in gender-neutral language, they are either drafted with female sex workers in mind or have been applied largely to them. Male prostitutes and their managers are usually untouched by the new controls. In other words, authorities operating in legal regimes tend to focus on female sex workers just as much as their counterparts in jurisdictions where prostitution is illegal. Women are everywhere the chief concern. Why? Perhaps because women are construed as universally more vulnerable to victimization and as having much less agency than male sex workers—a rather blatant paternalism—regardless of whether prostitution is legal or outlawed. One obvious problem with this orientation is that male sex workers are left both unmonitored and unprotected (see Katsulis 2008 ). They are less susceptible to arrest when prostitution is legal, but this hardly translates into enhanced health, safety, or labor rights for them.

Another issue that arises in deliberations about legalized prostitution is whether sexually oriented businesses should be restricted to a particular locale and prohibited outside it or whether a laissez-faire approach should prevail, where such businesses may locate wherever they please. Some cities have both geographically delimited red-light districts in addition to brothels and clubs in outlying communities. Because these red-light districts are rather visible and sometimes controversial, it is worth discussing them in some detail here. Such zones were studied decades ago by Chicago School researchers, who described vice districts as socially disorganized areas of the city. In his detailed study of Chicago, Reckless (1933 , p. 252) observed “[v]ice resorts concentrated in those tracts of the city which showed the highest rate of community disorganization,” measured by rates of predatory crime, disease, divorce, poverty, and physical decay. These associations continue to be made today and are used to justify zoning ordinances that ban or restrict strip clubs and adult video stores in the United States. But red-light districts are not, as Reckless argued, universally anomic, criminogenic, and socially disorganized. Indeed, the social ecology of such zones differs tremendously from place to place, with some departing considerably from the traditional, marginalized “skid row” image ( Weitzer 2012 , 2013 ).

Some countries where prostitution is legally regulated by the government have restricted visible prostitution to particular geographic areas. For example, several Dutch and Belgian cities and towns have districts whose main attraction is window prostitution; prostitutes sit behind red-lit windows and seek to attract male customers (no male prostitutes work in these districts, but some transgender women do). The physical appearance, social structure, and level of public order in some of these red-light zones clash with conventional stereotypes of such areas ( Weitzer 2012 , 2013 ). Such zones exist in Antwerp and Ghent in Belgium and in Alkmaar, Eindhoven, Haarlem, Groningen, The Hague, and Utrecht in the Netherlands. Based on this author’s field observations in some of these places coupled with descriptions in clients’ online discussion boards, these cities’ red-light districts have the following characteristics: They are located in enclaves away from the town center, making them less obtrusive for persons who wish to avoid the zone; they are single-purpose environments, largely restricted to window prostitution with few if any other businesses in the district; they are limited to pedestrians; the ambience of the zone is fairly tranquil; and the area is clean and lacking in signs of physical disorder or decay. The level of social control is also high: Police patrols are frequent, which sends a symbolic message to visitors, and some of the zones have visible security cameras as well. Antwerp has a mini-police station in the heart of its red-light district (see Weitzer 2013 ).

The existence of these kinds of zones suggests that legal prostitution can manifest itself in an erotic landscape that departs dramatically from conventional stereotypes. At the same time, such areas are by no means preordained in legal prostitution systems. In the same nations hosting the zones described above, there are other red-light districts that come closer to the traditional disorderly vice district model (e.g., Brussels). The key point here, however, is that prostitution, once legal and regulated, can be organized in a manner that is likely to benefit sex workers, clients, and local residents alike.

26.8. Conclusion

Most research on sex work has been conducted in nations where prostitution is outlawed. This means that what we think we know about prostitution may be distorted by the disproportionate research focus on criminalized prostitution. Research that examines sex work under different legal regimes, from criminalization to legalization, is necessary if we are to understand how legal approaches influence the origin, character, and consequences of sex work. In addition, the literature is heavily weighted toward studies of street prostitution and female sex workers. A more balanced and comprehensive picture requires a major shift in research. First, researchers should, when possible, adopt a comparative framework that includes female, male, and transgendered providers. Investigations of this sort are necessary if we are to understand the ways in which gender influences involvement in sex work, its conditions, and its effects. Second, researchers need to further expand the categories of actors studied to include the customers as well as the owners and managers who operate legal and illegal erotic businesses. Regarding customers, there is a growing but still small research literature on prostitutes’ clients but almost no studies of the consumers of pornography in the real world—outside artificial laboratory settings (exceptions include Loftus 2002 and McKee, Albury, and Lumby 2008 ). Third, researchers need a broader lens, not only examining sex work as a deviant or illegal act but also as a form of income-generating labor and the working conditions associated with it.

Some recent research has begun to shatter prevailing generalizations about commercial sex, generalizations that are largely based on studies confined to female street prostitutes. This work highlights significant differences between women who provide sexual services indoors versus the streets and has begun to document ways in which female prostitution both differs from and is similar to male and transgender prostitution. Gender differences have been documented in stripping and pornography as well, differences that shape the experiences of male and female performers as well as their customers ( Dressel and Peterson 1982 ; Montemurro 2001 ; De Marco 2007 ; Abbott 2010 ; Thomas 2010 ). We are also learning that geographical context matters tremendously. Sex work can differ radically from one locale to the next, as some major, recent international studies demonstrate ( Steinfatt 2002 ; Agustín 2007 ; Katsulis 2008 ; Kelly 2008 ; Zheng 2009 ; Abel, Fitzgerald, and Healy 2010 ; Kotiswaran 2011 ; Liu 2011 ; Trotter 2011 ; Chin and Finckenauer 2012 ; Weitzer 2012 ). But much more research is needed to expand and deepen our understanding of sex work and the factors responsible for its polymorphous character around the world.

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Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization Essay

Introduction.

The world continues to witness different forms of discrimination and violence against individuals working as sex workers. This is the main reason behind the high infection rates among people involved in this business. In many countries, the activity has been termed a crime, making it more difficult for the rights group in such places to be effective. In countries where it has been allowed, the discrimination level and denial of access to health services are incredible. When it comes to the prevalence of HIV, this group of individuals consists of the most significant numbers compared to other people in the population. Much of this can be attributed to poor policing in countries that consider this activity criminalized.

Society in the last century can be described as not well-informed about the issues around them. For instance, there lacked social media and other channels today that enhance faster transmission of information. This explains why most people still believe that sex work should be criminalized. In the 70s, many people died due to a lack of attendance from medical professionals due to discrimination. Such issues can be significantly highlighted in today’s society whereby news will travel quicker, which is different from then. The essay looks at the problem of discrimination against sex workers and the criminalization of sex work and highlights efforts that have been made towards decriminalization of the activity.

Sex workers have continued to face various challenges globally, such as violence, criminalization, and discrimination, among others, that increase their rate of getting infected with HIV. They are in the group of people that have been isolated and forgotten in terms of the HIV response (Smith and Juno 8). The prevalence of the disease is ten times higher among individuals doing business than the general populace since they receive poor services from HIV medical teams (Brookfield et al. 683). The majority of the issues, barriers, and vulnerabilities they face in getting access to various services are a result of being criminalized and some restrictive regulations faced.

In many countries, buying or selling sex services has been established as a criminal offense. The number is thirty-nine in total and more countries have rules that are against some aspects of sex work. When someone can be arrested due to possessing condoms as an indicator that they are doing sex work, then it becomes hard for people to use protection (Brookfield et al. 684). Additionally, in places where the activity is not a criminal offense, it is seldom protected. Research suggests that women in sex work are subjected to much violence (Brookfield et al. 687). For instance, about thirty-five percent of Haiti report being physically violated, and twenty-seven percent claim sexual assault.

Nevertheless, many organizations that consist of sex workers are putting efforts to promote their human rights and access to services in many places around the world. For example, in South Africa, the groups collaborate with health agencies to create a plan concerning protection and access to other services. The countrywide initiative enlisted peer motivators to aid in distributing lubricant and contraceptives and data on sexually transmitted diseases and prevention (Al-Ali 334). Community empowerment services, whose primary intention is to eliminate the issue of violence and stigma, have introduced a helpline and sensitization training.

With the increase in deaths recorded among sex workers, it is essential to review how much they know about sex education. According to my knowledge, sex education is great quality teaching as well as learning concerning a wide range of topics associated with sexuality and sex in general (Al-Ali 339). It examines the values and beliefs of people on the subjects and assists in gaining skills necessary to navigate relationships with a partner and community. An individual can additionally understand the way to manage their sexual health better. Sex education equips individuals with the knowledge of using condoms and contraceptives (Febres-Cordero et al. 5). The information is vital for sex workers considering their line of work.

The movement fighting for the rights of sex workers started in the 70s and, in many countries, works to better the working environment, increase the benefits and reduce the rate of discrimination. The International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights attained human rights coverage in 1985 when they were awarded the World Charter for Prostitutes Rights, thereby establishing a global community. It continued to become larger as members came together to fight the HIV epidemic (Al-Ali 335). The NSWP, or the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, was established in 1992 at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.

The network played a significant role in the global education and response of individuals during the epidemic concerning sex work activity. Much of the progress made by the movement in the discussion was only visible in developed countries (Murray et al. 942). Currently, organizations have attempted to balance the impact by focusing more on developing countries. Even though studies concerning the movement have been done in Western European and North American places, sex worker-led mobilization has happened worldwide. Such activities seek to affect policies to ensure that it is acknowledged as a legit profession and adequate rights are provided to the individuals practicing it.

The NSWP has received much fiscal support from bodies, for example, Open Society Foundations, and acknowledges that it does a combination of reactive and pro-active policy advocacy to support evidence-based strategies for sex workers. They aim to do this while guaranteeing that local issues are discussed globally (Adebisi et al. 1780). It is largely accountable for the shift in language, mostly the utilization of the word sex worker rather than a prostitute (Platt et al. 5). The former corresponds with an acknowledgment of someone’s human rights. The advocacy work has consisted of HIV addressing discrimination, and participating in studies concerning the profession.

During International AIDS Conference held in 2012 in India, sex worker activists from various places formed the SWFF, an optional event for them. The 7-day function included activity in the Sonagachi red-light area and was a representation of a protest against the exclusion of prostitutes (Sawicki et al. 355). It sought to guarantee that the viewpoints were heard in meetings organized in Washington, D.C. The NSWP published a report in 2014 and described it as the snapshot of curated information that outlines a significant and historical time in the movement for sex workers’ rights.

The Joint United Countries Programme on HIV and AIDS has produced a report that suggests some policies in Asia as well as the Pacific. It includes case studies in support of the ways of bettering access to medical services in these places (Selvey et al. 171). It addresses as well some factors that act as barriers to sex workers’ chance of receiving health services. Moreover, the United Countries released another one that discusses the guidelines around the topic in the same areas, the impacts of the laws, and recommendations.

Legality of Prostitution

The activists campaigning to establish policies that protect sex workers against violence can be categorized into two primary classes: proposers of abolitionism and those of legalization. The initial reformers determined the main issue with prostitution as male lust that forced innocent females into a corrupt life as prostitutes (Van Staple et al. 196). Therefore, those supporting abolitionism claim that the act is a system that exploits women involved in the business. Thus, they trust that to avoid violent acts against sex workers, the consumers of such services need to be punished to ensure that the whole institution is demolished.

Due to the policy being based on the notion that females are helpless, individuals on the opposing side of this argument believe that it fails to empower women. One must understand that violent acts are an inherent part of prostitution, whereby the likelihood of undergoing violence rises along with the amount of time someone is a prostitute (Van Staple et al. 197). It makes me conclude that sex work is multi-traumatic in every form (Van Staple et al. 197). Others in their study utilized Holland as an example of a nation to support the idea that legalized prostitution can harm an individual (Sawicki et al. 363). According to Sawicki et al. (363), 90% of prostitutes show signs that they may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Hence, the proposers advocate abolitionism to guarantee those sex workers are protected.

By punishing consumers and sex workers, proponents believe that it would lead to the safety of the prostitutes. Many of them state various reasons according to the research conducted on the impacts of prostitution in nations where it is practiced (Van Staple et al. 198). Some of their claims are that the act fails to enhance women’s choice, cannot protect participants, and does not promote their health since protection use is not strictly followed. Additionally, they argue that rather than prostitution controlling the sex industry, it expands it. There are reports that it is the main reason behind child trafficking and molestation, as there are individuals who believe that as long as they have money, they can get sex.

Some activists believe that to promote safety against violence for sex workers, governments should legalize the act. They trust that buying and selling sexual activities will continue even if countries fully embrace abolitionism. Thus, one method to successfully prevent violent actions is by acknowledging that and setting laws and regulations that handle the matter via control of the business. The proponents of this idea claim that a system prohibiting prostitution can cause oppression of sex workers. They recommend that guidelines be established that restrict the exploitation or trafficking of innocent women.

The legalization of prostitution usually entails additional restrictions as well as requirements placed on prostitutes and registering with government offices. I would argue that decriminalization is better than legalization (Van Staple et al. 195). This is due to the latter focusing on the laws that enforce the rights of the sex workers, for example, against coercion to enter or remain in the business. This is while every consensual sexual contact between an adult client and a sex worker would not be criminalized. Using lay proof about prostitution has led to moral panic since the opponents argue that it is violent and cannot be controlled. Governments have rejected the notion and found methods of regulating.

There are various standpoints regarding the issues of sex work, including sex-positive feminism, abolitionism, and decriminalization. Of the three, the last one is the best viewpoint (Platt et al. 7). Activists in the United States claim that prostitutes deserve to share the same rights, basic human and labor, as others. This allows for better working settings, less violence against prostitutes, and protection from law enforcement. In 2014, the Canadian government attempted to pass a bill that would have criminalized buying or promoting sexual services (Platt et al. 8). Some organizations tried to exert pressure on political officials to vote against it (Platt et al. 8). According to them, it would have led to adverse effects such as more coercion, an increase in the cases of violence, and human trafficking.

Sonagachi is among the projects worldwide whose focus is on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. They encourage condoms, which has resulted in a significant decrease in sexually transmitted diseases. Additionally, it promotes and protects the rights of sex workers (Platt et al. 12). The tactics they use include typical distribution, peer education aimed to raise awareness of STIs, and providing screening, treatment, and management. The founders of this project desired to offer a voice to the sex workers since they understand what is ideal for them and that needs enhancement. Such individuals believe that prostitution is working as others and deserves respect.

Another standpoint that some activists take is legalization, allowing sex workers to perform their work in better and more organized circumstances, such as lawful brothels. These are places that adhere to standard industry practices, for example, practicing the use of condoms and routine check-ups for prostitutes (Platt et al. 13). It results in a reduction in the transmission rate of sexually transmitted infections. The majority of the sex workers seek for their business to be decriminalized and legalized to ensure that they can ask for help from the authorities when they are assaulted. The activist groups act as the voices that push nations to make changes and stop the discrimination around prostitution. During the pandemic, the Supreme Court in India instructed that every state government provides dry ration to prostitutes.

Risks Associated with Sex Work

In the countries where prostitution is illegal, prostitutes encounter many potential threats of assault. This can be fear or government policies acting against the business. An example is the danger that they get infected with an STI due to individual or structural barriers (Murray et al. 943). Due to street-based violence being common, it increases their vulnerability further to contracting an illness. Additionally, the WHO claims that sex workers are known to be denied medical services when seeking out prevention or treatment. They are afraid as well to do that due to a lack of awareness of the methods that could offer them better conditions for work.

A specific example of the threats a sex worker faces can be illustrated through a study done in Cambodia, where the HIV infection rate has risen. The researchers investigated the prevalence of the disease among a collection of indirect prostitutes (Murray et al. 944). These are individuals hired to promote as well as sell beer but indulge in the business with drunkards willing to pay (Murray et al. 944). They discovered the highest number of cases since they usually sell sexual intercourse to supplement their low wages (Murray et al. 945). Only a few of them understood the importance of using protection or even the methods (Murray et al. 945). It is important to design policies that target all sex workers in a vulnerable state.

In the United States, some live above the poverty line, and others do not. Seventy percent of the population living under it are more likely to consider working as a sex worker, most being the minority (Al-Ali 340). Regarding gender, since women still have fewer opportunities than men, they find themselves looking for other ways to support themselves and their families. Thus, there is a high number of sex workers among black females. It has reached a point where people associate the work with a female job. Even in sex work, clients have reservations about the type of service provider they desire. This is not a crime and should be respected by every individual.

However, some go beyond having a preference to being aggressive with those they do not appreciate. For instance, according to Transgender Sex Workers Face Frequent Abuse (1), transexuals have experienced much violence in this line of work. I can argue that even the black females have witnessed similar challenges as well 557 (Glover). People must understand that the gender a person is assigned at birth might not be how they wish to identify themselves. Respecting others’ choices is essential, and, in the event a customer does not enjoy the services of a particular individual, they do not have the right to harm them.

The essay has looked at the problem of discrimination against sex workers and the criminalization of sex work and highlighted the efforts made towards decriminalizing the activity. The paper has established that indulging in the sex business, either buying or selling, is a crime in many countries. It has been established that in such countries, the fact of having a condom can stand as proof of participating in prostitution. This makes it difficult to convey information about the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. It has as well been discovered that in countries allowing free practice, there are no laws that aim to protect individuals.

The above constitutes discrimination which has resulted in many problems for the sex workers. For instance, in Asia, organizations in support of these individuals collaborate with law enforcement and the community at large to reduce the rate at which individuals are being physically assaulted. There have been social and health services established for this purpose. A tremendous body of knowledge exists that concerns the significance of dealing with both legal and structural obstacles that impact sex workers. To end HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections would require translating evidence into practice. For instance, every government prioritizes the issue of protecting human rights and encouraging access to prevention and treatment services by sex workers.

An organization such as the NSWP acknowledges that it advocates for evidence-based strategies to be used when attempting to help sex workers. Its aim is to accomplish this whereas guaranteeing that issues impacting local communities can be addressed at the global level. It is greatly associated with the shift in language, for example, using sex worker rather than prostitute when referring to someone offering sex services. They did this since they felt that the word prostitute is demeaning. Someone using the term on a sex worker shows that they do not respect them or view them as equal, which is an indication of discrimination.

Works Cited

Adebisi, Yusuff Adebayo, et al. “Sex workers should not be forgotten in Africa’s COVID-19 response.” The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, vol. 103, no. 5, 2020, pp.1780.

Al-Ali, Nadje. “Covid-19 and feminism in the Global South: Challenges, initiatives and dilemmas.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 27, no. 4, 2020, pp. 333-347.

Brookfield, Samuel, et al. “Barriers to accessing sexual health services for transgender and male sex workers: A systematic qualitative meta-summary.” AIDS and Behavior, vol. 24, no. 3, 2020, pp. 682-696.

Febres-Cordero, Belen, et al. “Influence of peer support on HIV/STI prevention and safety amongst international migrant sex workers: A qualitative study at the Mexico-Guatemala border.” PLoS One, vol. 13, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1-13.

Glover, Julian Kevon. “Customer Service Representatives: Sex Work among Black Transgender Women in Chicago’s Ballroom Scene.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 120, no. 3, 2021, pp. 553-571.

Murray, Laura Rebecca, Deanna Kerrigan, and Vera Silvia Paiva. “Rites of resistance: Sex workers’ fight to maintain rights and pleasure in the centre of the response to HIV in Brazil.” Global Public Health, vol. 14, no.6-7, 2019, pp. 939-953.

Platt, Lucy, et al. “Associations between sex work laws and sex workers’ health: A systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative studies.” PLoS medicine, vol. 15, no. 12, 2018, pp. 1-26.

Sawicki, Danielle A., et al. “Culturally competent health care for sex workers: An examination of myths that stigmatize sex work and hinder access to care.” Sexual and Relationship Therapy, vol. 34, no. 3, 2019, pp. 355-371.

Selvey, Linda A., et al. “Challenges facing Asian sex workers in Western Australia: Implications for health promotion and support services.” Frontiers in Public Health, no. 6, 2018, pp.171.

Smith, Molly, and Juno Mac. Revolting prostitutes: The fight for sex workers’ rights . Verso Books, 2018.

“Transgender Sex Workers Face Frequent Abuse.” Www.unaids.org , 2022.

Van Stapele, Naomi, Lorraine Nencel, and Ida Sabelis. “On tensions and opportunities: Building partnerships between government and sex worker-led organizations in Kenya in the fight against HIV/AIDS.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy, vol. 16, no. 2, 2019, pp. 190-200.

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IvyPanda. (2023, April 6). Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sex-workers-discrimination-and-criminalization/

"Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization." IvyPanda , 6 Apr. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/sex-workers-discrimination-and-criminalization/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization'. 6 April.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization." April 6, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sex-workers-discrimination-and-criminalization/.

1. IvyPanda . "Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization." April 6, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sex-workers-discrimination-and-criminalization/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Sex Workers: Discrimination and Criminalization." April 6, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sex-workers-discrimination-and-criminalization/.

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