What I Learned from Reading Books by Sex Workers
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So you’ve seen Hustlers? Or maybe you saw Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and thought ‘hm, that doesn’t seem like such a bad job?’ Wherever your image of sex workers has come from, chances are it probably didn’t come from an actual sex worker. And if recent debates have taught us anything about self-representation, it’s that it matters, like really matters.
Representations of sex work deserve a lot more thoughtfulness and attention, meaning we need to question things like source material, authorship and common tropes that go into the representations we consume. Wondering where to even begin and how to challenge your own perceptions of the industry? Try starting by centring sex workers in this dialogue. The industry is so vast and complicated, so who better to shed light on it than the people working within it?
This is by no means an expansive or exhaustive list of books by sex workers, in fact I’d say it barely scratches the surface of all their creative output, but you’ve got to start somewhere. For now, we’re learning from SWs from the West coast of Canada since that’s where my research “expertise” happens to lie. Without further ado, here are just a few of things I’ve learned from reading books by sex workers…
They are an invisible part of the Queer community
Sex workers enter the industry for a wide variety of reasons, and for LGBT+ individuals employment opportunity might be an especially strong motivation. According to International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), social contexts that are homophobic and transphobic expose members of our community to disproportionate rates of homelessness, mental illness, and lack of education. However, sex work offers an income excluded from the typical structural barriers in place in the conventional workplace.
Studies have also demonstrated the opportunities that sex work provides for queer individuals. A 2018 study of Men, Two Spirit and Trans sex workers in Vancouver showed that the industry offered a way to explore and exprience their identities in an environment without the stigma surrounding queerness. One participant suggested that sex work was an escape from the racism of the gay community, which had previously limited their ability to pursue their sexuality.
However, their vulnerability also places them at the intersection of what ICRSE term ‘LGBTphobic’ and ‘whorephobic’ (and additionally racist and misogynistic) violence on a systemic and individual scale. Between 2008-2014, the Trans Murder Monitor Project of Transgender Europe found that 65% of murdered Trans people were sex workers (this only includes those with known occupations). ICRSE’s 2015 Intersection Briefing Paper shows how LGBT+ sex workers suffer as a result of their invisibility, whether it be in terms of vulnerability to police violence, exclusion from health services, or oppression due to criminalisation.
The solution? An intersectional approach to LGBT+ organisations and activism that includes sex workers and refuses to treat their access to human rights as optional or separate from the fight for LGBT+ rights. Myself and my fellow queers also have a responsibility to destigmatise sex work through education and visibility, promoting the voices of sex worker activists, writers and advocates.
The Criminalisation of Sex Work is Extremely Harmful
Sex work organisations have focussed their efforts on the decriminalisation of sex work and global organisations including the WHO and Human Rights Watch, have condemned criminalisation for a range of reasons:
- Criminalisation increases the opportunities for police to abuse their authority over sex workers and leads to worse rates of incarceration for vulnerable communities
- Pushes sex workers into a more marginalised and taboo social position
- Exposes workers to the risks of HIV and STDs
- Gives clients more power to abuse and push sex workers into dangerous or undesirable circumstances
Recent studies have also shown that COVID-19 has aggravated many of the problems faced by sex workers as they have limited to no access to government supports, which pushes already vulnerable sex workers to take more risks for their income. Overall, criminalisation is a policy which only reinforces dangerous structures of power and ignores the voices of sex workers asking for better and safer working conditions.
Sex Workers are Creative as Fuck and Worth Celebrating
Sex workers are protectors of ourseves and our friends, and our chosen and blood fams protect us. We are astute analysts of the media, language, legislation, labour, beauty standards, homophobia, transphobia, colonization, and racism. And we are poets. -Amber Dawn, Hustling Verse
As much as I’ve learnt from reading books by sex workers (and will continue to learn), literature by sex workers deserves recognition for its creativity, political power, and absolute fucking fearlessness. In the face of marginalisation and stigmatisation, these writers speak out and transform their voices into a force to be reckoned with.
Recommended Reading:
Resources for Sex Workers during COVID-19:
Prepster’s Guidance for sex workers: https://prepster.info/covid/info-for-sex-workers/
Sex Workers Outreach Project USA: https://swopusa.org/resources/
SWARM Collective UK: https://www.swarmcollective.org/
References & Further Reading:
- Ten Reasons to Decriminalise Sex Work: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/ten-reasons-decriminalize-sex-work
- ICRSE Intersection Briefing Paper, 2015: https://www.sexworkeurope.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdfs/icrse_briefing_paper_october2015.pdf
- 2018 study on Male, Two Spirit and Trans sex workers: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1097184X16664951
- COVID-19’s effects on Sex Work: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/sex-workers-covid-19-pandemic