P is for Prostitutes

Prostitution inhabits a strange space in the collective Anglo-Western psyche. There is the lure of sex on demand. At the same time, we express disgust at sex workers as 'soiled' women. Finally, a widely accepted upper-class feminist perspective is that sex workers are helpless, ignorant victims of the patriarchy who need to be rescued. These ideas get distilled in media representations to give us the Disposable Streetwalker. She's on drugs, has no education and no prospects, a sordid, tragic past. She usually ends up the victim of the Killer of the Week on detective stories, or is otherwise background to show how gross and seedy the setting is. This, fiction tells us, is what sex workers are. No exceptions.

Much has been written about how these ideas influence public policy, and also influence the behaviour of law enforcement and social workers who regularly interact with sex workers of various kinds; however, their perceptions are partially the result of direct experience. But the influence of fictional representations drives the perceptions of sex work among people who have never met anyone in the sex trade. The result is legions of internet feminists advocating policies to criminalise sex work and 'save' prostitutes and other sex workers, who are framed as desperate women with no prospects, about to be victims of crime.

Of course, some drug-addled streetwalkers exist, but they're not the only face of the world's oldest profession. Far more common are temporary strippers and escorts-- educated men and women who enter the industry to get through financial rough patches, and exit when their monetary needs have been met, no rescue required. There are also specialists who carve out lucrative fetish niches, people who find the work genuinely enjoyable, or people who simply find sex work to be the best of their job options and treat it with the indifference of the average office worker.

Obviously this isn't to say sex work isn't a physically and emotionally high-risk career. It's both. There are a good many people who are stuck doing this work due to a lack of options. But part of the problem is public perception fueled by fiction. If the public perception was expanded to humanise sex workers (instead of using them as stock 'Victim of the Week' or 'Kind Hooker') and show a diversity of experiences, this might guide a more nuanced discussion and better public policy for both people who desperately want to flee the sex trade and for those who actively choose to stay.