It’s truly great to have part-timers and people who did/do only a small amount of sex work speak about their experiences. I am glad that people who don’t “need” to be involved in the fight for sex workers rights care to do so anyway.
It also testifies to how sex work is not a monolith and can often be something people do once in their lives, or for a few months, or a few years, or with one special patron they see twice a year. I am not dismissing those folks and their stories or their work as activists, but for people who have flat-out spent less time sex working, they sure do comprise a whole lot of our tacit leadership and spokespersons.
The vocal sex worker scene needs more people whose primary motivation wasn’t a quick bout of fun self-exploration. That’s a totally valid reason to do sex work, and I’m not saying you’re bad or irrelevant if it describes you, but it’s simply not representative of sex workers in this country as a whole.
Sex worker rights discourse is inaccessible and dominated by ‘dabblers’ – The Scavenger
Excellent, excellent article (written by a sex worker, as if it needed clarification) about the well intentioned outsiders that dominate the discourse of sex workers rights.
Which brings me to another point, this one more personal. I was asked a couple of weeks ago (or better said, it was suggested) that I write an article about sex work. And the truth is, I haven’t been able to do so because it feels extremely appropriative to me. I am passionate about my belief to legalize and elevate the profession. I am convinced it would do the people involved a huge service. But I am not a sex worker and, just like I would feel personally aggravated if a White Dutch person wrote a personal account of my experience (or the experience of those like me), living in this country as a minority, I believe I would be taking on a subject where I would seriously risk speaking wrongly of issues of which I have no business dabbling into. There are many valuable voices already speaking about their experience, on this very platform and I feel I wouldn’t add anything valuable to what they are already saying.
On the occasions I do talk/ write about sex work, it is always from the political perspective of legalizing it, of putting safe guards to prevent exploitation and trafficking, of giving the people involved the protections to be autonomous (if they desire it) and to promote alternative ways of thinking of the profession to remove stereotypes and stigmas, while at the same time, providing safe spaces where those who are involved in the trade can discuss alternative models of association and promotion of their work.
Both current paradigms in mass media, the happy hooker or the tragically trafficked woman are distanced from the more nuanced realities of day to day sex work. The people better equipped to do away with these stereotypes are the workers themselves because they can relate their own experiences and stories in ways that I wouldn’t be able to, mostly because I would be one of those dabblers the article mentions.
So yeah, check the article. She speaks truth.
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