BY AVA CARADONNA

I am not proud of being a whore, but I am proud of not being ashamed
L, sex worker activist, London 2008.

Sex work is selling sex (or sexual acts) for money. There is nothing inherently exploitative or degrading about consensual sexual behaviour regardless of its motivation. Yet many campaigners and lawmakers ignore the voices of sex workers and refuse to recognise that the vast majority work in the industry by choice. The stigma associated with selling sex structures the meaning and context of commercial sexual practices in fundamental ways. The anti-prostitution lobby define sex work as violence against women, campaign for the abolition of prostitution and for the criminalisation of clients. Invisible in the mainstream prostitution discourse are the men who sell sex to other men and to women – and the women who are also clients. The focus remains primarily on prostitution making invisible the thousands of men, women and trans people who sell sex on the phone, via the internet, dance in clubs or make films. Perhaps most dangerously, campaigners against sex workers rights present sex as something men do to women and enshrine women’s status as victims.

In contrast, support for the decriminalisation of sex work and the repeal of all laws related to the exchange of sex for money is premised on the idea that sexual behaviour between consenting adults requires no regulation by the state. Decriminalisation would mean that sex workers would be entitled to the full protection of the law. Fundamentally, everyone should have equal freedom to choose how they earn their living and freedom to choose what they do with their own body. In a neo-liberal capitalist society, how ‘free’ we are to choose to work can be debated, but this is true of all occupations, not just the sex industry. The struggle for sex worker rights must begin with sex work being recognised as labour and at the very least that those who work in the sex industry being entitled to the same labour rights as other workers and the same human rights as other people.

Shifting the analysis of sex work to labour relations and migration provides analytical tools to investigate the gendered nature of labour (not only in sex, but also domestic and care work), the role of border and immigration controls in maintaining and heightening exploitation as well as how these inequalities are negotiated, challenged and resisted. A labour analysis of sex work removes commercial sexual services from moralistic and paternalistic arguments that view sex as a fixed, privileged or natural site of human activity and places such activity within the realm of commodified labour relations.
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