Leftists with very little understanding of the actual labor conditions of sex workers are eager to categorize the class character of sexual labor. The fact is sex workers’ labor conditions vary wildly. Two clear cut examples:

A sex worker employed by an agency, parlor, or club is a prole.

A sex worker who has employees whose labor she exploits for her own gain is petit bourgeois.

Assigning class character to sexual labor in general doesn’t make sense when the labor conditions of sex workers vary so wildly.

To give a non SW example it wouldn’t make sense to assign class character to the work of a doctor. A doctor employed by a public hospital is a prole, and a doctor who owns a private practice is petit bourgeois.

The fact that some are so quick to speak to the class character of sex work with no attempt to learn about our labor conditions or our labor organizing speaks to the actual root of their “analaysis”—anti-sex work bias informed by the very propaganda machine they claim to hate.

No investigation, no right to speak

These people have often bought into racist “white slavery” panic narratives, and/or the “feminist” works of those who see sex workers as a symbol rather than people doing a specific type of work. Or they just think we’re gross lol

I know I say this all the time, but I implore these people to take some time to learn about our work (from us). Do some reading. The people who say this kind of stuff (understandably) can’t stand criticisms of their ideology from those who have done zero research—

But they’re doing the same exact thing. Yeah, if you don’t dig too hard it’s easy to find a lot of anti sex work bullshit (and liberal “empowerment” sexual liberation rhetoric). Just as there’s a lot of bad info out there about other shit we’ve all had to unlearn.

Criticism of our work with no basis in experience of investigation results in a lot of sex workers getting alienated from organizing outside of the affinity group. Yeah a party should be a site of struggle and it’s great if someone can show up and challenge this shit but—

a lot of this rhetoric is really sickening and understandably results in sex workers walking away. Shit like “you’re raped every time you go to your job” and “you’re suffering from false consciousness.” It’s the same abuse we get from reactionaries.

Even the perhaps less violent comments (“all sex workers are petit bourgeois” lmao) are profoundly alienating because what’s being asserted is our work is somehow so obviously foul that others have the right to speak with no investigation.