Hey maybe since I'm unlocked now I can do a brief educational thread on the history, utility and limitations of the term "sex work"

It was coined by Carol Leigh aka "Scarlet Harlot" in the 70's, in response to the term "sex use industry"-- she suggested "sex work industry" instead, right on the spot, to highlight agency and labor

It's become very useful as an organizing term because many folks criminalized under prostitution laws-- even if they know they are criminalized as such-- don't readily conceive of themselves 'prostitutes.' Also obviously legal deniability.

A stripper who occasionally gives hand jobs would benefit from learning from other workers across the industry how to avoid police, but is not likely to go to a "prostitutes' rights meeting". She's a lot more likely to go to a "sex workers' rights meeting"

And even though they're onto it by now, you can still tell any cops who are curious about your "sex workers' rights meeting" that you are all in fact strippers who just totally follow the law! Same thing with funders. The obfuscation is the point.

But there are obvious limitations to "sex work" and honestly the fact that camgirls might try to center themselves in discussions on sex work is pretty far down the list of concerns.

What's more problematic is that people who trade sex or sexual services informally, casually, occasionally, are not likely to identify as "sex workers".

If you watch your friend's kid for extra cash are you suddenly a childcare worker? No. If you trade sex for drugs sometimes are you a sex worker? Probably not, but you are more likely to face criminalization as a prostitute than an indie, high-end, indoor escort

And while 'work' is certainly not the opposite of 'violence', people for whom their experience in the sex trades was largely one of violent exploitation are going to want to foreground that and not the work part and we are thankfully moving past the reactionary...

"sex work is not sex trafficking" rhetoric that seeks to divide the shared interests of both 'sex workers' and 'sex trafficking survivors' and people who are both. Revolting Prostitutes has a great section on this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gwao.12447?af=R

So we're moving more in the direction of "people who trade sex(ual services)" and "sex workers and people who trade sex" and the one I find most accurate if not very catchy, "people who exchange sexual services across the spectrum of choice, circumstance, coercion + force"

Sex workers/ people in the sex trades are already having these critical discussions! @thotscholar has some great writing critiquing the term "sex work" and talking about "erotic labor" as an alternative.

But the SWERFs who hate sex work hate it for ridiculous reasons. https://twitter.com/EmilyDWarfield/status/1297208630475988992?s=20

They think it allows people who don't experience the majority of the oppression and violence of the sex trades to center themselves in advocacy and the truth is that that doesn't happen that often except maybe in some random online discussions.

Most people leading SW advocacy orgs have experiences of poverty, violence, drug use, trafficking or some combination. In fact, experiencing the violence of criminalization is what brings a lot of us to the work. See: https://twitter.com/katezenlove/status/1294035910531723264?s=20

Like most people we have various combinations of privilege and oppression and just because we don't always discuss it or don't always center it in our discussions doesn't mean we haven't experienced it. Also, since COVID? The line between virtual + in-person has dissolved.

Most of us who could do any sort of online work started doing it but we are also doing (or plan to return to doing) in-person work. Girls who strictly work OF aren't going to devote their lives to decrim, I promise.

Also I hate hate hate the SWERF idea that 'work' is in opposition to 'abuse.' Anyone who's experienced DV or ongoing abuse knows how much labor that requires and anyone who's ever had to support themselves in a working class job knows how much violence that entails.

Like FFS some of you all are Marxists talking about "sex work isn't work, it's abuse". I get if you do not want to identify your own experiences as work but to say that anyone who does has not also experienced abuse or violence in that work is absurd and cruel.

Le fin.

Uh oh I said 'le fin' but I am having further thoughts! Mostly I wanted to drive home that use of the term 'sex work' doesn't necessarily indicate a neoliberal understanding of work-as-empowerment. I was going to say that all it indicates-- not directly, but because of context--

that criminalization of the sex trades is a harmful practice, whether from a right libertarian understanding of sexual freedom or a liberal understanding of work or a radical understanding of policing, but I'm not even sure that's true anymore.

Like even the New York Times is using 'sex work' more often. It seems like it's becoming ideologically neutral. Which I think is mostly fine!

The only people who really seem to hate the term are those who have devoted their lives to criminalization (of 'prostitution' as well as DV) as a solution to gendered violence + exploitation, when really it's another form of gendered violence + exploitation

But the New York Times is certainly a carceral feminist rag, so I don't even think "sex work" = "decrim" anymore.

Sort of tangential but I appreciate the criticisms of the decrim focus of sex worker advocates that come from the left.

Like the trans women of color who trade sex who are saying, "You can decriminalize sex work tomorrow and I'll still be arrested for other things (drug use, homelessness, migration status, no real reason at all), what I need are *resources*."

I do think we need to be devoting more time and energy to the provision of resources for those in the sex trade across the spectrum of coercion and choice and whether or not they want to leave the industry. This comes up again and again in research and needs assessments.

It's not like SWERFs or the mainstream, carceral anti-trafficking industry are providing these resources either though!

I think most of the leftist work that's going to happen over the next century will focus on resource provision as an alternative to the criminal response to violence and exploitation and yes this will absolutely include sex work and people who trade sex...

And carceral feminists are going to become increasingly irrelevant, left behind in the dust. Looking forward to it!

Also shout-out to the crucial mutual aid work that sex workers/ people who trade sex ARE doing and are so good at doing and which has kept countless people housed and fed during this pandemic. Truly a "we keep us safe" situation.