Sex Work Is Both Good and Bad

The problem is when people try to say it’s one thing or the other. It’s both good and bad at the same time.

The story of the homeless prostitute, who starts hooking at the behest of a boyfriend when she’s still a preteen, who’s frequently beaten on the job and ends up a drug addict.

The story of the college student from the middle-class family who starts doing porn to subsidize her tuition and then graduates with honors.

One sex industry story is that of the traumatized young woman, exploited again and again.

The other story is that of the self-empowered feminist who takes ownership of her body through sex and earns a fortune.

Both of these stories are current sex-industry narratives, and both of them are true.

Both are also used by proponents or detractors of the sex industry to prove their points.

They’re both wrong. Because they’re both right.

The sex industry is both good and bad — simultaneously. It’s the simultaneous nature of the good and bad parts of sex work that confuse people.

People want to make a decision. They want to take one side or the other. They want to select whichever evidence they choose to back up their own personal opinions about sex work.

You cannot pick and choose evidence to back your claims, because both sides of the story have a place in the debate.

While sex work can be exploitative to women and children, who are trafficked and pimped, it can also be empowering to women (and thus to children), because when mothers are better able to pay their rents and buy food because of sex work, then children benefit as well.

The tricky part is to not let your personal opinions muddy the facts.

One of the major problems I’ve seen with making blanket statements about sex work is that people lump together every sector of the industry as if it were one.

People prefer to view the sex industry as a monochrome monolith instead of the fragmented, multicolored mash-up it is.

The job of the streetwalker is not the same as the job of the high-class escort.

The job of the high-class escort is not the same as the job of the commercial house dominatrix.

The job of the commercial house dominatrix is not the same as the job of the porn star.

Which is not the same as the job of the phone sex operator, or the peep-show girl, or the stripper.

And even within every subset of the industry there lie differences. The porn actress who creates amateur, girl-on-girl content is different than the major porn star who does everything from double penetrations to gang-bangs with men.

Each facet of the sex industry, each subset, and micro-world pose specific advantages and disadvantages to the women involved.

There are different levels of danger and risk and profit and fortune.

The disparity becomes even more marked depending on the class, race, and education of the sex worker.

The white woman who’s grown up privileged, in a stable household, with ready access to higher education and superior health care, who does not have a drug problem, possesses distinct advantages over the Black woman who’s been tossed from one foster family to the next, who has no real parental figures, who’s never been shown adequate love or respect, and who therefore turns to pimps and drugs as a means to survive.

These two experiences cannot be compared.

And again, I use the instances of the more privileged white woman and the less entitled Black woman, but I’ve also seen these stereotypes turned on their head.

I’ve known a Black dominatrix, who attended a top twenty school and who has a graduate degree, but who uses the extra cash she earns as a Domme to fund her own non-sex-industry business and therefore get ahead in the world.

Though I would concur that racism is alive and well in the sex industry as it is in every other aspect of our lives in this country, this particular Black woman has distinct advantages over a white woman with less natural intelligence and education, who’s been trafficked into prostitution at a young age by family members.

And yet I also abhor the concept of the whorearchy — that of separating sex work into higher and lower tiers — the high-class sugar babies with graduate degrees on the top and homeless, drug-addicted streetwalker on the bottom.

Such class discrimination helps no one, and only hurts the women of the sex industry.

Because all sex workers suffer from the criminalization of our jobs. All sex workers are weaker when we are judged by society to be marginal.

We benefit from dismissing our differences and bonding to help each other as equals.

And yet there are differences between us. Even as I illustrate the difference between a high-class escort and a streetwalker who works with a pimp, there are still shades of gray to those cases.

There’s the streetwalker who simultaneously works as an agency call girl or the girl who works the street, who isn’t a drug addict and doesn’t have a pimp, who could very easily work from the Internet if she wanted, but who chooses the street for whatever benefits it offers.

I’ve spoken to one prostitute who works the street because she suffers from bipolar depression and can’t stand all the chit-chat she has to engage in with clients in the brothel atmosphere.

She, therefore, chooses to work the street as opposed to working under the control of a madam, who may offer protection but who impedes her life in other ways.

I would never say that the sex industry is not full of malicious characters — it is. If a woman does not have the mental and emotional health and strength to contend with these unsavory people and to position herself to succeed even in the face of their menace, then she will fall victim to these individuals.

The pimps, the strip-club owners, the lawyers, the porn production company directors, the porn actors themselves or whatever other business people — both male and female — who seek to take advantage of the readily available income the sex industry affords a woman and therefore siphon a percentage from her work for their own — these people are those whom any sex worker must protect herself from.

But this goes for life in general. If your home life growing up was stable, if your family enjoyed enough financial security to care for your health and basic needs as a child, then you will be in much less of a position to fall victim to grifters, abusive lovers, and any other hidden perpetrator as a general rule.

I think it’s important for people who have never worked in the sex industry to take a step back and fully research the industry before they make blanket judgments.

I also believe it’s important for sex workers who are engaged in the fight for our rights to work legally to be honest about the industry, without sugarcoating it.

While I don’t endorse the sex industry as a career option for all women, I do believe it should be legalized. While sex work does not offer perfect working conditions for all women, some have greatly benefited from it.

While I don’t agree that the sex industry is a moral wasteland, I do believe that the weak can and will be figuratively eaten alive by the worst people in the industry if they’re not careful. Even the strongest sex worker can end up jaded by discontent.

But that doesn’t mean that sex work is not a valid form of making a living for many women, who find empowerment, financial autonomy, and even joy from working their jobs.

This is something that we all should respect.