Pimping Sex Workers

Photo "Talking Heads?" by Flickr user initrd. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Renegade Evolution, guest posting on the Village Voice's Naked City blog says

You know, it's tough to be a sex worker of any sort. When you become one, you know going in: there will be stigma. People will stereotype you as everything from creepy to utterly broken without ever knowing you, and why yes, they will use you for whatever agenda suits them at the time. Sex sells, right? That being the case, I think we're all owed a big fat check from mainstream media. What with everything from Bill O'Reilly eviscerating advocates like Amanda Brooks on his "news" programs to dead hooker of the week on Law & Order Special Victims Unit, these people are making a ton of money off sex workers, and at the same time, doing nothing to help us, at all.

Spitzer? Palfrey, the DC Madam? Her suicide? Great for ratings! Yet, do you ever see much of actual sex workers on TV? Other than what "Dateline" or "20/20" tell you? Edited and filtered through their lens of course. When was the last time you ever saw big media coverage of a Sex Workers Rights Rally, or a piece on a happy porn star, or time given to those speaking on the decriminalization or legalization platform?

Let me guess, never.

Read the quote in context here.

It's certainly irksome how narrowly the whole shebang is discussed. Over at Body Impolitic there's a quote by Goldie Hawn from The First Wives’ Club "There are only three ages for women in Hollywood - Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy." And, possibly for the same reasons, there's only a similar handful of pegs to hang the narrative of sex workers on: crack "ho," "high class" call "girl," and former-sorority madame spring to mind and... I'm sure there are others and I've just missed hearing them discussed, right?

Instead with every new sex worker I meet (I don't meet *that* many, maybe even not enough) I realize there's yet something else I'd always known about her, always realized about her, always understood about her... that happened to be pretty wrong. Wrong enough to recognize there's no one way to do it. (Let me pause a moment here to *strongly* recommend one way to look at sex work that level-headed queen of cutting through illusion Heather Corinna proposes.)

What I *do* know is that Ren's right about the three views of sex work in the standard operatic libretto: it sells tickets to the show in a way that gives the Diane Sawyers and Bill O'Reillys, their employers, and their customers very little incentive to change anything. Not least because the *worst* that could happen is the sex worker could commit suicide which, after all, is a merciful blessing for dirty little whores *plus* a bonus opportunity for talking heads to nod and look somber. And for other people, anti-feminist or otherwise, to nod, look somber, and say how this just proves that *their* plan to lock the little baggage up is for their own good. Since it might scare some *decent, hard working, white* girls out of the business.

And here's the thing: never mind that the *real* stories about prostitution and other forms of sex work are more interesting, and not even always sunshine and daisies interesting, but the standard narratives are just too powerful, and the ruts too deep, to ever go there. For instance it's *more interesting* that rescued trafficked sex workers often want to become *independent* sex workers. It's *more interesting* that Randall Tobias couldn't even stick to *his own agency's* abstinence/chastity/fidelity policies than it was that Deborah Jeane Palfrey brokered the prostitutes he failed to comply with his own policy objectives with. It's *more interesting* that most sex workers *don't like their jobs* but do it not so much for the money but for *the relatively light working hours* And it's more interesting whether you're trying to craft real policies or whether, like 99% of the clowns who fulminate against sex work in the media, you know your audience just likes to jack off from the frission of thinking about it.

Consequently discussion of nuts and bolts, of actually making lives better, of assessing the real impact of real policy instead of the lascivious pleasure of demanding, um, "feel good" policies instead... in other words stuff that would *actually help* just doesn't come up.

There's actually plenty of blame to go around for the problems sex workers face. Good for Ren (also surprising considering how many others in the feminist community have had bigger opportunities and certainly much larger platforms) for bringing up this one.