Chapotraphouse

Terminology is often fused to a theoretical position so that adopting the term means adopting the political theory behind it. Oftentimes, activists strategically do this. “Sex work is work” is one of those terms. It’s not simply stating that sex work is work, but endorsing a specific theory and calling for an entire political program based off of that theory.

The question often frames the possibility of the answer. The question of whether sex work is work was framed to fuse the interests of the sex worker with the industry. The problem, of course, is that this fusion is entirely superficial because the prostitute’s interests are diametrically opposed to that of the pimp and the buyer. “Sex work is work” then becomes more about protecting the interests of the sex industry and less about protecting women forced and coerced into prostitution.

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Leftist men who are too lazy to work on improving the material conditions for women can instead opt to support the sex industry. It’s where women who have no other choice belong and we should accept that. So let’s throw all the buzz words around to sound radical: destigmatize, decarcerate, decriminalize, center, solidarity. Yet they can never actually explain where the stigma or violence comes from. And they never explain why their version of “solidarity with sex workers” always aligns with the interests of pimps and buyers. They sound radical while remaining comfortably within the boundaries of male supremacist culture. Their objectification of women remains unchecked.

“Solidarity with sex workers” has been engineered to mean only one thing: normalize, legitimize, expand, and sanitize the sex industry. The other options, by virtue of the slogan’s intended purpose, are intentionally side-lined. Everything else is framed as anti-sex work, which they argue is anti-sex-worker: Guaranteeing the right to not be prostituted, the right to exit, the right to subsist without survival sex, the right for Indigenous women to end prostitution on their land, the right for third world women to not be forced to serve imperialist men. The revolutionary feminist left needs to fight to redefine the meaning of “solidarity with sex workers” as pro-worker, anti-industry.

- Esperanza Fonseca, The problem with the phrase “sex work is work”