Research on sex work should be hard, emotionally and intellectually. I don’t mean emotionally hard the way reading some titillating poverty porn is “hard” and now you know there is true evil in the world blah blah (lookin’ at you, Feministe). Hard is research that tells you something you don’t know in a way that challenges the ideology you walked in with. I’ve spent the last three years learning about other sex workers’ experiences, their feelings about their work and their strategies for communicating them, in an effort to disrupt the sex positive ideology I held when I started, which couldn’t account for my experiences. Given the glut of writing produced about sex work, the field would benefit from a reduction in the number of people who just want to confirm their existing beliefs.
And while all of this trendy research by “allies” and “saviours” is going on, the lack of recognition of sex workers’ skills and expertise, the adherence to polarized stereotypes about abject victims and high class callgirls, the feeling of entitlement to treat sex workers badly — these problems that plague society are creating a really nasty environment for actual sex workers in many academic settings. My experiences of bullying and stigma at the Fortress of Smartitude are not unique. It is to Athabasca University’s credit, especially as a “poorly ranked” institution, that they provided such an incredibly supportive environment for me to study sex work. It wouldn’t have been remarkable, never mind changeable, if they hadn’t. Sex workers need support to be students and researchers — whatever resources your university has for supporting sex work research, sex workers should be using them.
Published
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 