No health insurance, no employer contribution to your retirement savings, no sick days, no paid vacation.
^ Which could all be changed if sex work was considered “legal”
Also, the fact that you will get raped multiple times per year throughout your career, probably beaten up, definitely get std’s, and your risk of being murdered shoots way up.
^ Many sex workers are never raped/beaten/get STDs/murdered, and constantly telling everyone that sex workers should expect this type of treatment, isn’t helping the sex workers who have been assaulted or murdered.
Due to the stigma against people who do sex work, most cops don’t take sex worker’s rape/assaults/murders seriously because “what did they think was gonna happen when they became a sex worker!?”Clearly, this is not a “job” in any usual sense of the word. It’s bad for your physical and mental health, and it’s simply not sustainable.
^ So, is being a cop not a “job” since you’re likely to be assaulted and it’s bad for your mental health?? Is being a doctor/nurse not a “job” since you touch other people’s genitals, plus you’re likely to be assaulted and it’s bad for your mental health?? etc
I’m saying it because I’ve seen the ravages of sex work first hand. I spent four years of my life doing street outreach, giving condoms to prostitutes who couldn’t afford them
^ In other words, you’ve never been a sex worker so you shouldn’t be speaking for/over sex workers 🙂
If your argument is that making sex work illegal hurts women because it will eventually take away their income, you do have some point. But weren’t people saying similar things when child labor was banned a hundred years ago?
^ Comparing child labour to sex work is ridiculous and not the same at all. What consenting adults decide to do with their money & their bodies behind closed doors, is no one’s business but theirs.
I assume we can both agree that sex work is not the best way to make a living long-term, right? No health insurance, no employer contribution to your retirement savings, no sick days, no paid vacation. Also, the fact that you will get raped multiple times per year throughout your career, probably beaten up, definitely get std’s, and your risk of being murdered shoots way up. All of these “occupational hazards” are ESPECIALLY true for people doing survival sex work – which I generally reserve to mean living hand-to-mouth.
Clearly, this is not a “job” in any usual sense of the word. It’s bad for your physical and mental health, and it’s simply not sustainable. I’m not saying this because I’m anti-sex worker, I’m saying it because I’ve seen the ravages of sex work first hand. I spent four years of my life doing street outreach, giving condoms to prostitutes who couldn’t afford them, and referring them to the free clinic. I cared a LOT about those girls. (For the record – mostly females, but also a number of trans women. And the boys on the boy block, too!)
If your argument is that making sex work illegal hurts women because it will eventually take away their income, you do have some point. But weren’t people saying similar things when child labor was banned a hundred years ago? After all, without the contributions from the older kids, how was a family supposed to make ends meet?
Clearly, ending the exploitation of child laborers served a larger social good. Likewise, criminalizing the buying of sex would also serve a larger social good. Sex work is a “job” that causes much more harm than good, and it’s always women who are the ones getting hurt. Arresting johns instead of the women they’re hiring is the least we can do to protect women. Maybe the cops will even arrest some of the men who murder prostitutes. Wouldn’t that be a victory for women!
Clearly, ending the exploitation of child laborers served a larger social good. Likewise, criminalizing the buying of sex would also serve a larger social good. Sex work is a “job” that causes much more harm than good, and it’s always women who are the ones getting hurt. Arresting johns instead of the women they’re hiring is the least we can do to protect women. Maybe the cops will even arrest some of the men who murder prostitutes. Wouldn’t that be a victory for women!
^ Ending the stigma against sex workers, would serve a larger social good. Ending the tired tropes about abused sex workers (hence normalizing/expecting the violence), would serve a larger social good. Cops aren’t going to care about sex workers lives, until sex workers are seen as ACTUAL HUMAN FUCKING BEINGS by the general public. As it is right now, society does not value sex workers lives. We are taught from birth, through media & those around us, that sex workers are somehow “lesser” people who need to be protected from themselves & men, but if they’re killed/raped/abused they deserve it because of the life they’ve “chosen”.
Arresting men who purchase sex, pushes sex workers further underground and makes their lives more at risk. (Because they have to try harder to hide what they’re doing, in order to get customers) Criminalizing the men who purchase sex isn’t helping anyone, nor is it ending the demand/sex trade. Human sexuality is normal and there are so many different reason why one would want to visit a sex worker… righteous people want to criminalize disabled people, etc who just want to pay someone to spend some time with them… SMH
TBH as a sex worker I’d argue cop isn’t a real job because they’re class traitors and terrible and don’t do anything useful but otherwise yeah this.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 