With a few notable exceptions, people do not get into the sex industry for reasons that have anything to do with desire for sex, any more than a person enters janitorial work out of a love for cleaning. The exchange between worker and customer is a complicated negotiation of need, illusion, denial, boundaries, and specific neuroses; but central to the exchange is cash. By keeping the debate about sex work focused on sex, and not work, the true nature of the issue is obscured. The arguments rage around ideas of obscenity, appropriate and inappropriate sexualities, representations of femininity, notions of morality: Important issues in their own right, but in the context of the sex work debate they function more as a smoke screen that keeps us from confronting what’s really going on. In this framework women are sluts instead of workers, or victims instead of cognizant participants in an economy. The real question here is, why are our options so lame? What are the economic realities that make the sex industry the most viable choice for many people?
That’s where feminism comes in. That’s where outrage becomes appropriate. The wage gap, welfare “reform”, sexist and racist hiring practices, the decline in the real value of the minimum wage, lack of universal access to healthcare or rehab services, and the widening disparity between the rich and poor: These are the things that undermine the social fabric and degrade the status of women more than me tramping around in heels could ever hope to. We have to ask ourselves, what is so compelling about blaming naked women for their own oppression? What kinds of confrontation are women avoiding by interrogating each other rather than actual power structures?