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Semantics of sex work: what's in a name?
December 18, 2006
Two really interesting pieces have found their way into my RSS feed and Google alerts in the past few days (ok, more than two, but there’s only so much blogging I have time for):
“The State Department’s office combating human trafficking
issued a directive Friday to US agencies urging them to avoid using terms “sex worker” or “child sex worker” and even advised governments not to use them.” [via Feministing]
and
A discussion in the UK about the use of the word “prostitute” to identify women recently murdered in Ipswich.
The issues raised in the two articles are very different - the State Department is essentially arguing that there is no such thing as “sex workers” because being in the sex industry is not a job, its slavery. In the UK, the discomfort is with prostitute becoming the primary identity of a dead woman (or a living one, presumably), and all other identities not associated with her job - mother, daughter, friend, etc - get subsumed in that one word.
As far as the State Department goes - they make it very difficult to have this conversation at all. Sexual slavery of women and children is a terrible thing, there’s no arguing against that. But treating all women and children as victims (not even potential ones, but straight up victims) takes away any agency they might have and replaces it with a patriarchal “there there,” and the fusion womenandchildren is ridiculous. Women are not children. Furthermore, children are not “sex workers” - because they are underaged and not able to consent to sex work - or any other kind of work, for that matter. Children are potential victims of the sex industry in a different way than women are potential victims of the sex industry. I’m not saying that trafficking/sexual slavery doesn’t exist, and I’m not saying that all (or anywhere near the majority) women go into the sex industry as sexual confidant and autonomous beings - all choices are constrained by something. But sex work is work, and there is a difference between work and slavery. And I know that its horrifying to many people that women (and men) who don’t necessarily want to be doing sex work are doing it, but people do lots of things they’d rather not be doing for money. I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of most work: doing something you’d rather not do, for longer than you’d like to be doing it, because you need to earn a living.
And as far as “prostitute” as primary identity goes - though I like the idea of the media referring to prostitutes as “women who work in the sex industry” or whatever, I’m not holding my breath. “Prostitute” is salacious, it sells papers - that’s really the bottom line. The likelihood of the media respecting dead hookers - especially junky hookers - is not great. Yesterday as my fellow $preadsters read off a long list of names of women and men sex workers murdered just this past year because they were vulnerable, I know this isn’t going to change any time soon. But it doesn’t stop me from waking up every day and fighting that fight.
On one hand: yes, the words are important. On the other: this argument is a smokescreen for the real issue at hand: sex workers’ right to self-determination both in and out of the sex industry. Choosing a language with which we refer to ourselves is part of that work on self-determination, though its only the tip of the iceberg.
Posted by Dacia at December 18, 2006 02:04 PM
Comments
While I agree that “prostitute” sells papers, I don’t really see it as a problem that the newspaper names the women that were killed by that appellation. I mean, it’s not like they call them junkie whore scum, you know? If all five women worked in a lady’s hat shop, I’m sure the media would call them the “milliner murders” instead of the “prostitute murders”, you know?
Posted by: Mike V. at December 19, 2006 12:21 PM
Apparently, today I really like the phrase “you know”, you know?
Posted by: Mike V. at December 19, 2006 12:21 PM
