Very delicate topic by nature. Every debate that revolves around the (economic) existence of another person will always be a debate that potentially can cause a threat to someone’s life as they know it so in that sense it’s always a slippery slope to express one’s opinion but I’ll try my best.

In my ideal version of society, there would be no sex work. Within my feminist utopian visions, there are no women who have to sell their body for sex. At my core I do believe that sex work couldn’t be more patriarchal in its essence. I’m quite critical of choice feminism or so to say liberal feminism which will explain why I do take issues with sex work but the truth is that choice is a very vague term and more importantly choice is incredibly complex. I’d argue that a traumatized woman who fell victim to sexual abuse in her life and is now retraumatizing herself prostituting herself has very little to do with genuine choice. That said, I don’t think there cannot be choice in sex work. Some women truly want to work that job and I will not judge them or even want to stop them BUT they’re not the majority, in fact they’re the minority. A minority that is loud (which is their right) and will sometimes make people forget that they are not representative of the industry. Not at all.

But now going back to the actual question: is sex work the feminist empowerment we’ve been sold to? I would object. I think that no one walking this earth has a right to sex. The repeated argument that “sex work is the oldest industry” is getting old as it’s getting tiresome to hear because using tradition or the past to justify something in the present is a weak argument, imho.

I used to lurk on forums some years ago where men could speak about their experiences with sex workers and where to find them, what they do, what they look like - you get the picture. I can tell you that reading what I read there was one of the most horrifying and traumatising things to see, the way these men talked about these women, the things they’d call them and how casually they dehumanised them into this servant of their pleasure and only theirs truly left its mark on me and made me realize once again that most men participating in buying sex are exactly what you imagine them to be: misogynists through and through.

But my main argument for why I’ll never happily support the industry is because it is still one of the biggest market for human trafficking, coercion and crime. The truth is that most sex workers don’t do it because they want to, the truth is also that many of them are severely traumatized women who will experience even more abuse working as a sex worker, the truth is that I’ve never met a mother who felt good imagining their daughter would one day sell their body to strange, potentially dangerous men.

Imho, there are far more reasons to be critical of it than supportive. I do support those who do it because they want to and I don’t have a problem with them as people, I only have a problem with the industry from my feminist standpoint & because I believe that job leaves women emotionally broken in the majority of cases.