Introduction

“Prostitutes have been cast as victimizers and victims, as dead to the pleasure of sex and as too alive to it. Whatever else, they have always been Other… [P]sychologists pathologize prostitutes by suggesting sweeping causative associations between prostitution and disadvantaged situations, physical limitations… and previous traumatic experiences, especially sexual abuse. And knee jerk moralists speak of prostitutes as flawed characters lacking in values.” Mustang Ranch and Its Women, Alexa Albert1.

When a woman in her mid twenties taking care of two children and working as a secretary is killed, the front page of the paper does not read “SECRETARY MURDERED.” Her profession is simply treated as a detail, one facet of her life. This is not the case for sex workers-- their profession often replaces their name or any other relevant details to their lives. It becomes the defining trait of how the world sees them, one word echoing so loud that their voices become eclipsed. This experience is disheartening. In ethnographies of sex work and research on sex workers, the sentiment is continually expressed: we feel like we do not have a voice, and when we do speak, the room unfairly judges everything we say.

The stigma around prostitution is a supposed moralist attack which seeks to disgrace any deviating sexuality and create a scapegoat for perceived social problems. There is a belief that sex work is bad: for women, for society, for those who purchase sex. Those who engage with it are marked with stigma, “the stigmatization of those with a bad moral record clearly can function as a means of formal social control.”2 In this sense, stigmatizing is an attempt to control sex work. Not only does it offer opponents a means to delegitimize dissenters and “other” sex workers, it encourages self policing. Any association with sex work-- even merely expressing an opinion in favor of it-- opens the individual up to potential stigmatization, and so people refrain from discussing the matter at all.  The status quo is maintained, and fear suffocates discourse, impeding change and development.

For those who do brave the stigma, it has been shown over and over again, in article after article and book after book, that the toll of stigma is by far the most corrosive element of sex work. Women feel like lepers, estranged from society, treated badly because of their work, and constantly under harsh judgement from everyone around them. It does not matter what one’s opinions on sex work are. Firstly, the inaccurate picture of sex work that stigma perpetuates contributes to mass misunderstandings and harm to women; second, it quells dissenting opinions, preventing robust conversation, and functions as a means of social control.

 

1. Albert, A. (2001). Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its women. New York: Random House.

2. Goffman, Erving. (1963) Stigma; notes on the management of spoiled identity.Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall