I told my family I got the money dealing drugs
The lengths that women go to in order to hide their profession are astonishing. Alex Albert, during her time at Mustang Ranch, found that women tell their families a variety of stories about where their money comes from. In one case, she reports that a woman told her family she dealt drugs. The effort of hiding their work is mentally taxing in it of itself-- having to create cover stories, living a double life.3 Not being able to talk to the people in their lives about their work and their experiences places a huge burden on them. These women also must live in fear of a loved one finding the truth and shunning them. In Live Nude Girls Unite, the film’s director explains how she kept her stripping job a secret from her mother, knowing it would damage their relationship, possibly irreparably. Her mother broke off contact for several months, and though they tenuously reunite, their relationship is permanently altered. This experience is typical, and is in fact better than most experiences. In this case, she was able to regain a relationship at all. Many women find that people do not want to associate with them, and those who do associate are prone to making terrible, insulting assumptions about their lives. Because of this imposition, sex workers are stuck constantly operating on the “front stage.4” Their job can be emotionally taxing-- as will be addressed in a later section-- but unlike other forms of emotionally taxing work, they do not step out of it when they are not working. In most cases, they must keep it up around family and friends. This performance is exhausting, women find that “intimate relations with others, ratified in our society by mutual confession of in-visible failings, cause [her] either to admit [her] situation to the intimate or to feel guilty for not doing so.5 ” In this sense, the stigma renders sex workers unable to have “normal” relationships-- they either admit their occupation and open themselves to judgement, or live with a deeply taxing guilt over hiding their choice of employment.
In Sex Workers in the Maritimes Talk Back,6 researchers emphasized on giving the sex workers a voice and allowing them to speak openly and honestly. The book is filled with references to stigma-- it was a top concern for the women involved. “Our name gets exploited over the papers, like we’re bad people…” one woman complained. These women do not see their actions as morally wrong or criminal. One woman in Talk Back highlighted that she slept with politicians and bankers who had done far worse things to society-- but she was the one who’d be labeled “criminal” and arrested. Generally, the women in Talk Back did not see their actions as criminal because they were not hurting anyone. Many expressed frustration that police spend the time to come after them, taking time away from pursuing criminals whose actions have tangible costs. To be regarded as a criminal by society for an act they do not deam as wrong is a strain on their mental well being and perception of self. It also produces a disillusionment with society as a whole.
Woman after woman in Talk Back expressed frustration over common assumptions people make: primarily that sex workers are drug addicts or were molested as children. There certainly are women who engage in sex work to service a drug addiction, and it is a problem-- but it is by no means the unilateral reason for engaging in sex work. People engage in all kinds of work, illegal and legal, to provide money for a drug addiction, but only sex work carries the weight of the stereotype. Again, it is true that some women engage in sex work because they were abused as children and have a difficult, unhealthy relationship to sex. Once again, this not the case for every woman. There is also a common assumption that sex workers are forced into it by pimps, family members, the mob-- by anyone and everyone. There are certainly women being forced into sex work and this is certainly a pertinent concern. But by assuming all women are being forced, we obfuscate the reality and are unable to identify and better understand how to help these women. Innocent people are forced into back breaking factory labor, but as a society we are able to recognize not every factory worker is a slave. The conditions, not the job, define what is human trafficking and what is legal labor. Sex work is not afforded this nuance. These narratives have become fundamental to sex work stories. Like many stereotypes, they are based on a grain of truth but do not accurately represent the demographic. Their omnipresence detracts from conversations and from building more complex understandings of sex work.
These stereotypes are an attack on women. It assumes that a woman would have to be forced, by addiction, a third party, or mental illness, to engage in sex for money. The right to decide what to do with their bodies is erased. For many women in sex work, it is a choice-- and an advantageous one at that. Flexible hours, above average pay, little to no training required: these are all things we look for in jobs, and a woman who prioritizes them would be regarded as normal. For many women, sex work was a logical choice. But these stereotypes erase this rationale from the narrative and replace it with the demeaning insinuation women do not choose this career, but are forced into it. This is an attack on sex workers, and an attack on women. It is a piece of a much larger patriarchal domination that policies what women are allowed to do with their bodies. Women who outright demand compensation for their bodies instead of willingly giving them to men are a threat the status quo and to male dominance. Sex should be given to men freely and willingly, it is not something they must earn, it is their right. Women have only recently stopped being the legal property of men, and although laws have changed, society is moving at a slower pace. According to the patriarchy, women’s bodies belong to men and so sex belongs to men-- when women request that men pay them for sex, they are requesting payment for something men see as rightfully theirs. And this is a an offensive of the highest order. Sex work forces men recognize that sex is not something they are entitled to, and this threat is not taken lightly. Men accept that they “pay” for sex in covert ways-- convincing women through words and gifts. But sex work brings that transaction to the forefront, making the correlation inescapable, forcing men to come to terms with the reality that women do not want to freely give their bodies over.
And so, sex work is not simply stigmatized as wrong, gross, and immoral. It is stigmatized as something a woman would never freely choose-- women are not allowed to elect to sell their bodies. When these women defy the patriarchy, they are doing so because they are coerced, and so it becomes less meaningful. The stereotype delegitimizes women’s choices, casting them off as made under pressure and ingenuine, maintaining order and maintaining perceptions of male dominance.
3. Albert, A. (2001). Brothel: Mustang Ranch and its women. New York: Random House.
4. Goffman, Erving. (1963) Stigma; notes on the management of spoiled identity.Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall
5. Goffman, Erving. (1963) Stigma; notes on the management of spoiled identity.Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall
6. Jeffrey, L. A., & MacDonald, G. M. (2006). Sex workers in the Maritimes talk back. Vancouver: UBC Press.