As you can likely infer from the title, we’re entering some difficult territory with Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac. This is a nonfiction book that confronts the challenging discourse surrounding sex work wherein the authors recognize that it would likely be better for women if sex work did not exist at all, but, since it does, we are obligated to establish better practices for protecting those in the industry.
A foundational aspect of the text is defining sex work as work, in some ways like any other. People often make moral arguments against sex work and decry (especially, but not exclusively) women selling or “renting” their bodies for a fee. The argument starts to break down, though, when you try to explain the difference between a sex worker selling her body and the destruction any number of people subject their bodies to for work. Consider, more directly, a miner whose body is perpetually sore or, to take it further, an Uber driver who never sleeps and so subjects themself to any number of illnesses. Gig economy work notwithstanding, we have a number of protections for workers—so what is the difference? The line of reasoning is reflective of the authors’ approach. Not that their work isn’t data-driven, but Smith and Mac tend to wax more philosophical and offer reasoned arguments for the ethical treatment of sex workers. They remain consistently informative, if a little general, and probe into the paradoxes of the industry.
Particularly compelling to me is the way they break down sex work prevention laws and expose them for their injustice. For example, in an effort to eradicate sex work, several countries have decreed that there shalt be no brothels and have put in anti-trafficking measures. The problem, though, lies in the definitions of these practices. For instance, a brothel is defined as any place in which sex work takes place by more than one worker. What does not get factored in is whether the workers are there at the same time, whether they know each other, and so on. Smith and Mac give the example that two women engaged in sex work might rent an apartment together to save on rent and be around as backup in the case of unsafe situations. Even if they are not working at the same time, and even if they also live where they work, their apartment gets counted as a brothel. Similarly, if you ‘harbour’ anyone involved in sex work, depending on where you are, you might get classed as a sex trafficker—including if you have a friend or family member in your life that engages in sex work and happens to sleep over at your house. These laws effectively serve only to cut off sex workers from their communities and make sex work less safe.
Another measure that people have attempted is to criminalize not sex workers but their clients. While we’re all prepared to shame people for being in the industry, the reality is that there are people willing to buy sex. Smith and Mac are quick to point out, though, that sex workers need the money, while their clients do not need to buy sex—there is an unevenly distributed need. And, like abortion—making it illegal means it will still happen, just less safely. So, when clients are criminalized, it has a few effects; it decreases the amount of vetted, trusted clients. In turn, workers are more willing to accept riskier clients—clients more prone to violence or not paying or having STIs.
Smith and Mac expose a number of hypocrisies that arise from not listening to the lived experiences of sex workers. Early on, they note that anti-prostitution organizations hire unpaid interns for months with no arrangements made for housing. These jobs, which could be paid, are nonetheless advertised as unpaid internships. The women most able to take on these roles are those who can afford to do unpaid work—that is, women in a position of privilege from where sex work is something to be abolished, not a pathway open to women who have suffered at the hands of national and global policies. Smith and Mac continually return to the notion that sex work is a product of circumstances imposed on desperate people—people who have been rendered illegal as they flee from circumstances beyond their control, and so forth. Particularly when it comes to trafficking, we could make a pretty circular venn diagram of people who oppose migration and those who oppose sex work. Well, in the case of trafficking, making everyone “illegal” paves the way for exploitative sex work of the people they claim in another breath that they want to protect.
Revolting Prostitutes is thus a difficult book to grapple with. It exists in a space of grey areas: prostitution is not ideal, yet needs to be protected. We want to reduce the necessity of sex work, but can’t criminalize it. We want to help people get out of the industry while recognizing that it is a viable income for some subset of the population. There are also, I imagine, far more sex workers in the world than you expect, especially if you broaden the definition beyond prostitution alone. This is not a book of easy answers, but is certainly a book of compassionate ones.
Happy reading!
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