Sara Zontone: Sex Work Solidarity

1. SEX WORK, “GOOD SEX”, AND SOLIDARITY

2. SEX WORK AND STIGMA
 Sex work: exchange of money for sexual services
 Direct sex work – mostly relates to exchange of sex in terms of intercourse (street work, escort services)
 Indirect sex work – lap dancing, stripping, phone and internet services
 Majority women (85-90% in the UK), but the presence of men and other genders is not negligible
 Wide range of socio-economic status
 93 different ethnicities working in London, only 19% from the UK
 Sex work as sex trafficking
 “Trafficking in agriculture is rife, yet we don’t see lobby groups standing outside supermarkets demanding they
stop selling fruit and vegetables or picketing car washes or manufacturing and building companies. Sex for some
reason is viewed differently.” (Cahill 2019)
 Shame and isolation

3. 2018 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery

4. SEX WORK AND SOCIAL MEDIA
 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop
Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA)
 Conflation between sex work and sex trafficking
 Financial consequences: hit on advertisers, de-platforming
 Isolation: “I wouldn’t be alive today without my Tumblr sex
worker community…I can’t imagine how similarly vulnerable
people are going to connect like that going forward.” (Bee
2019)
 Lack of resources and education

5. SEX WORK AND LABOUR RIGHTS
 Policing and Crime Act 2009 in England and Wales
 Street prostitution is still criminalised
 NY’s “walking while trans”
 United Strippers of the World and unionising the sex industry

6. “Through foregrounding sex workers’
voices and stories and creating a living
record of their artefacts, OoD challenges
the pervasive social stigma that
attempts to silence sex workers. It is not
merely an attempt to ‘humanize’ sex
workers through providing outsiders
with a glimpse into their lives. Rather,
sex workers’ stories about materiality
and exchange challenge the wider
public to reflect upon the dynamics of
gendered labor, complex hierarchies of
power and care under capitalism, as well
as the interplay of the emotional and
the material in all relationships.”
(Objects of Desire 2020)