Sex work is defined as “any agreement between two or more persons in which the objective is exclusively limited to the sexual act and ends with that, and which involves preliminary negotiations for a price” (UNAIDS 2000 in Richter et al. 2011, 10).
Carol Leigh, better known as Scarlot Harlot, is accredited for having coined the term ‘sex work’. According to Harlot, sex work is the only “word for this work which is not a euphemism” (Leigh 1997: 310). Traditionally referred to as prostitution, sex work can be simply understood as the exchange of sex for money, or reward of pecuniary value (Richter 2012: 63). In my academic work I employ the term sex work as opposed to prostitution. This is because the term sex work denotes the activity as just that – work.
The term is also devoid of the stigmatisation attached to the term prostitution, which often encompasses moral judgement that hinders it being recognised as a form of work (Krűger 2004: 138). Most importantly, the decision to employ the term sex worker in this research is informed by the participants themselves who prefer to self-identify as sex workers instead of prostitutes.
With that said, I do tend to move between the terms ‘commercial sex’, ‘sexual economies’ and ‘selling sex’ to include those who might not necessarily identity what they do as a form of labour, but rather an activity they occasionally engage in to supplement their incomes. Hence, I will also be making reference to people “who sell sex”, rather than sex workers per se (Walker et al 2017; Walker & Galvin 2018).
Male sex workers talk business
Police brutality of a sex worker
