A Bad Girl Talks Sex Work

Some see sex work not as a simple commercial transaction, but as paid abuse, occurring in a world where women are less respected and less valued than their male counterparts. The exchange of sex “for consideration” somehow reduces every woman into a commodity, to nothing more than a collection of parts to be used and then discarded, our value measured by our fuckability and nothing more.

My value does not depend on my having sex for money. In the same way, when I have sex for money, it does not change, or diminish my worth.

Sex workers sell our time, our labour. We do not “sell our bodies”. Apart from the obvious physical services, we also comfort the mourning, talk with the lonely, and embrace those who haven’t felt the touch of another human in years. It’s profoundly dissuasive and extremely objectifying to suggest that sex workers are selling their bodies.

It’s also dangerous. When we buy something we think we can do with it whatever we want. When we purchase a service we must respect the rules of the transaction and the person with whom we do business until that transaction is completed. Any person who chooses to not comply with the rules of the transaction is not within his rights. He is not a client, he is a criminal. To ignore the clear difference…