| > and legitimate consensual sex work What is legitimate consensual sex work? For those of us who don't transact with prostitutes, all we know about this is a stream of narratives we've seen on tv and in film. Julia Roberts falling for Richard Gere, or Maggie Gyllenhall refusing to have a pimp "manage" her. Yet, I remember reading one account of a porn actress, who despite signing all the paperwork, waivers and contracts and such, later claimed that every single act felt like rape to her. Even when there are no pimps or sex traffickers, many claim that they feel coerced by circumstances. Exploited by their clientele. On top of that we have to deal with ever-evolving ideas about what consent even means. That one cannot properly give consent if one party is more powerful than the other (and how could that ever not be the case, when one is a man and the other a woman... does not plain strength count as power in that scenario?). In one episode of Californication, Fox Mulder's sitting there mocking a man that showed up with the hooker, calling him a pimp, asking where's his feathered velvet hat, and the guy drolly explains "I'm just here to make sure creeps don't try to beat up the girls". It's very unclear whether there is such a thing as legitimate consensual sex work, or that humans are even capable of formulating a reasonable definition of consent that would satisfy idiot frat boys and feminist activists both. To call this "tough" is world-class championship understatement. It looks absolutely intractable. |
They are subject to the same coercive pressures, and their constraints are individual to them as everyone's are to themselves. Consent is simply the wrong framework for understanding decisions made under life and death consideration. In the same way a machinist's anger at their on the job maiming is righteous, a sex worker can consider any or all encounters to be rape. Just because they've chosen to be there doesn't mean they want to be.