Read on Twitter
I'm not going to have a lot of time to tweet today, but I just wanted to introduce the topic: what do we think of when we think of sex work and disability?
The answer to this has changed a lot in just the past 6 years that I've been asking people this question. I did a survey of Google search results 5 years ago for various combinations of 'sex work' and 'disability' (+ related terms) and the results today are VERY different
The most common answer used to be-- and still is, to an extent-- that we think of a physically disabled client paying an able bodied sex worker because he "has" to. The notion that many sex workers are ourselves disabled is only just breaking into public consciousness.
There are a lot of reasons for this and I want to talk about all of them! But for now I just want to leave you with this stat: the percentage of disabled people in this study of sex workers is nearly twice that of the general population https://www.courtinnovation.org/publications/NYC-sex-trade
(The actual terminology used include chronic illness and health conditions and people who trade sex but I was running out of characters)
And I also want to explore why disability is so common among sex workers and people who trade sex (and discuss the differences in terminology here). I am going to try to hop back on later tonight (10 EST) to do that but if not-- definitely tomorrow!
Ok! Time to finally answer these questions!
I'm going to pull a lot from my undergraduate thesis for my women's studies degree, " 'Blemishes' and 'Abominations': the Dually Stigmatized Identities of Sex Workers with Disabilities"
I'm going to pull a lot from my undergraduate thesis for my women's studies degree, " 'Blemishes' and 'Abominations': the Dually Stigmatized Identities of Sex Workers with Disabilities"
I'm hoping to finally publish this in August, so if you're interested, follow me over at @EmilyDWarfield and I will keep you updated on when + how to purchase.
The title references Erving Goffman, who wrote the foundational sociological text on stigma: "“Different types of stigma may be mentioned. First there are abominations of the body, the various physical deformities. Next there are blemishes of individual character […]”
Disabled sex workers are stigmatized in two ways that are almost opposites. One of the major reasons we don't consider the existence of disabled sex workers is because our existence is a contradiction to many people
In the popular imagination, sex workers are hypersexual-- always "playing the whore" (to quote @melissagira) even when we're not working. And disabled people-- most disabled people-- are seen as asexual.
The major exception for this is women with mental illness, who are hypersexualized as well. It's not a coincidence that crazy women are portrayed as whores and whores are portrayed as crazy. But the idea of a sex worker with a physical disability doesn't even occur to people.
Another reason for the erasure of disabled sex workers in popular discussions of sex work and disability is simply the fact that sex workers' financial needs are constantly dismissed and clients' sexual 'needs' are constantly centered-- including by feminists
Feminist critiques of the sex industry paint it as one somehow uniquely driven by demand. This is false. It has now been proven false. Thanks to COVID, demand for in-person work almost disappeared. What happened to sex workers? Were we liberated?
No, we're just even more desperate than we were before.
Sex work is already a last resort for many of us. There's no improvement when you remove a last resort and replace it with nothing.
Sex work is already a last resort for many of us. There's no improvement when you remove a last resort and replace it with nothing.
I'm going to come back to """abolition""" later, especially as it relates to sex workers with disabilities.
But I want to finish examining the popular erasure of disabled sex workers first.
But I want to finish examining the popular erasure of disabled sex workers first.
I want to point out that there is actually one very popular image of disabled sex workers, although we don't consciously consider the woman in this visual trope 'disabled': what @CharoShane has aptly termed "street legs"
This is the standard stock image used in every media story about sex work, even indoor sex work. Although! This is now starting to change. Images of women holding money, working at computers, and even protesting (!!!) are now used as well. But Street Legs is still standard.
Street legs is disabled in a way that obviously no one is in real life. She is cut off mid-torso, just ambulating amputated limbs. I would argue that this image of absurd disablement is in many ways intentional. It is used to dehumanize.
But why are so many sex workers disabled, like, *for real*? In the study I cited yesterday, the rate of disability among sex workers is about twice that of the general population. Other studies show similarly high numbers.
This confirms what I've encountered anecdotally and through community organizing. I was a co-author on one of the first studies to ask sex workers about disability and chronic illness because I knew what we would find.
I'm going to pull now from my 2018 @WoodhullSFA presentation on reconceptualizing sex work and disability. So there are 2 possible relationships between SW and disability: you're disabled + so you decide to become a sex worker or you're a sex worker + so you become disabled.
It's also possible of course that there's no relation and that's certainly true for some individuals. But most of the time there is some relationship. So, first: what are some reasons why PWD might decide to do sex work? (I'll RT your answers)
Y'all are right on! Here was the complete list I came up with:
-workplace injury makes continuing straight work physically impossible
-pre-existing disability makes straight work physically impossible
-structure of straight work (9-5) incompatible with symptoms (pain, fatigue)
-workplace injury makes continuing straight work physically impossible
-pre-existing disability makes straight work physically impossible
-structure of straight work (9-5) incompatible with symptoms (pain, fatigue)
-structure of straight work incompatible with treatments (Dr appts)
-cost of health care needs can't be met doing straight work
-ableist discrimination in hiring and promotion
-welfare payments don't cover basic living expenses
-cost of health care needs can't be met doing straight work
-ableist discrimination in hiring and promotion
-welfare payments don't cover basic living expenses
It's very important to talk about intersectionality here and the way that many of these issues are amplified for people of color and LGBTQ people. If you're a disabled Black trans woman, that's 4 kinds of employment discrimination you're potentially facing. And it happens A LOT
But also! Sex work can indeed lead to disability/ chronic health issues, or at least increase symptoms. Gonna open it up for RTs again of the reasons why that happens.
No takers on this one, huh? That's ok, I have some reasons prepared for how SW --> disability:
-physical strain leads to or exacerbates physical issues
-emotional strain leads to or exacerbates mental health issues
-acquiring an STI that leads to chronic illness
-physical strain leads to or exacerbates physical issues
-emotional strain leads to or exacerbates mental health issues
-acquiring an STI that leads to chronic illness
And violence at the hands of police, clients, and third parties leads to injury or trauma.
Please note that violence is not intrinsic to sex work but a result of criminalization and stigma. Still, it's part and parcel of the job for the time being.
Please note that violence is not intrinsic to sex work but a result of criminalization and stigma. Still, it's part and parcel of the job for the time being.
And that's another obvious area where intersectionality comes into play, as WoC and trans and gender non-conforming people experience higher rates of violence in the sex trades (and outside!)
Someone asked how common it is for disability to precede sex work vs sex work preceding disability and I don't think there's been research done on that. Anecdotally, however, it mostly seems to be the former.
But for a lot of us it's bidirectional. It definitely is for me: for a good period of time sex work was the only work I could do because of severe mental illness. Even when I did finally take an office job...well, for a lot of us with chronic illness, it's not a matter of 'can't'
It's a matter of 'at what cost?' I worked an office job for a year but it made me so exhausted I had to go to bed at 8 PM most nights, which severely limited my quality of life. My QoL was higher doing sex work because I had a lot more spare time and energy.
But! Sex work (which I am back to doing b/c grad school was incompatible with FT 9-5 work) also often exacerbates my mental health symptoms in other ways. I hear this from a lot of friends as well: the relationship between SW + disability works both ways.
