Toni Mac talks of the very real and practical situations that lead people to decide that sex work is their best available option β always a survival strategy, a complex choice made in complex circumstances.
Then she explains how the four basic approaches used round the world for regulating sex work each results in workers being trapped into making choices that leave everyone less safe: criminalized, vulnerability to violence, prey to corrupt officials or simply unable to move on when they do have better options available to them. And then she talks of the kind of regulations and laws that sex workers actually want and that would actually be more effective.
I want to talk about sex for money. It sounded reasonable to me until the closing months of , when I was working two dead-end, minimum-wage jobs. Every month my wages would just replenish my overdraft. I was exhausted and my life was going nowhere.
Like many others before me, I decided sex for money was a better option. So I signed up for my first shift in a brothel. The first approach is full criminalization. Half the world, including Russia, South Africa and most of the US, regulates sex work by criminalizing everyone involved. Lawmakers in these countries apparently hope that the fear of getting arrested will deter people from selling sex. Criminalization is a trap. The law forces you to keep selling sex, which is the exact opposite of its intended effect.
Being criminalized leaves you exposed to mistreatment by the state itself. In many places you may be coerced into paying a bribe or even into having sex with a police officer to avoid arrest.
