Embracing Sex Work’s Complexity: Global Organizing by Sex Workers

Abstract

In light of atrocities leveled against sex workers in Ipswitch England and the United States the issues of safety, dignity, and violence, both structural and individual, against sex workers globally is a necessary discussion but one rarely given much attention. However, increasingly sex worker advocacy groups, specifically those working from within the industry, have taken up the charge to foster an environment which enables and affirms individual choices and occupational rights. This paper focuses on campaigns coordinated by international and national organizations to complicate deep rooted simplification of sex work by immobilizing the historical association of sex work with dysfunction, drug addiction, organized crime, and powerlessness. The socially constructed notion of sex work is reclaimed and firmly placed in the discourse of work, autonomy, and human rights. Describing the composition of organizing used by numerous activists who are engaged in sex work offers a new way to frame the issues.