The Defiant Potential of Sex Workers’ Humour

Sex Workers’ Online Humor as Evidence of Resilience

“…The presence and functions of humor in sex work have been explored in some existing works, both focused primarily on humor [1][2][3] and mentioning it tangentially [4,5,39,40]. Humor has been identified as serving to help workers both manage and resist discrimination and oppression [1][2][3], echoing existing work that considers the uses of humor by other stigmatized groups.…”

“…The presence and functions of humor in sex work have been explored in some existing works, both focused primarily on humor [1][2][3] and mentioning it tangentially [4,5,39,40]. Humor has been identified as serving to help workers both manage and resist discrimination and oppression [1][2][3], echoing existing work that considers the uses of humor by other stigmatized groups. Downes argues that sex workers in Costa Rica use humor to resist marginalization and contest stigmatizing ideas about sex work, and to gain a sense of belonging and community while contending with a broader social landscape that labels them as the 'other' [3].…”

“…Downes argues that sex workers in Costa Rica use humor to resist marginalization and contest stigmatizing ideas about sex work, and to gain a sense of belonging and community while contending with a broader social landscape that labels them as the 'other' [3]. Güler found that street-based sex workers in Turkey used humor as a mode of resistance, using it to reject hegemonic arrangements and to highlight the absurdity and unfairness of the discrimination they faced [1]. Güler notes, too, that while she did not originally intend to consider humor as part of her research, 'it is such an integral aspect of my research participants' sociality that leaving it out would misrepresent .…”

“…. their daily lives' [1] (p. 244). Sanders' research, which draws on an ethnographic study of sex workers in Birmingham, UK, offers a typology of different forms of humor identified: jokes at clients' expense told in private, coded jests about clients told or performed in front of them, retellings of the disclosure of sex work told in a humorous fashion, humor as a way to resist harassment, humor as a strategy when communicating difficult experiences to figures such as medical personnel, and humor as a way to negotiate and define group membership [2].…”

“…While sex work has often been the target of cruel jokes, often trading on the stigma which continues to impact those within the industry, much less has been written about sex workers as the producers and purveyors of humor [1]. Research that does consider the prevalence and operation of humor within sex-working communities and workplaces has found it serves multiple functions and can act as a buffer to the emotional and mental toll of navigating stigma and discrimination, alongside the stresses characteristic of customer-facing roles [1][2][3]. Sex workers have also used humor for political ends, including during protests and interventions [4,5].…”