The Politics of Sex Work

by Bridget Woods, Kanishka Awasthi, and Ifreet Hossain

In April of 2018, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) were both signed into law, from the House and the Senate respectively. While claiming to focus its eye on sex trafficking, FOSTA actually targeted any kind of “prostitution” in a bid to de-platform sex workers en masse (Jones, 2022). In fact, research demonstrates—unsurprisingly, if sex worker voices were listened to—that violence towards sex workers has increased as a result of punitive legislation and increased policing, particularly for those at the margins (Jones, 2022).

In 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were both abrupt changes and stagnations for sex workers. For some, they reported reduced access to community-based social services and confusion/inaccessibility to PPE and social distancing practices (Pfeffer et al., 2025). It was already difficult to access comprehensive healthcare pre-COVID for sex workers due to stigma, lack of coverage, and other factors (Moss & Langseth-DePaolis, 2025); COVID exacerbated pre-existing problems. For those moving to digital sex industries for the first time, the Internet could provide some level of safety from the virus, but issues of anonymity, protection, and resources were brought into question (Rubattu et al., 2023). Additionally, the focus on digital sex industries by the mainstream public didn’t accurately represent the holistic experiences of sex workers: some already within the industry reported a rough transition from in-person to online work and a decrease rather than an expected increase in earnings (Rubattu et al., 2023). 

As we emphasized in our toolkit on Gendered Sports, the language encircling sex work continues to be rooted in moralistic and deficit-based perspectives. Whorephobia and whore stigma drives much of the undercurrents of criminal legal policy, viewing sex workers on the whole “as victims of exploitation, their labour as delegitimate and sex work as risky” (Stardust et al., 2021). This is exacerbated for trans sex workers, where whore stigma intersects with transphobia and cissexism, resulting in trans sex workers facing disproportionate levels of violence—from both clients and police (Stardust et al., 2021). In Canada, for example, indigenous women are made the face of anti-trafficking initiatives without any valid empirical data or actual material support, all while maintaining colonial undercurrents (Raguparan & Raguparan, 2025) and perpetuating the conflation of trafficking with sex work (for more on this, check out our podcast episode with Dr. Sam Majic). What increased policing around sex work and sex trafficking does do, however, is justify an exorbitant level of surveillance surrounding marginalized communities. 

Discourse surrounding sex work is often situated within criminal and legal frameworks: “criminalisation (where the buying and/or selling of sex is completely illegal); legalisation (where sex work is legal but highly regulated); the Swedish/Nordic model (where only the buying of sex is illegal, in an attempt to curb the ‘demand’ for it); and decriminalisation (where all adult sex work is legal, and while not morally sanctioned, prostitution is subject only to the same regulations as any other service industry)” (Farvid, 2017). Brooks (2021) explains that the binary framework “about sex work focusing on decriminalization versus criminalization, innocence versus guilt, or choice versus forced sex work do not address the actual needs or political desires of sex workers, especially Black women.” Criminalizing sex work is also criminalizing access to wages (Jackson, 2024); as we have already seen through SESTA/FOSTA, the targeting and deplatforming of sex workers in online spaces results in income insecurity and further economic precarity (Majic et al., 2024). Increased surveillance on online platforms also targets political organizing (Jones, 2022); for sex workers looking to collectively organize across physical borders through digital means, there is a constant watchful eye from the government that could lead to sites being taken down, people targeted, and organizing efforts thwarted. 

The demand for sex work to be considered “real work” is not a new rallying cry, but it asks us to consider both our relationship to labor as well as bodies. With the continued rise of the “gig economy”, sex workers are at the front lines of the labor movement. Additionally, with heightened scrutiny of bodies performing gender, and specifically trans bodies, it is no surprise that trans sex workers are disproportionately victims of violence—physical and economic; “for trans sex workers, their bodies and sexuality are not only implicated in all labor, but their body is the central instrument of sex work” (Topa, et al., 2023, 4). The hyperfocus on sexual morality is an intentional design to obfuscate the labor relations that sex work bring to the surface. 

In this month’s toolkit, we highlight how legislation with the stated purpose of “protecting” women has continued to harm them, and others who engage in sex work. We look at the impacts of SESTA/FOSTA on online platforms, the disproportionate violence trans sex workers face at the hands of the police, and the shifting legal landscape through an interview with Dr. Sam Majic for Sexcavation Podcast. 

Sex work is not a thread that can be untangled from the tapestry of market-economy; it is not an industry that can be criminalized to elimination by legislation, nor a practice that can be relegated to the boundary of a street, neighborhood, or social media page. Sex workers, through the nature of their labor, are also the producers of culture. One way we see this is the rise of pole dancing classes over the past decade as a form of “fitness”, often divorced from the realities of pole dancing as an art form and strippers as the choreographers and laborers. The women working on Roosevelt Avenue who are dehumanized due to their class/racial/citizenship status, the women working around New York City in strip clubs, the women making films online and in-person—all are part of a diverse industry of workers.

Brooks, S. (2021). Innocent white victims and fallen black girls: Race, sex work, and the limits of anti–sex trafficking laws. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 46(2), 513-521.

Farvid, P. (2017). The politics of sex in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific: Tensions, debates and future directions. Women’s Studies Journal, 31(2), 27-34. 

Jackson, C. (2024). Taking our words right out of our mouths: The appropriation of sex worker-rights language. In B. Barton, B.G. Brents, & A. Jones (Eds.), Sex work today: Erotic labor in the twenty-first century (pp. 285-292). NYU Press. 

Jones, A. (2022). FOSTA: A transnational disaster especially for marginalized sex workers. International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law, 2, 73-99.

Majic, S., & Ditmore, M., & Li, J. (2024). 440 sex workers cannot be wrong: Engaging and negotiating online platform power. Social Sciences, 13(7), 1-26.

Moss, R., & Langseth-DePaolis, T. (2025). Criminalizing sex work, criminalizing mothers: Unpacking the legal frameworks impacting sex-working parents. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 53(3/4), 159-176. 

Pfeffer, R., Barrick, K., Galvan, T., Marfori, F.M., & Williams, S.A. (2025). “I’d rather by broke than harmed”: A qualitative analysis of the experiences of people engaged in commercial sex work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Health Reports, 140, 61-66.

Raguparan, M., & Raguparan, A. (2025). Anu’s story: Unpacking the conflation of sex work and sex trafficking. Sexualities, 28(3), 1154-1172. 

Rubattu, V., Perdion, A., & Brooks-Gordon, B. (2023). ‘Cam girls and adult performers are enjoying a boom in business’: The reportage on the pandemic impact on virtual sex work. Social Sciences, 12 (62), 1-29. 

Stardust, Z., Treloar, C., Cama, E., & Kim, J. (2021). ‘I wouldn’t call the cops if I was being bashed to death’: Sex work, whore stigma and the criminal legal system. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 10(3), 142-157.