Why are prostitutes called sex workers?

[JoanofLarks]

Forgive me if I've missed something here. In my view, prostitution isn't work, it's... Seedy to say the least. If it was work, then surely it wouldn't be illegal, would be regulated and so on. Am I being offensive to women who do this by referring to them as prostitutes? Need some help with explanation I think!

Prostitution isn’t illegal, in the UK at least.

It’s legal where I live ( NZ) so they’re referred to as sex workers when featured in the news etc. eg a recent article about their drop in business during Covid. I don’t remember if they’re classed as self employed.

Because by referring to it as ‘work’ it can be touted as a valid career choice for women (who often lack any other options or are groomed/ordered into it) and men can feel less bad about purchasing women’s bodies. It’s merely paying for a service! Like a massage!

I think now we know that many women and girls are trafficked into prostitution, held against their will and forced to be abused in this awful way-we really should stop referring to women as sex workers. In reality men are paying to rape them which is vile. Many of the women have histories of abuse and are very vulnerable-often drug addicts.

In some social service areas, sex worker began to be used because the groups they served weren't all necessarily prostitutes, but were in some way working in the sex industry. Strippers, cam girls, pornography, for example.

It's also used now to try and gloss over the nature of prostitution, but there are legitimate uses for the term.

What noblegiraffe says.
Im expecting to hear of young women having their job seekers allowance stopped because they didnt want to interview for a role in the sex industry within my lifetime.

It's a euphemism to attempt to sanitise the reputation of a brutally exploitative industry.

It has a higher rate of PTSD among exited women than among combat veterans. It recruits/exploits from a pool of women massively more likely to have been victims of child sexual abuse than the general female population. The women doing it are at massively higher risk of rape and assault than the general female population.

And if it was really "work" the level of PPE you'd need to do the "job" safely would render it impossible.

And if it was really "work" the level of PPE you'd need to do the "job" safely would render it impossible.

This is a really good point I've not seen before.

It also includes pimps, because they work in the sex industry as managers, apparently. So the "sex worker lobby" usually includes and is run by them. What other trade union includes the bosses?

A more accurate description is 'prostituted women'.

Sex work is what used to be called weasel words and are part of the same queer politics that took over universities in the 80s and changed women's studies to gender studies.

So by substituting words with real meaning for ambiguous ones you can then make any arguement to further your agenda.

Any one on FWR will be aware of the slippery slope that was caused by more and more people saying gender when you are actually talking about sex. Now there are whole generations of school children who have grown up thinking they are the same.

And when the students educated in the 80s and 90s moved into journalism they change the style bible of newspapers so that this manipulation of deliberately misleading words became not just the norm but the absolute.

And in the same way as those who argue that sex should be a choice they also want the prostitution of women to be a choice, hence sex work.

Whereas, as with gender reinforcing sex stereotypes, sex work reinforces the notion that women with few employment opportunities "choose" prostitution. (Funny how unemployed men aren't expected to make this "choice".) So not only does this mean women become available to be exploited by men, it re-inforces the notion that women aren't worth training or being given education to get better paid and more valued work, but characterises women's "assets" as being her body.

(And I suspect those in social work and elsewhere were also part of the education system that was part of the back lash against women's liberation politics, which was about demanding women's autonomy, at home and in society. But instead reinforces the notion that women or a certain class - and race - will only ever have the "choice" of being prostituted so lets patronise them by pretending it is work of the same status and most jobs.)

"Sex worker" is the gender neutral "comfort women".

I use prostituted women

I don't use sex work as it's not work; it's rape, abuse and exploitation.

It's to make men feel like they are using a legitimate service.

I use prostituted women

This gave me pause

But yes that’s the term I use. Not sex worker. Like I’ll never refer to top/bottom surgery.

Farm worker- on a farm
Shop worker - in a shop.
Sex worker doesn’t fit this pattern.

There are other patterns:
Farmer - someone who farms
Masseuse- someone who massages
Therapist - someone who provides therapy

And so on

So the correct word would be in this pattern?

It isn't illegal and it is work - sometimes hard work! They provide a service for which they are paid. You may consider it seedy but it is still work.

No one on here would deny that it's a bloody hard life for a woman to end up in. What we do take issue with is the airbrushing of it as "just a job like any other."

Name me another job where rape is an occupational hazard. Name me another job where pregnancy or STDs are an occupational hazard. Name me another job which carries an equivalent risk of common assault from your customers.

And the people who are seedy in this story are the customers. They don't need the "service", they want it and are prepared to use women's desperation for money (where society offers them no other options) to sidestep consent. There's a name for men who don't care about consent.

They're called sex workers because the work by having sex. Same as people who work by delivering post are called postal workers. Not difficult, really.

How is it "not work"? A prostitute / sex worker / whatever you want to call it makes an offer to do something for someone in return for money, and if the offer is accepted, does it and gets paid for it. What has the fact that you consider it "seedy" got to do with whether it's work or not? Your moral judgments decide whether something is work or not?

As has already been noted, it isn't illegal in the UK and many (most?) other jurisdictions. But even if it were, what difference would that make? There are forms of work that are illegal.

I don't know whether it's important to sex workers to be called sex workers rather than prostitutes, as a less loaded and judgmental term. If so then yes, you're probably being offensive if you insist on calling them prostitutes.

It's not really work like any other job though is it? People aren't generally coerced to work in Boots or have to pay a lot of their salary over. They're not deliberately addicted to drugs to get them through the day. They're not targeted to work in the retail industry by people who see them as vulnerable.

Obviously I respect sex workers as people. But the way the industry is run I don't believe for the majority of sex workers that it's a legitimate career choice. There are far too many vulnerable women, trafficked women, addicted women for that to be true. Clearly there are some women that have chosen it but there are many, many more for whom there is no choice.

Unfortunately there are people falling over themselves to be cool about things. The ladette culture or the idea that its empowering to get your tits out for money. Overall, although some women may benefit financially, for the vast majority of us it does us a disservice; it feeds into the idea that we're commodities, not people, and that anyone who wants to can purchase us.

I think that we need to examine the reasons why prostitution is legal despite it being surrounded by such criminality, and why while the act is legal, pimping, kerb-crawling, managing a brothel, soliciting and so on are illegal.

If it is just to protect the women who are often forced/groomed into prostitution and recognise that they are often victims, then that puts a different spin on it being a legitimate career.

It would be like saying that children who are engaged in county lines drug running because they are groomed by adults aren’t prosecuted and therefore that means they are employed in ‘drug work’.

Using a euphemism like “sex worker” is an attempt to hide the sordid reality. 85% of prostitutes want to escape the “industry”. As mentioned upthread, they have higher levels of post traumatic stress than combat veterans.
What do you think it does to a woman’s self esteem, to be spat on, raped, vomited or shat on, beaten up, choked and treated with utter contempt by the sort of vile men who use her?
And would you be happy for such “work” to be advertised in job centres? Happy to recommend it to your daughter? No? Just other people’s daughters, then?
We need the Nordic model. Now. Criminalise the men, not the abused, trafficked and exploited women.

Prostitution isn’t work like any other , it’s isn’t sex work. It’s the capitalised degradation of a whole sex.

Marx and Engels had a few words between them about that and so much more. Supporting the right to buy a body has no place in feminism.

I'm not quite sure what we're arguing about here. I didn't mean to say that sex work is a good things and certainly not that the coercion and exploitation involved in much of it is a good thing. Nor do I think it's "just like any other job".

That's not what the OP said though. They said that prostitution "isn't work" because (a) it's seedy, and (b) it's illegal.

That just doesn't make any sense. Whether it's seedy in someone else's judgment makes no difference to whether it conforms to the definition of "work". And in most countries it isn't in fact illegal.

Maybe I'm too literal.

Fifteentoes - not too literal but offensive, patronising and ignorant of whole discourse around women’s rights and understanding of rape and male entitlement. Don't shift your piss poor reasoning to arguing about OP’s semantics