by Jason Stotts
Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it.
I’m working on revising chapters from Volume 2 to get it ready for publication and one helpful criticism I got on an early version of my chapter on sex work was to start the chapter with an overview. This aporia is an attempt to do just that. As with my other aporia, this is an early work in progress and includes all the bits that would usually be stripped away from a piece prior to publication. It’s really more of a thinking-on-paper to prepare to write the chapter than anything else, but I thought it might be interesting to at least some people to see how the sausage is made.
========
Before we look at some of the core types of sex work, let’s start by looking at this issue more broadly. This is important as sex work exists on a spectrum and while we can conceptually break things apart to look at them, this does not mean that they are always so cleanly cut in the real world. Moreover, we hardly have the space to detail the myriad ways that sex work could manifest and so a broad look will help to better understand the landscape.
Broadly, we can think of “sex work” as any activity related to sex and sexuality for which a person is paid. We can split it into three kinds: direct, indirect, and blended sex work. Direct sex work is when one person directly interacts with another person sexually for money (e.g., prostitutes, erotic masseurs, cam girls doing a private show, strippers, phone sex operators). Indirect sex work is when one person indirectly interacts with another person sexually for money (e.g., actors in pornography, women who sell used panties, cam girls putting on a general performance).[1] Blended sex work involves elements of both direct and indirect sex work: for example, a stripper who remains on stage for her entire performance without directly interacting with anyone is engaging in indirect sex work, but if she also comes off stage and gives a lap dance, then this is blended sex work. In the real world the spectrum of sex work is often not clear cut and a person could engage in multiple types of sex work, or in different kinds at different times, some of which are direct and some of which are indirect.
It seems to me that the key to something being “sex work” is that there has to be a transactional nature to the sex. A woman putting up a sexy video of herself and her partner because she is an exhibitionist and finds it thrilling is not engaged in sex work. If the same woman also charges for the video, then she is engaged in sex work. A woman who likes to exploit men financially is not engaged in sex work, unless its “financial domination” and the man is sexually aroused by being financially exploited. A man who likes to have sex with other men for his own pleasure is not a sex worker, unless he starts to charges these other men for the sex.
As some feminists (ref) have pointed out, this can get a little messy as in cases where a woman goes on a date with a man expecting to get a gift and a meal and have sex with him in return. Is this sex work? I think it’s sex work if, and only if, the only (or primary?) motivation of the woman is the financial compensation and the sex is what she is trading for this. If the woman instead really enjoys sex and is having sex as much for her sake as for his, then I don’t think it would count as sex work. It can obviously be sex work if the woman enjoys the sex, the question is about her motivation: if its only (primarily?) monetary, then its sex work.
Although I think that some feminists (ref) go too far with this in declaring that consensual marriage where the two partners decide that the best course of action is to have one partner stay at home to take care of the house and family is just another form of sex work. This is not so, unless the only reason that one person marries the other is because of money and without any genuine desire for, or emotional connection with, the other person.
But what about more complicated cases? What about a woman who has a very high sex drive and would want to have sex either way, but who has also chosen to charge for this to increase her earnings or to support her family? Or the couple whose primary motivation in posting their amateur videos is exhibitionistic excitement, but who also charge for the video?
Is it helpful to compare it to “traditional” work? For example, my primary motivation in practicing psychotherapy is to be paid, but I certainly also find the work meaningful and interesting and would choose to do something else if I didn’t. I think it’s clear that no one would deny that I was doing “psychotherapy work.” And likely no one would deny this no matter what my motivation was: anyone practicing psychotherapy professionally is doing psychotherapy work, no matter their motivation. Indeed, even if I took on a pro bono case and received no financial compensation, this would still be psychotherapy work.
Is motivation irrelevant to the question of what qualifies as sex work then? Perhaps it is, but it seems like there’s a difference between the prostitute (using this as a morally neutral term) who is genuinely attracted to her client and the one who is not. They are both doing sex work, but the latter seems to be a more clear-cut case. The couple posting the amateur video out of themselves because they find it exciting and charging for this also seem to be doing sex work, even if this is only somewhat tangentially true.
It seems that, strictly speaking, a person’s motivations are irrelevant to the question of whether they’re engaged in sex work: if they receive money for an activity related to sex, then it is sex work. But, that’s not a great definition as it would debatably include writing erotica and I don’t think that should qualify as sex work as no one is sexually interacting with the writer of erotica. What about this: “sex work is when one person sexually interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, for the sake of financial gain.” This seems better as it would preclude the erotica writer and leaves aside the motivation of the sex worker, which seem to be irrelevant. It also transposes to other areas well: “[psychotherapy] work is when one person [psychotherapeutically] interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, for the sake of financial gain.” Not a perfect transposition, but pretty good for a statement that’s not directly related to the field.
The rub might hinge, though, on the “for the sake of” part. The couple posting the amateur porn is directly interacting with each other for the sake of their own pleasure (presumably). They are only indirectly interacting with others by allowing them to masturbate to video of them and to be paid for this privilege. A good definition was probably a lot easier to arrive at prior to the internet when amateur porn was more or less non-existent (besides polaroids which probably[?] weren’t shared much).
Perhaps we could change the definition to: “sex work is when one person sexually interacts with at least one other person, either directly or indirectly, with the expectation of financial gain.” This better leaves aside motivations, which I thought we had with our last definition, and also still includes sex work for which a person (immorally) refuses to pay. It also doesn’t seem to have a prima facie issues or cause any immediate contradictions.
Perhaps it would be instructive at this point to look up some other definitions. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_work) lists the definition as “the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation”. Interestingly whoever wrote that also drew a distinction between direct and indirect interactions, which seems right. I’m not sure it’s a better definition, though, as it says “for material gain.” This would exclude instances where a person performs what would otherwise be sex work but doesn’t get paid, so then suddenly it’s no longer sex work. That can’t be right. The Apple Dictionary lists the definition of sex work as “a person who engages in prostitution, appears in pornography, or takes part in similar activities for payment.” That’s an even worse definition than the Wikipedia one. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as “a person whose work involves sexually explicit behavior.” This is also a pretty poor definition as it’s not going to include things that seem like they should be included, like women who sell used panties. With this brief review of dictionarial endoxa, we have sufficient reason to think our definition pretty adequate at this stage.
It strikes me now that perhaps it’d be more instructive to try to define “work” more generally and just treat sex work as a species of work. The Apple dictionary lists one possible definition of work as “mental or physical activity as a means of earning income.” This seems like a good definition of the broad field of work. Sex work then would be something like “mental or physical activity related to sex and sexuality as a means of earning income.” It would work for psychotherapy work as well: “mental or physical activity related to the practice of psychotherapy as a means of earning income.” Fundamentally, all work is transactional: if you’re not getting paid, it’s not “work” in the relevant sense.
Of course, sometimes sex is transactional and probably shouldn’t count as sex work per se. For example, many romantic relationships become merely transactional over time if the intimacy dies, such as the married couple who no longer love each other, but one pays the rent and the other fucks them sometimes. In this case, I wouldn’t want to call this sex work as it’s the remnants of a previous relationship and this previous relationship better explains the interaction than calling it sex work (although I know there are some people who would want to call it sex work).
——–
[1] Someone might reasonably wonder where something like writing erotica would fall into this classification. I would say that it does not as no one is having a sexual interaction with the writer of the erotica, but with a work that is distinct from the author (as opposed to, for example, a pornographic video in which viewer is masturbating to an actor or actress through the medium of film).