When you consider all the multiple ways to be oppressed, the deck is incredibly stacked against these street/outdoor sex workers and the stigma seems to have little or virtually no agency. With these we talk a lot about how to save these sex workers rather than what can we do to give them more voice? What can we do to give them more agency in their lives and work? The prostitute is seen primarily as the source of the problem rather than as someone who is denied rights or agency. The issues raised by sex workers – gender and age economic structures, violence (particularly from clients), police harassment, health and stigma – are rarely raised on paper. Or rather they are, they are the expectation rather than the norm and are not presented from the prostitute's point of view. (Jeffrey 158) We need to start seeing society's bigger problems as problems rather than scapegoating sex workers.
tags