Sex work: A rejoinder

Abstract

In fact, our citation from Day concerned a different question: why sex work attracts stigma. We claimed that sex work threatens only a “particular moral economy” within capitalism. Fox, a self-employed sex worker who runs an escort agency, is no longer an IUSW member. The IUSW does not only include wage labourers and the self-employed in its ranks, yet these are the majority. We regard it as we do any union: critically. Other unions engage in disreputable activity (sweetheart deals, graft, etc), and many include managers, but they remain unions. We repudiate Edwards’s suggestion that we deny that prostitution can be harmful. It is an outlandish claim. What we say is that the degree of harm varies greatly according to individuals and circumstances.