Strange Logic

A new documentary by Louis Theroux entitled ‘Selling Sex‘ has been creating a stir in my social media feed. As you might guess from the title, it tackles the subject of sex work, following three women involved in the industry. Most of the sex workers I follow were not impressed. This thread by Lola Ruin and this tweet by Mistress Evilyne are pretty indicative of the feedback I saw.  Even the people involved in it were not happy.

I’ve not seen the show so I can’t review it. Instead I want to review a review of it. Specifically, this review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan. I’m sure if you asked Lucy she’d claim her article, like the show, was a balanced and nuanced take on a tricky subject. Yet I think her final paragraph, containing the sentences below, show just how illogical and confused people can be when it comes to sex work.

The true question is how we define coercion or exploitation. The aim of the law’s definition is surely to ensure that anyone selling his or her body is doing so willingly, as a matter of absolutely free choice. Whether this can be said of any of the women here, I am not sure.

The idea of selling your body is not only a tired cliche but also makes no sense. A sex worker no more sells their body that does an athlete, a fashion model or a nurse. Like all those professions, a sex worker uses their body and their brain to provide a service. At no point before, during or after the transaction does a client own any part of their body. Possibly used underwear or sweaty athletic wear might be purchasable, should both parties tastes run in that direction, but that’s a whole different dynamic.

Logically, if having sex implies some transfer of ownership, then the same must be true regardless of the involvement (or not) of a fee. So does Lucy think that a wife having sex with her husband results in him owning her body? Is she a fan of bringing back the idea of Coverture more widely? It would seem an unusual position for a Guardian journalist to adopt.

The other strange part of that final paragraph is the bar she sets for doing sex work – ‘a matter of absolutely free choice.’ How many of us do our jobs out of absolutely free choice? I love my job, but I’d drop it tomorrow if I had the financial independence to make an absolutely free choice. That’s why it’s my job and not my hobby.

Coal mining is a dangerous, dirty and physically challenging job. As a result miners are often lauded as blue collar hero’s, taking on tough work to put food on the table for their families. Are they doing that as an absolutely free choice? Maybe we should we shut down the mines until we’re 100% sure of that. The idea that miners don’t understand the choices they make would be rightly criticized as patronizing and insulting. Yet people like Lucy are happy to infantilize sex workers and imply that they other people’s judgements (the law) should replace the workers own choices. Instead, shouldn’t we be celebrating sex workers for the difficult job they choose to do?

This is a long post spun from just a few sentences in a review of a show I’ve not even seen. Yet those few sentences seem illustrative of how even intelligent people can have internalized damaging and illogical views on sex work. From the online feedback that seems to be a problem the show’s creators shared.

I’ve no idea what’s an appropriate image to accompany this kind of post. Given I mentioned Lola Ruin at the top of it, I’m going to use that as an excuse to feature a lovely shot of her (from her twitter feed).