New York Times columnist and "Pornified" author Pamela Paul dissected the term "sex worker" in a column published Thursday, pushing back on its increasing popularity.
"Even outside academic, activist and progressive strongholds, ‘sex work’ is becoming a widespread euphemism for ‘prostitution,’" Paul explained. "It’s now commonly used by politicians, the media, Hollywood and government agencies. But make no mistake: ‘Sex work’ is hardly a sign of liberation."
The term, Paul argued, sounds like a "conventional job title" and "whitewashes the economic constraints, family ruptures and often sordid circumstances that drive many women to sell themselves."
"It flips the nature of the transaction in question: It enables sex buyers to justify their own role, allowing the purchase of women’s bodies for their own sexual pleasure and violent urges to feel as lightly transactional as the purchase of packaged meat from the supermarket," Paul added.
One of the worst iterations of the term is "child sex worker," which Paul said has appeared in mainstream liberal outlets like Buzzfeed, The Decider and The Independent.
The author claimed that while "data is often incomplete," it is only a "tiny minority of people [who] actively want to remain in prostitution."
Paul referenced a July feature story on Melanie Thompson, a former victim of child sex trafficking who has become the Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator for the Coalition Against Trafficking. "The media uses terms like ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’ in their reporting, treating prostitution as a job like any other," Thompson said.
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"I urge the media to remove the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker’ from your style handbooks," Thompson also said.
This is a common story in the U.S., Paul wrote. "Many, if not most, enter the trade unwillingly or underage (one oft-cited statistic shows the most common age of entry is between 12 and 16; some have also disputed this)," she said.
"They are frequently survivors of abuse and often develop substance abuse problems," Paul continued. "Many suffer afterward from post-traumatic stress disorder. To say that they deserve attention and compassion is to acknowledge the breadth of their experience, not to deny them respect nor cast them solely as victims."
New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof has similarly criticized liberals for double standards on prostitution.
"The push in recent years to allow pimping seems odd to me," Kristof wrote, "because elsewhere we liberals are alert to the potential for exploitation. We bar work among consenting adults if it’s performed for less than the minimum wage, for example, and we block consensual high-risk work like using window-washing platforms without many safeguards."
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