Word of the Day by Tina Orlandini & Jorge Díaz Ortiz
The word of the day is Sex Work. The term refers to the exchange of sexual services between consenting adults of all genders, for money or goods, sex work positions, the rights, safety, and wellness of sex workers as a labor struggle and in solidarity with all workers who are exploited under capitalism between 1979 and 1980 sex worker and activists. Coined a phrase, sex work and the woman against violence and pornography and media conference in San Francisco. The shift away from prostitution to sex work emerged from the struggle led by sex workers for their safety and survival. Fundamental to this shift in language is the agency of sex workers to name themselves while also emphasizing the role and society has worked.
Anti-prostitution organizations attempt to speak for sex workers as needing to be saved while denying the multiplicity of their experiences and material needs.
Likewise, advocates working to end sex trafficking claim that sex work of any kind enables sex trafficking, which is not only inaccurate but the related laws, police. And strip club raids also put sex workers in more danger of incarceration. Sex work is inherently tied to bodily autonomy, particularly for women and femme identified people who have been repeatedly told through laws and political rhetoric that their bodies don’t belong to them.
The sex worker movement in the United States today stands on the shoulders of the queer and trans liberation movement and women like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson who fought for the visibility and protection of trans sex workers incarcerated for performing sex work for survival.
Sex work is work. As working-class people, we must make connections from within an organization and fuse our efforts to build stronger movements of solidarity for our collective liberation. Because when sex workers win, we all win.
This is the word of the day.
