The sex industry has existed in various forms from the dawn of recorded human history. Sex workers have always been a part of societies, economies, and civilizations. Despite countless attempts at banning, regulating, shaming, and controlling the sex industry, it continues, relatively unfazed.

So why does society treat sex workers as criminals, when they have been such an integral part of civilization for so long? Aren’t sex workers themselves often the ones who are the victims of crimes? Paradoxically, it is not the existence of the sex industry itself which causes this victimization to occur, but rather the way that we view sex workers as a culture. Further, the way that we view sex workers is a reflection of the way that we view all women.

When a person experiences violence or abuse in any other line of work, she has both social and legal recourse to seek support and justice. Sex workers, be they full-service, strippers, porn stars, webcam models, or otherwise involved in the industry, do not have this same recourse. While this creates a dangerous situation for sex workers, it also creates a dangerous situation for all women.

Our respect for women as a culture is often related to how we perceive their sexuality, and this is demonstrated by rampant violence against women of both a physical and epistemic nature. The way society treats a woman employed in the sex industry speaks volumes about the way it treats women in general. Sex workers are the canaries in a very deep and dark coal mine.

In his 1997 book, The Racial Contract, Charles Mills introduced the concept of “epistemologies of ignorance.” These epistemologies are systems of obtaining knowledge which benefit people in privileged positions of power and allow them to maintain their power (Mills).

The systematic silencing of sex workers who try to share their experience is a prime example of how these kinds of violent epistemologies are born. Gaps in public knowledge about the perspectives of marginalized groups are not always accidental, but often intentional, with the goal of justifying the inhumane treatment of these marginalized groups (Tuana).

“Territorial imperatives structure and limit the kinds of utterances that can be voiced within them with a reasonable expectation of uptake and “choral support”: an expectation of being heard, understood, taken seriously,” writes Lorriane Code in Rhetorical Space, Essays on Gendered Locations.

Sex workers do not and have never had this expectation of being heard, understood, and taken seriously.

Recent legislation in the US has only made things worse.

On April 11th, 2018, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act became laws in the United States. While FOSTA and SESTA were well-intentioned pieces of legislation, which appeared to fight the victimization and exploitation of sex workers, actual sex workers were not pleased with the results.

Intended to criminalize the “facilitation” of things like child sex slavery, these bills instead shut down websites that fit the ambiguous definition of having facilitated sex work of any kind, consensual or not. The far-reaching and sometimes absurd effects of this went as far as to result in the tag #femalefitness being shadowbanned from Instagram. This started with Instagram hiding the posts of non-sex worker pole dancers who used pole dancing as a way to stay fit (Rodriguez).

These pieces of legislation serve as a glaring example of how workers in the sex industry are harmed by an epistemology of ignorance. Those trying to help sex workers often end up hurting them, and this is caused by both an ignorance of the hard facts surrounding sex work, and a deep misunderstanding of the experience of sex workers.

According to sex workers, FOSTA-SESTA’s further criminalization of the means they use to support themselves has actually made them less safe.

“It’s my personal opinion, based on familiarity with many of the groups that pushed FOSTA/SESTA, that this ambiguity about acceptable speech concerned with sex and sex-adjacent work (like massage or dating) is purely intentional,”

writes Liara Roux, sex worker, and political organizer.