The Conversation, August 10, 2017
Stigma is a mark of disgrace, a social discrediting, or a spoiled identity. For sex workers, legal, cultural and social discourse is characterised by “prurience, titillation, outrage and disgust”.
Narratives of sex work as undesirable and sex workers as disposable victims are heavily steeped in our cultural imagination.
Examining the individual and institutional treatment of sex workers reveals how sexuality is organised and stratified, and how certain kinds of intimacies are rewarded or punished.