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Sex Work Quotes

Browse 105 quotes about Sex Work.

Sex Work Quotes

“All these women were, however, careful to distinguish *sexual commerce*, in which women view sex work as skilled labor and their chosen occupation, from *sex trafficking*, described by governments, NGOs, and activists as forced sexual labor. Key to this distinction is a labor process that depends heavily on workers' consent and the establishment of trust in relation to both the clients and the madams/bar owners who regulate the workers' labor.”

WomenTrustConsentSex WorkSex TraffickingSkilled LaborChosen OccupationForced Sexual LaborLabor ProcessSexual Commerce
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“In these spaces of leisure, powerful local elites, Viet Kieus from the diaspora, business executives, and marginal tourists enter into niche markets that never overlap. Instead, each niche market operates with a unique logic of desire that has important implications for how we think about that place of sex work in the global economy.”

DesireLogicImportanceLeisureUniquenessImplicationsGlobal EconomySex WorkSpacesNiche Markets
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“Yeah, I'm a drug addict. And a prostitute. The whole world knows. Not because I robbed my own family. Not because I ended up behind bars. Not because I've been hassled by the cops when soliciting customers from a local street corner. Not because I'm shooting up in the public bathrooms at your city park. Everyone knows because I told them all. I never tried to hide any of it. I never felt the need to.”

TruthCourageHonestyIdentityProstitutionSex WorkShamingOuting
Book:Speed Needles
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“From my understanding, this is a matter of value?” asked Andrei. “Like other men have had her leg, so her leg doesn’t mean anything to you anymore?” “No... no, that’s not even it. It’s that you can’t pretend to give someone your leg. Even if it’s just a photo. Legs can’t pretend. You can, but legs can’t. And when someone gets your leg, it’s given. And you multiply that by a hundred, but she has only two. Two little legs. And it’s as if her legs know. The body is not meant to be mass distributed, Andrei. We’re not large gods in Olympus—we need assistance climbing up the stairs and eventually porcelain teeth to chew our food. Thousands of strangers have every part of my girlfriend’s body, down to the ears. But the one thing they don’t have is a woman in the other room sending herself away. They don’t have that,” cried Raphael. “I have that.”

LoveSadnessDatingBreakupProstitutionSex WorkCam GirlsOnly Fans
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Lo sfruttamento può riguardare qualunque ambito lavorativo. Il fatto che appaia peggiore quando si parla di sex work è indicativo dell'atteggiamento ambivalente che abbiamo nei confronti del sesso: considerato basso e sporco da un lato, glorificato e santificato dall'altro. Fare un pompino per 5 euro sembra più grave che raccogliere le fragole per 3 euro l'ora. Ma lo sfruttamento è sempre sfruttamento.”

SexWorkFeminismWomanAnthropologySex WorkFemminismoAntropologiaSex WorkersSex Worker
Book:Sex work is work
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“I want you to understand that the difference between being a sugar baby versus being a prostitute is the connection. Although sometimes “sugar dating” is just a code for escorting, those people are just not doing it right. To really sugar date correctly, you have to feel something for the man who takes care of you, and he has to feel something for you.”

SexMoneyDatingProstitutionSex WorkSugar DaddySugar BabySugar Dating
Book:The Sugar Baby Club
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“That's when I joined the circus. I started as a stablehand and eventually became one of the riders." She sighed nostalgically. "I liked the circus. The people are warm." "Too warm, I gather." Maisie nodded. "I never really got on with the ringmaster, and when he told me to gam him it was time to leave. I decided that if I'm going to suck cocks for a living I want a better wage. And here I am." She always picked up speech mannerisms and she had adopted April's unrestrained vocabulary. April gave her a shrewd look. "Just how many cocks have you sucked since then?" "None, to tell the truth." Maisie felt embarrassed. "I can't lie to you, April-I'm not sure I'm cut out for this trade." "You're perfect for it!" April protested. "You've got that twinkle in your eye that men can't resist. Listen. Persist with Solly Greenbourne. Give him a bit more each time. Let him feel your pussy one day, let him see you naked the next. In about three weeks he'll be panting for it. One night when you've got his trousers down and his tool in your mouth, say: 'If you bought me a little house in Chelsea, we could do this any time you wanted to.' I swear to you, Maisie, if Solly says no to that, I'll become a nun." Maisie knew she was right, but her soul revolted against it. She was not sure why. It was partly because she was not attracted to Solly. Paradoxically, another reason was that he was so nice. She could not bring herself to manipulate him heartlessly. But worst of all, she felt she would be giving up all hope of real love-a real marriage with a man she really burned for. On the other hand, she had to live somehow, and she was determined not to live like her parents, waiting all week for a pittance on payday and forever at risk of unemployment because of some financial crisis hundreds of miles away.”

MoneyProstitutionSex Work
Book:A Dangerous Fortune
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“Money buys protection. It buys time off and privacy. And it buys nice, pretty shit. Money also buys food, housing, and health care. Getting paid enough to meet our needs—and more—feels good. I’m not romanticizing the sex industry, I know it has risks; I’m just not going to romanticize economic deprivation in the name of being a “good girl,” either. So do sex workers feel pleasure at work? Yeah. Because you know what feels amazing? Surviving capitalism.”

MoneyEconomyFeminismCapitalismSex WorkSexworking
Book:Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
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“Feminists have accepted that choice is possible when it comes to a different, difficult subject: abortion. The feminist position (and I agree with it) is that women own their bodies and therefore each woman has the right to choose to get an abortion if she gets pregnant. This is called being "pro-choice". Feminists should be consistent on the subject of choice. If a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, she should also have the right to choose to have sex for money. It's her body; it's her right.”

FeminismChoiceAbortionWomen S RightsProstitutionSex WorkPro ChoiceSex Workers
Book:Paying for It
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“While anti-sex work feminists see trading sex as the ultimate concession to patriarchy, I see it as a refusal. A refusal to accept the terms we've been given, to accept the violence of poverty, exhaustion, and overwork, to accept the limited options and future we're meant to be content with. In that refusal is an affirmation of our right to exist, of our right to survive, and the possibility of a reality without white supremacism or capitalism.”

FeminismIdentityCapitalismPatriarchySex Work
Book:Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex
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“Can you go back to America and tell all your friends that I do NOT want to be rescued? All these Americans and Viet Kieus who come here thinking that they need to save us are so stupid. If you had to choose between working in a factory for twelve hours a day with bosses who don't let you rest and [who] look at you like they are raping you with their eyes, or working in a bar where you have a few drinks and sometimes spread you legs for a man, which would you choose? Why don't people go rescue factory workers? We are the ones who were not scared to leave factory work for sex work. We are smart hustlers [*nguoi chen lan*], not dumb, scared factory workers! —Trinh, twenty-four-year-old hostess in Lavender”

AmericaSexSex WorkBarSex WorkersFactory WorkersMisconceptionsFactoryHostessFactory Work
Book:Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work
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“Believe me, porn’s not easy. It’s not just screwing hot chicks. Especially when you’ve made a name for yourself. A lot’s expected of you, man. A lot. Sometimes for hours. You got all those crew members standing around expecting you to perform, waiting on you, wanting to get home to their wives or their kids or whatever but they can’t till you do what you gotta do. And it’s repetitive. There’s only so many ways to fuck somebody. And most of your co-workers become friends and you get to know them too well, to the point they irritate you, and there’s just no sexual chemistry most times—like I said, it’s a job—and you gotta psyche yourself up, like training for a marathon.”

SexSexualityPornographyPornSex WorkPorn StarSex WorkerPornographicAdult FilmAdult Film Star
Book:Porno Valley
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“Anti-prostitution feminism is a place where men can participate in flinging slurs like "holes," "whores," "orifices," and "cum dumpsters" at sex workers– and call it feminist analysis. It's a place where men who consider themselves feminist-aligned can patronize and dismiss prostitute women, as men have done for centuries. It's a place where a police officer can rifle through the bathroom bin at a sex worker's flat, retrieve blood-soaked tampons, publish photographs of them in his memoir (with a touching dedication to sex workers he has met in his work: 'this is my attempt to describe your reality'), and still be treated like a feminist activist. As sex worker Charlotte Shane observes, anti-prostitution feminism makes it progressive for men to dwell incessantly on violent, coercive sex and abject bodies while at the same time enjoying praise and even Pulitzer Prizes.”

SexWomenFeminismProstitutionSex WorkProstituteSex Worker
Author:Juno Mac & Molly Smith
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“Prostitution is not exactly a reputable business over there either, even though the girls actually have to pay taxes on their earnings, and submit to regular health check ups. Even the prostitutes have universal healthcare over there. The benefit of legal prostitution is obvious: tax income for the city, healthier girls, and safety. In Amsterdam, each girl has an alarm button next to her bed that she can press if one of her "customers" tries to rape or hurt her. The police will arrive within minutes and protect the girl from harm.”

SexProstitutionAmsterdamSex WorkProstitutesSex WorkersProstitute QuotesLegalize It
Book:Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Going to New York
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“Sex workers and their allies are dismissed as the ‘pimp lobby’. Trans people and their allies become the ‘trans cabal’, or in an incredibly offensive formulation, the ‘trans Taliban’…. And any challenge to reactionary feminist views is repackaged, via these conspiracy theories, as evidence that they are indeed right. Terms such as ‘trans Taliban’ echo other reactionary monikers, such as the racist ‘woke Stasi’ and misogynist ‘feminazi’, which are common on the far right. They also tap the contemporary appetite for conspiracy that has supported recent rightward shifts. Reactionary feminists may well be the InfoWars of the movement.”

RacismTransgenderSex WorkFar RightTerfSwerf
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“Western borders are currently being reasserted in the context of economic crisis, to protect the global ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’. And reactionary feminism is complicit with this capitalist and neo-colonial project. It foregrounds narratives of scarcity; it claims resources and support for the ‘good’ women rather than the ‘bad’.”

ColonialismSex WorkFar RightWhite FeminismTransphobia
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“Herein lies the material basis of trans femininity: a cis woman might be a sex worker and both proletarian and bourgeois standards for female respectability have long been defined in contrast to the figure of the sex worker, but trans femininity has been positioned by police and cultural producers in a categorical relation to sex work since the late nineteenth century. This is a feminist theoretical conclusion that trans feminine lives reveal and trans women politicize.”

Sex WorkTransfemininityTransfeminismTrans Theory
Book:The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory (Volume 27)
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“Somewhere, I heard the phrase, ‘When money talks, no one checks the grammar.’ That’s what all this was about—money, money, and more money. For money, girls sacrificed their own lives; for money, they risked sexually transmitted diseases; for money, they were willing to step beyond their convictions. For money, the agency treated us like trash thrown on the street; for money, they were willing to risk our health, safety, and everything else, and for money, they had a few select girls they treated decently. It was never about people, morals, or decency.”

GreedExplorationSurvival InstinctSex WorkObjectificationPower DynamicsMoral DecayHuman Dignity QuotesSystematic Abuse
Book:ELIS: Irish call girl
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“A sex worker deserves a billion times more respect, than the mystical fraudsters of the society, such as astrologers, psychics and tarot card readers.”

TruthScienceHumanityActorsSocietyIgnoranceEntertainmentCinemaReasoningMysticismPsychicsPornographyHumanity And SocietyEroticaAstrologyProstitutionMoviesRational ThinkingSocial PsychologyThinking QuotesSocial ProgressActorPornPsychicSex WorkCinematographyScience Of MindActressTarot CardsFilm MakingProstituteProstitutesSex WorkersPsychic PowersAstrology QuotesPsychic MediumTarot ReadingReasoning SkillsAstrologerFilm MakersTarot ReaderPorn StarPsychic ReadingsFraudulenceProstitute QuotesSex WorkerPornographicAstrologersPorn StarsPornographerPornographers
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“In Germany, people will agree in theory that prostitution should be legal, but they usually won't admit that they themselves have ever gone to a prostitute: "Yeah, it should be legal, and I have no problem with it, but I would never go to one. I'm above that." Then they secretly go to one anyway. On the down low. They won't admit it in polite company, because they don't want to look trashy.”

PoliticsSexSocietyGermanyProstitutionSex WorkProstitutesSex WorkersProstitute QuotesLegal Prostitution
Book:Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Going to New York
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“Gay rights aren't predicated on being born gay or having the right gene. Gay rights are predicated on having choice and consent. If you're a man and you can find another man that consents to have sex with you, it's the consent that gives you the right to have sex with him. Genetics are irrelevant when it comes to sexual rights. Just as gay rights are based on choice and consent, so are prostitution rights. All sexual rights are based on choice and consent.”

LgbtLgbtqProstitutionGay RightsLgbtqiaSex WorkSex WorkersLegalizationJohnsDecriminalization
Book:Paying for It
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“Prostitution arrests are racist. They have always been racist. In 1866, San Francisco police arrested 137 women, 'virtually all Chinese'; the police boasted that they had 'expelled three hundred Chinese women.' In the 1970s, the American Civil Liberties Union found that black women were seven times more likely to be arrested for prostitution-related offenses than white women. This disparity is no relic of the past: between 2012 and 2015, 85 percent of people charged with 'loitering for the purpose of prostitution' in New York City were Black or Latinx- groups that only make up 54 percent of the city's population. Increases in prostitution enforcement mean increases in the arrests of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement mean increases in the arrest of women of color. Between 2012 and 2016, the New York Police Department stepped up enforcement targeting massage parlors. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant details, during this period the arrests of Asian people in New York charged either with 'unlicensed massage' or prostitution went up by 2,700 percent. Arrests on the street target Black and Latina women - who may not even be selling sex - simply for wearing 'tight jeans' or a crop top. The NYPD do not arrest white women in affluent areas of the city for wearing jeans.”

ProstitutionSex WorkProstituteProstitutesSex Workers
Author:Juno Mac & Molly Smith
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“It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy to women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize for such sympathy. One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one of the neighboring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a woman at first sight.”

SympathyProstitutionSex WorkEmpathy For OthersProstituteSex Workers
Book:La dame aux camélias
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“I saw a documentary about prostitution in Holland a few years ago, that said over there health insurance actually pays for monthly visits to a prostitute for the disabled, because they feel that sex is part of a healthy life, so unmarried disabled men have a right to have sex, even if it's with a paid prostitute. Pretty bizarre, huh? Can you imagine a US health insurance company picking up the bill for your romp in the hay with a hooker?”

SexSexualityProstitutionObamacareSex WorkDisability QuotesProstitutesSex WorkersSex Positive QuotesUniversal Healthcare
Author:Oliver Markus Malloy
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“Of course when the history books tell of the groups murdered by the Nazis, they never list the prostitutes, because I'm sure the mention of their deaths is considered a stain on the other victims. The attitude is that the lives of prostitutes are worthless. I think it is self-hate. Our world hates anyone who would accept us and our bodies, and our secret desires without reservation. But that is what the ladies taught me... to welcome disdained things.”

MurderShameHolocaustMisogynyProstitutionXenophobiaNazisSex WorkSex Workers
Book:My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1
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“Und eins sollte keine und keiner von denen, die immer wieder predigen, Prostitution sei „Sexarbeit“ und ein Beruf wie jeder andere, eine ganz normale Dienstleistung, je vergessen: Wenn wir uns als Gesellschaft dafür entscheiden, dass Sex Arbeit ist, müsste man Prostitution auch dir auf dem Arbeitsamt als Jobangebot unterbreiten dürfen, und außerdem wird jeder Typ, der dir nachts auf der Straße hinterherpfeift und ruft: „Ey, Süße, willste ficken?“, keine sexuelle Belästigung begangen, sondern dir einfach nur ein Jobangebot gemacht haben.”

JobProstitutionSex WorkSexual HarassmentProstitutesSex WorkersSexuelle Belästigung
Book:Entmenschlicht - Warum wir Prostitution abschaffen müssen
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“Trans-exclusionary and anti-sex-work feminism amplify the mainstream movement’s desire for power and authority, and pursue it by policing the borders of feminism and womanhood. The mainstream preoccupation with threat becomes an overt ‘us and them’ mentality, and the necropolitical desire for annihilation is deliberately turned on more marginalised people.”

VictimhoodSex WorkWhite FeminismTransphobia
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“The investment of sexual trauma in the outrage economy allows the ‘good’ woman (cis, ‘respectable’, implicitly white) to be used to withhold support and resources from the ‘bad’ ones. Trans women and sex workers are pitted against more privileged women, in a politics that does not challenge how neoliberal capitalism has created massive inequalities of distribution.”

TransgenderSex WorkSexual ViolenceWhite Feminism
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“Reactionary [trans- and sex worker-hostile] feminism accelerates the white feminist ‘war machine’, using the media and social media outrage economy to maximum effect. Although its numbers are small, this movement is tightly networked and highly organised. Its tactics are similar to the notorious harassment campaign Gamergate: it identifies and then relentlessly attacks target after target, seemingly with the aim of total submission.”

TransgenderSex WorkWhite FeminismTransphobiaGamergate
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“... something in the back of her mind whispered that there was no help coming and if she ran out of money, she had no real way to earn more. Her only skills were embroidery and weeding gardens. I suppose I could sell my body, but I'm not sure how one does that, either. It seemed like it would be a lot more complicated than getting a seat on a coach. Dis you approach people, or did they approach you, and how did you start a conversation that ended in money for sex? Was there an etiquette? This was not the sort of thing one was taught at convents. It was easier just to sleep in the coaches.”

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Book:Nettle & Bone
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“I pulled my dress to my hips, bunching it there in a way I was sure must look awkward, but there was no other way to move my legs apart. I considered unzipping the back and slipping it off to seem less ungainly, but I intended to give him not an inch more than he paid for or deserved. I had no illusion of modesty, but I was well aware of my worth as a commodity. If he wanted to see the curve of my back—and certainly if he wanted another look at my tits—there would be a price tag attached.”

LegsHipsModestyProstitutionPriceDressSex WorkBack
Book:The Temptation of Eden
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“Sex workers are the original feminists. Often seen as merely subject to others' whims, in fact, sex workers have shaped and contributed to social movements across the world. In medieval Europe, brother workers formed guilds and occasionally engaged in strikes or street protests in response to crackdowns, workplace closures, or unacceptable working conditions. Fifteenth-century prostitutes, arraigned before city councils in Bavaria, asserted that their activities constituted work rather than a sin. One prostitute (under the pseudonym Another Unfortunate) wrote to the Times of London in 1859 to state, "I conduct myself prudently, and defy you and your policemen too Why stand you there mouthing with sleek face about morality? What is morality?”

WomenFeminismProstitutionSex Work
Book:Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights
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“To a degree, these activists are right; a whore is a whore is a whore, and legal, moral or procedural lines serve only to break people into smaller groups which are more easily dominated by the power-hungry. If you accept money from someone that he gives due to sexual interest in you, then you are a whore and everything else is just semantics.”

Sex Work
Book:The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I: Collected Essays from "The Honest Courtesan"
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“Anti-sex-industry feminism makes excellent use of outrage. This is generated, quite rightly, in response to the trauma of sex industry survivors. But the telling of survivor stories works in tandem with the idea of a ‘pimp lobby’, which positions sex workers and their allies as malign. This strategy is very effective: it means that people who support decriminalisation, many of whom are sex workers and/or feminists, are not only failing to ‘listen to survivors’ but are supporting ‘pimps’ instead.”

FeminismSurvivorsSex WorkOutrage Porn
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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