Anti-sex work activists endlessly harp on the specter of the multi-billion dollar sex industry.  They never want to talk about how individual sex workers only make fairly modest incomes, and for generally short periods of time.  It’s easier to set up all of us sinners as obscenely wealthy, because it makes it easier for average people to resent us.  This contributes to a culture of disrespect for sex workers where the public thinks we’re not only lazy and gauche, we also get a 6-figure check every time we disrobe.  It’s a tactic of othering sex workers to a country that has been struggling a lot financially since the recession.  And it’s a very successful one.

When I was making the opposition tracker on SWAAY.org, I thought about trying to create a comprehensive list of how much profit there is to be made in anti-sex worker activism.  As sex workers, we’re constantly having our campaigns dismissed on the grounds that everything we say must be a lie because we have a financial stake in sex work.  It drives me crazy that it’s a one-sized argument, as though only sex workers profit from sex work.  Your average sex worker makes substantially less than an anti-sex worker academic or nonprofit, so who really has a “financial incentive” to say what they say?

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