To the Editor of USA Today,

For far too long, sex workers have been rejected or separated from the rest of society, and
it needs to be talked about. Very rarely do others think of the circumstances in which women go
into sex work, whether it is positive or negative circumstances. Some women are forced into it,
raised into it, trying to escape poverty, trying to provide for family, feeding an unfortunate drug
addiction, and sometimes, they enjoy profiting from the misogynistic idea that women are sexual
objects.
As a young girl, just starting to develop, I was slut shamed aggressively. It starts from
teaching girls what they can and cannot wear because we are “sexual objects,” so if you wear
what you are not supposed too, you might be deemed a whore. In middle school, if I was in a
group of guy friends, I was a whore. When I had “boyfriends” in middle school, I was a whore (I
had not even had sex yet). When I was in seventh grade, I learned my stepsister’s mother used to
be a stripper; I did not think much of it, but my mom said she was a slut because she was selling
her body. I was incredibly confused about how they could say these things about her when it was
my stepdad that met her in the strip club and later went on to marry her, but they never said
anything about his character or judgment.
The problem at hand is not only the misogyny, but also the dehumanization of sex
workers; in the journal article, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, Felicia, a sex
worker, says, “Others beat you for nothing – others call their friends to rape you b’coz you are a
sex worker. They say you deserved to be raped” (Felicia 113). She goes on the say that they
think sex workers are not human (Felicia 113). This dehumanization is very harmful because it
can affect their personal relationships with family and partners, but clients can also be very
violent because they simply do not see this woman as anything other than their object or toy.
When sex workers get raped, going to the police almost always backfires because they might be
arrested for prostitution (depending on the form of sex work), and they will be the doctors' last
priority if they should go to the hospital.
Black women in sex work experience a different level of dehumanization because of their
race. Montana Fishburne, the daughter of Laurence Fishburne, grew up in a wealthy household
and decided she wanted to make a sex tape because it might help her further into the
entertainment business. The first printing sold out 25,000 DVDs and blew up Blockbuster
revenues within the first week; despite this success, many people said she could have gotten
more famous in other ways. Mireille Miller-Young wrote in A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black
Woman in Pornography, “As a publicly sexual black woman, Montana is already seen as a
devalued commodity, and her strategic efforts to take up pornography for a bid at celebrity and
even pleasure are compromised by that fact” (Miller-Young 181). Black women are especially
devalued once they enter such a stigmatized industry such as sex work. If we do not include this
perspective along with many others, it can be damaging. If we only pay attention to the majority,
that is only a part of the sex worker’s lives saved; there will still be many others suffering and
experiencing the sad effects of misogyny, dehumanization, and social isolation.
 Sex workers are human beings with lives that they live, and they need to make money just
like everyone else with a job. We can also begin to look at this issue from an intersectional
perspective, analyzing women’s experiences from a global perspective. In Dealing in Desire:
Asian Ascendency, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work, Kimberly
Hoang shares a conversation between her and an Asian sex worker; the sex worker says, “We are
not the ones they should save. When you go home [to America], tell people that this is a job just
like an other job” (Hoang 108). There are sex workers that do this for a living because it feeds
them and their families, and they see it as nothing other than a job.
Sex positivity is one of the many reasons why sex work should be normalized and talked
about more; if sex positivity becomes a common value in society, it would be able to save sex
worker lives everywhere. When women enjoy what they are doing, they are practicing sex
positivity; this means that they see sex as something that might empower them, and it benefits
them. These women are comfortable in their sexuality and are against slut shaming of any kind.
Looking at sex and sexuality in a positive way for women used to be very uncommon; sex was
also seen only for the purpose of having children or for man’s pleasure. Sex and its pleasure were
not talked about for women, and most women felt ashamed or dirty if they liked it. Nowadays, it
is not exactly like this; women are more open to talking about their sex life and finding pleasure
in it; there is even music and art about it. However, there are still plenty of women that feel
shame, like they do not know their bodies, or have never been in a relationship that respects their
sexual needs. What society rarely tells women and growing girls is that it is normal and perfectly
okay to feel sexual desire, and it is supposed to happen once a girl hits puberty.
Beth Montemurro in Deserving Desire: Women’s Stories of Sexual Evolution says, “When
girls explore their bodies independently, they better understand their sexual functioning and can
become more confident about sex throughout their lives” (Montemurro 50). According to this
statement, it is perfectly normal and even good for a woman to experiment with her body and to
get to know it. To get society speaking on these subjects is important; it could save a life, allow
others to see sex workers as human beings, and bring awareness to the fact that women can
capitalize from their own bodies (which are sexualized no matter what they do), and it should go
without judgment from others.

Thank you,
Abby Patterson
“Autonomy and Consent in Sex Work.” Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline,

and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work, by Kimberly Kay Hoang, 1st ed., University of

California Press, Oakland, California, 2015, pp. 104–125. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt13x1hcz.9. Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.

Felicia, and Muchaneta. “Sex Workers' Stories.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender

Equity, no. 82, 2009, pp. 113–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41321374. Accessed 24 Nov.

2020.

Miller-Young, Mireille. “A Taste for Brown Sugar : Black Women in Pornography.” 2014.

Montemurro, Beth. Deserving Desire  : Women’s Stories of Sexual Evolution . New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press,, 2014. Web.