One accusation often levelled at sex workers is that we spread disease. Instead of responding to this by talking about safety measures we take, we should refuse to see catching a disease as a moral failing.
There have always been claims about sex workers being “dirty” or “diseased”, mainly with STDs like HIV as the primary concern in recent decades. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, with many sex workers having to defy lockdown rules to pay rent and being at high risk of contracting it, these accusations of disease spread have come from a new angle.
It is true that sex workers, as a group, have a higher rate of STDs than the general population. This is due to a higher number of partners, not a lack of interest in safety or due to ignorance about how protection works. Poorer sex workers who engage in more precarious (survival) sex work are more likely to be pressured into not using protection, and that raises their chances further.
The fact that we are more likely to have STDs is not due to any sort of moral failing, it is due to circumstance. As individuals, we often assess risk and decide to do things that could expose us to disease, and sometimes we end up catching something. Two people who engage in the same sort of risky acts might have wildly different outcomes, one ending up with no STDs and the other having many of them. Only the person who is found to have STDs is burdened with the stigma that comes with being infected, despite both people taking similar actions with similar risks.
Even if everyone is willing to agree that catching a disease is not a moral failing, many will point out that the possibility of spreading it is a separate issue. It is. Once others become involved, their well-being has to be considered.
A sex worker who is seeing clients in the middle of the pandemic knows that seeing one client after the other means risking transferring Covid-19 from one client to the next. I have seen many people compare this to a person recklessly choosing to see multiple friends, or to someone hosting a party – the rebuttal to which is that sex workers have to do this to live and can therefore be absolved of the moral responsibility. This raises a lot of questions. It’s considered moral when I’m seeing clients to just barely survive? I could skip my rent for a couple of months before an eviction would go through – so does surviving include paying my rent? If it includes rent and food and necessities… if I see one client beyond my basic needs, does it become immoral then?
Continuing to see clients to earn money should be judged similarly to people in other jobs that are non-essential whose workplaces have not shut during this pandemic. For most workers, what stops them from continuing to go into their workplace all throughout is the fact their employer will not allow them. No matter how averse to taking the risk, when your workplace is still open and you’ll lose your job otherwise, most people will keep going in. They’re not staying home just because the law says so. For sex workers outside of brothels, and for some in them, our workplaces have not closed. Like most people, we weight the disease risk against our needs.
Clients are the ones who give us these diseases, then other clients (despite knowing the risk too) decide to see us. In other workplaces, people’s coworkers are at risk alongside numerous customers who might come in, but selling sex often only involves one worker and one client. Johns are taking personal responsibility far more directly. It’s easier to blame one person than to blame many, so pointing the finger at hookers is easier than talking about how clients spread disease via the sex workers they see.
Someone could say that sex workers spread disease, and in a way they’d be right. As a group, on average, we are more likely to become infected with certain illnesses and then to spread them in the time before we realize. The problem is the implication being snuck in with that statement, which is that we do so due to negligence or inherent dirtiness. I’d rather talk about how sex workers are vulnerable to becoming ill ourselves, with any spread as a side-effect of that initial vulnerability.
When advertising to clients, it makes sense that we respond to claims about disease spread by talking about how safe we are. Escorts can wax poetic to clients about how we get tested often and always use condoms and don’t even see that many people. At the end of the day, that’s marketing, and a lot of it’s bullshit. Now that Covid-19 has come along, we see clients who are anti-vaxxers or deniers, or others who are nervous who we reassure that we’re taking constant lateral flow tests. The risk they choose to take is ultimately up to them, and we shouldn’t be blamed for their choices. They choose to see us.
If someone says hookers are disease-carriers, especially during this pandemic, the first thing I want to do is to deny it. To rid myself of that stigma by talking about all the ways I’m careful. Sometimes I even want to tear others down to make myself seem better, to talk about how rarely the average person of my age gets STD tests and how so many people are going out to parties or to restaurants while I stay home. None of these impulses are helpful, in the long-run. The way to deal with this stigma is not to try to exempt myself or a small sub-group from the shaming directed at us all.
So what, if sex workers are more likely to catch infectious diseases, and are therefore more likely to pass them on in greater numbers as a population? Why should that reflect negatively on us?
… If someone says hookers are disease-carriers, I want to ask why we would be, if not for clients spreading those diseases to us in the first place.
Why are we framed as “carriers” of disease first, and not as victims of these illnesses?
Jack Talks About Sex Work 