When it comes to the topic of prostitution and censorship of discussion about it, terms like “sex work” are often banned whilst words like “prostitution” or “sex trafficking” are not. In practice, given that labels like “sex worker” are adopted mostly by sex workers themselves and particularly by activists for sex worker rights, articles and information by those groups and with those goals in mind is suppressed whilst anti sex worker propaganda is promoted.
Various online platforms and websites forbid explicit content or sexual advertisements. There are also a plethora of laws restricting or regulating prostitution, including online solicitation. In combination, these laws and rules result in advertisements which sell sex generally not using terms like “prostitution” and instead that term being used mostly by those condemning it, so the term prostitution in itself is no longer associated with solicitation or with graphic discussion and therefore is not restricted as significantly as terms sex workers do sometimes use when soliciting or promoting pornographic content. Of course, the result of this is that automatic filters on search engines and moderation which is done by machines rather than people will assume content which discusses sex work is graphic and will not allow it to be promoted. Content which is not graphic but does discuss sex work ends up being unfairly censored or suppressed as well.
Organisations like Nordic Model Now or Exodus Cry benefit from which terms are permitted through the filters by different platforms. If someone is looking up information about the Nordic Model in sex work on Google, they’re far more likely to come across a post from them because they reject the term sex work entirely and don’t use it. All of the informational content out there explaining the flaws with the Nordic Model which states that it harms sex workers is going to get suppressed for referring to them that way.
From an advertising perspective, a book or piece of media about sex work has a lot more hurdles to overcome. You can put a paid advertisement on Tumblr, for example, for a book about sex trafficking… but call it a book about sex work and exploitation and suddenly you’re having an issue with getting your advertisements accepted. I tested this out with my book “Whoring Out Our Trauma”. My assumption was that I would be rejected from advertising because of the title, but in fact I was able to place an advertisement on Tumblr by tagging the advertisement with terms like sex trafficking and avoiding using the phrase sex work. I tried to place another ad in which I used the term sex work, and the advertisement was rejected entirely. Same book, same provocative title, but only the ad which didn’t acknowledge prostitution as a form of labor was able to make it through.
For the first two years I used this blog, I never had people find my articles through Google organically. SEO (search engine optimization) is a method by which people make their websites show up higher on search results, so I looked into this and discovered that the reason for this was almost certainly that every post I made was tagged with “sex work” as a topic. As soon as I posted even a single article without that tag, still including other tags like “sex trafficking” and “prostitution”, people started to find my blog through Google.
There are, of course, options for dealing with this. As sex worker rights campaigners, we could remove the term sex work from the tags of our posts and avoid or censor the term. This would mean giving up important political language which notes that sex work is work and also unites various types of people who sell sexual services or make pornographic content. Another option, which interests me far more, is to strategically avoid using these terms for specific purposes. When putting out messaging against the Nordic model, for example, it may make sense to talk about how the legal model harms those who sell sex rather than calling those individuals sex workers. I absolutely will not cave to the people who want me to give up using this important political term, and at the same time I think we should be smart about where and when we employ it.
Sex workers are no strangers to having the things we post suppressed. It’s common for the dating profiles of sex workers to be suspended, while using them for genuine dating purposes, and sex workers are frequently held to a higher standard of scrutiny on platforms like Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr. Meanwhile, of course, pornbots run rampant on those same websites. The problem is that this extends far past even the individual harm to sex workers but also to our appeals to improve things and make legislative change.
It’s not fair that we have to self-censor and make ourselves less clear to get some of our messaging through, but that frustration comes second to the need to gain support for sex worker rights. Once people begin considering these issues, they’re more likely to seek out the word of sex workers after. When we post an article here or there which doesn’t use certain terms, perhaps that leads a person to the rest of our work. There will be times when, even being coy about what exactly we’re discussing, we can direct people to people who are discussing the topic more openly and essentially provide them with a larger audience.
The places that will allow sex workers to candidly discuss our profession are ever-shrinking, and even in those spaces the conversation is often hidden. The first priority is to make sure other sex workers get safety information despite them, then secondarily we need to consider how we get our calls to action out to the public.
How am I supposed to ask people to support sex workers rights if I can’t say the words? With much more difficulty!
Some examples of ways to phrase certain requests, to make them more Google SEO and social-media friendly, meaning they’re less likely to be suppressed:
“Fully decriminalize prostitution, because it makes selling sex safer for those who do so.”
“Criminalizing sex buyers doesn’t result in a reduction in prostitution. When clients are criminalized, the people they are buying sex from are less able to report abuse and are more subject to certain types of coercion. Clients have less to lose if they are already facing legal consequences for paying for sex, so they will be more likely to result to violence.”
“If it is illegal to pay for sex, clients will be less willing to provide their personal information for screening purposes.”
“Selling sex alone is often more dangerous than selling sex in a group, so making it illegal for more than one person to work from the same premises as a part of brothel-keeping laws means that vulnerable people selling sex are in even more danger.”
Try to think about what kinds of language anti-prostitution organisations are using, without picking up language which dehumanizes sex workers or ignores their autonomy. Phrases like “prostituted women” should be avoided, because they treat sex workers as victims merely being acted upon and frame the situation as one in which prostitution is being forced on them by a third party. Instead, focus on talking about sex workers as “people who sell sex” when discussing prostitution or “people who make porn” when discussing porn performers. While it is not as quick to say as sex worker is, the language is still accurate and humanizing and makes no claim about whether the sex workers are being victimized (or not!) because everyone of any background is included.
Should we keep saying “sex work”?
For our political organizing, yes. It is a useful term which groups together all sorts of people from those who sell sex in person to strippers to people making porn and engaging in paid phone sex. Under this umbrella term we develop solidarity among various groups of workers who share issues and suffer similar stigma.
When creating materials that we want the public to see, especially things we want to advertise, we need to consider whether the phrase “sex work” can be excluded from some percentage of our messaging or articles so that the maximum number of people will see it.
Solidarity to all my fellow sex workers out there.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 