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Porn Studies

ISSN: 2326-8743 (Print) 2326-8751 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprn20

A sex worker perspective

Filippa Fox

To cite this article: Filippa Fox (2018) A sex worker perspective, Porn Studies, 5:2, 197-199, DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2018.1434111

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2018.1434111

Published online: 05 Mar 2018.

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A sex worker perspective Filippa Foxa,b

aSex worker, Australia; bMelbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Australia

I write this article as a femme academic who works both in the public health sector and in the sex industry. Due to anti-sex work stigma in both academia and public health, I have chosen to author this article under a pseudonym. This act of self-erasure speaks to the epistemic injustice sex workers face in scholarly and policy dialogues about our health.

My own understanding of epistemic injustice is drawn from the work of José Medina and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr, as well as Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2009; Medina 2011; Pohlhaus Jr 2012). The notion of epistemic injustice marks those ways in which we can be harmed in our capacity as knowers when communicating with others (Fricker 2009). Medina amends Fricker’s original account by arguing for a temporal understanding of durable epistemic injustices, using the term ‘dominant social imaginary’ to refer to the mainstream understanding of particular aspects of the world and the limits of that under- standing. Durable epistemic injustices are those which occur when groups of marginalized persons fail to be recognized in the dominant social imaginary for long historical periods as subjects who can speak for themselves (Medina 2011). Pohlhaus Jr uses the term ‘wilful hermeneutical ignorance’ to describe how, despite epistemic resistance and knowledge production by marginally situated knowers, ‘dominantly situated knowers nonetheless continue to misunderstand and misinterpret the world’ (2012, 716).

I am wearily familiar with the longstanding ideological coalition between the religious right and sex worker exclusionary radical feminism in the United States. Aziza Ahmed (2011) has written an excellent article on the history of this coalition and its impact on HIV/AIDS prevention and policy around the world. The current public health policies pro- posed by this coalition – exemplified by the longstanding anti-prostitution pledge pre- venting foreign non-governmental organizations from receiving US HIV/AIDS funding if they do not oppose ‘prostitution’ – make life considerably harder for those of us involved in the sex industry. At every turn, we are made invisible from dialogues about our own health and well-being.

One of the most longstanding strategies of sex worker exclusionary radical feminism has been to insist on a causal relationship between pornography and violence against women, exemplified by Robin Morgan’s (1980) ‘Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape’ and Andrea Dworkin’s (1980) ‘Beaver and Male Power in Pornography’. The small number of articles that serve as an evidence base for this myth have been discredited time and time again, and yet the myth itself endures as an all-too-effective discursive strat- egy for justifying the erasure of sex worker voices from public discourse.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Filippa Fox [email protected] Sex worker, Australia; Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Australia

PORN STUDIES 2018, VOL. 5, NO. 2, 197–199 https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2018.1434111

We are understood as victims of violence whose knowledge is coerced and therefore untrustworthy. Those of us who refuse to be victims are seen instead as threats to the social order – illegitimate, criminal subjects unable to be assimilated into polite society. Our bodies are understood reductively as vectors of disease; either literally through unsub- stantiated claims of heightened STI rates, or figuratively as agents of moral decay. To engage the services of sex workers or to consume the pornography we produce is seen as morally reprehensible. It is assumed that we are all cisgender women who exist in con- trast to good wives and good mothers in monogamous, reproductive sexual relationships. We are seen as a threat to these relationships. Just as our bodies are believed to be infec- tious, we are believed to pollute the social environment, encouraging violence and under- mining the heteronormative family unit. We are constructed both as helpless victims and as powerful manipulators of the social order.

This construction of the sex worker subject did not arise with the coalition between the religious right and sex worker exclusionary radical feminism. It has been with us since at least the earliest stages of British imperialism exemplified by the 1864 Contagious Diseases Act in British-occupied India. In the dominant social imaginary, we have been understood for a long historical period as subjects unable to speak or reason for ourselves.

It is because of this durable epistemic injustice that it does not occur to many non-sex workers that we have uniquely useful, nuanced, and plural perspectives on our own health and work. Although we actively resist, most non-sex workers continue to dismiss the epis- temic resources we develop. They maintain their ignorance about our lives while simul- taneously claiming to have expertise over them. For sex workers who experience compounding historical injustices, such as transfemme workers, Indigenous and First Nations workers, or Black workers, this ongoing exclusion from the dominant social ima- ginary is even more thorough and violent.

The coalition between the religious right and sex worker exclusionary radical feminism in the United States is effective precisely because it can comfortably expect non-sex workers not to have access to sex worker perspectives. Non-sex workers who may not share the political orientation of the religious right may nevertheless find it easier to believe what the dominant social imaginary says about pornography than to seek out the epistemic resources developed by porn workers.

Sex workers remain stigmatized and hidden from the dominant social imaginary in ways which make it hard for others to understand us as potential conversational partners with expert knowledge about our own lives. The social epistemological perspective I have traced here clarifies how the marginalization of sex workers makes possible the endurance of myths which are at odds with our lived experience. This perspective also clarifies the wilful failure of dominantly situated persons to use the epistemic resources we develop.

Furthermore, the erasure of porn and other sex workers from the ongoing public dialo- gue about pornography and health prevents us from addressing the very real health crises which we do face. At present, I live and work in Australia in a jurisdiction where sex work is legalized and licensed. Unlicensed and non-compliant workers continue to face criminaliza- tion and punitive interference by the police. The Australian healthcare system provides ade- quate care to a greater proportion of marginalized people, including sex workers; nonetheless, sex work stigma regularly affects the quality of the care we receive.

Mikey Way, Australian porn worker and activist, noted to me in conversation:

198 F. FOX

Medical practitioners here have no knowledge of the standard practices in the porn industry and often need to be taught them during medical appointments, effectively requiring us to out ourselves and place ourselves at risk of discriminatory behaviour. On top of that, many of the things we rely on as porn performers are under-researched – e.g., the effects of men- strual sponges on physical health, the impact of anal douches and enemas on health, harm minimization for [consensual] bareback sexual contact, and the success or lack thereof of a testing-based [STI] transmission prevention method.

Much of what Mikey brought up has parallels in my own experience with other sectors of sex work: discriminatory behaviour on the part of health professionals, the requirement to educate doctors, incorrect diagnoses based on false assumptions about risk, and a dearth of evidence related to my needs and health practices as a worker.

Many of us face even greater barriers accessing mental health care and finding provi- ders who respect our occupation and do not assume, for example, that we are sex workers because we have experienced trauma, or that our work is the sole cause of our ill-health.

American porn worker Andre Shakti (2017) addresses a number of similar points related to sex worker health in her excellent Rewire commentary ‘No One in the Porn Industry Likes a Broken Vagina’, including the lack of workplace protections, the difficulty of accessing private insurance in the United States as a sex worker, and the potential legal ramifications of disclosing sex worker status to health professionals.

As a scholar, activist, and worker dedicated to improving sex worker access to appropriate and adequate healthcare, I find the language of pornography as a ‘public health crisis’ to be deeply and deliberately disingenuous. It is the latest strategy in a long history of epistemic injustice committed against sex workers. Because of the persistent erasure of porn and other sex workers from the public dialogue on pornography and health, it is difficult for us to join this conversation and use it is as a platform to improve our own occupational health and safety. I call this an erasure because I want to be clear that we are having ongoing conversa- tions about our health. It is the responsibility of health professionals and policy-makers to listen to us. It is the responsibility of non-sex workers to exhibit epistemic humility and make an effort to understand and use the epistemic resources we create.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References

Ahmed, Aziza. 2011. ‘Feminism, Power, and Sex Work in the Context of HIV/AIDS: Consequences for Women’s Health.’ Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 34: 226–258.

Dworkin, Andrea. 1980. ‘Beaver and Male Power in Pornography.’ New Political Science 1 (4): 37–41. Fricker, Miranda. 2009. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. Medina, José. 2011. ‘The Relevance of Credibility Excess in a Proportional View of Epistemic Injustice:

Differential Epistemic Authority and the Social Imaginary.’ Social Epistemology 25 (1): 15–35. Morgan, Robin. 1980. ‘Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape.’ In Take Back the Night: Women on

Pornography, edited by Laura Lederer, 134–140. New York: William Morrow. Pohlhaus Jr, Gaile. 2012. ‘Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful

Hermeneutical Ignorance.’ Hypatia 27 (4): 715–735. Shakti, Andre. 2017. ‘No One in the Porn Industry Likes a Broken Vagina.’ Rewire. February 17. Accessed

August 1, 2017. https://rewire.news/article/2017/02/17/no-one-porn-industry-likes-broken-vagina/.

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