I was in a conversation recently with a younger person and they mentioned the singer Cardi B. (I’ll concede I’m officially an old fogy because I had never heard of Cardi B before this conversation.) During the conversation they mentioned that Cardi B had been a sex worker before becoming a singer.
I happened to read an article on Cardi B a couple of days ago and they mentioned she had been a stripper in the past. I checked on Wikipedia and confirmed this.
So my question is whether describing a stripper as a sex worker is accurate. Personally, I’d say no. A stripper may be giving sexually explicit performances but she’s not actually having sex with her customers. (I’ll leave aside any strippers who also work as prostitutes.) I’d only describe a prostitute or an adult film actress as a sex worker.
Yeah, I don’t think the term necessarily implies actual sex, but whether the work is “sex related.” Putting your naked body on display for money seems related to sex to me.
I wouldn’t, no. Just my two cents, but I think a stripper would be closer to “exotic dancer” than “sex worker”. I don’t have a problem with any of it but I do think they’re two different things.
I would take “sex worker” to be somebody who actually engages in sex, so a porn star or prostitute (with lap dancing a grey area, perhaps).
Wikipedia wants the term to encompass not just strippers (people who dance nude but do nothing more), but also the receptionist at a porn film company and the cleaning lady at a brothel. I don’t think most people would agree.
I think use of the term “sex worker” (rather than prostitute) is a laudable effort to remove the stigma from prostitution and pornography, to lay emphasis on the fact that sex workers deserve the same employment rights and protections as any other worker. However, the social stigma isn’t going to vanish from society overnight, so I doubt that most support staff would describe themselves as sex workers. And a stripper who does no more than dance nude might well seek to emphasize that he/she does not engage in sex at work by avoiding the term.
An adult film actress isn’t a sex worker by that definition, as she doesn’t have sex with her customers, just other actors. Also camgirls don’t qualify as sex workers because while they do sexually explicit things at the request of customers, they do it themselves, not to the customer. Phone sex also doesn’t count as sex work, since it’s just talking. Depending on exactly how you define ‘sex’, ‘happy ending’ massages don’t count as sex work because there is only hand-genital contact involved, no penetration. A professional dominatrix typically doesn’t count either, because they generally engage in BDSM activities that don’t involve anything that counts as ‘sex’.
I think your definition of sex work is a bit too narrow to be useful.
I agree that context is everything. It’s a little like asking if History belongs in the humanities or in the social sciences. It depends on who you’re talking to and what they’re doing.
In some strip clubs, “extras” aren’t uncommon. A stripper who does that sort of thing is almost certainly engaging in sex work by any reasonable definition. In some strip clubs, the dancers never come off the pole and rarely go nude; it would be hard to say that they are doing sex work, though some may disagree.
I’m going to go with the ‘no’ crowd on this one. It’s like asking if swimsuit models are sex workers. Or anyone else using their body’s sex appeal for entertainment or advertising.
But to be clearer, the relevant question is whether she was on that occasion engaging in sex work, right? In my opinion, still no. But one can be a part time sex or occasional sex worker, just as much as one can be a part time software engineer.
On a related topic, the legality of sex work in the U.S., Family Guy:
