This poster is part of an impressive campaign being run by a sex worker group in Ireland:
The Turn Off the Blue Light poster campaign has been designed to challenge the Irish public’s perception of sex workers, to get away from the overly negative or positive images of sex work that are so often seen, and instead show a more balanced, realistic view.
Sex workers are frequently portrayed either as victims, sad, beaten, raped, abused, drug addicted women, or as ‘happy hookers’ with privileged lives making a fortune, despite the fact that both of these images are not typical of sex worker experiences in Ireland today.
We are confident that our campaign is a fair portrayal of sex workers in Ireland today, and we hope our posters will encourage people to think again about how they see sex workers. We can’t think of another group of people in Ireland who are discriminated against as much as sex workers, and this is very wrong and unfair and we feel it is very important we start addressing this discrimination now.
I don’t know about ireland, but I thought there was plenty of research showing very high levels of drug use and mental illness in sex workers, as well as a huge amount of sexual abuse in their upbringings.
I would have written that a bit differently.
It sounds like it suits her sexual needs, when it may be she’s just trying to make a living and raise her kids. (And it’s different from, similar to.) Perhaps it could be more about work flexibility and family friendly work policies in other fields.
I’ve thought a lot about the rights of sex workers (there but for a decision or two goes lots of us). And noting that sex is not for sale in the most feminist country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/03/iceland-best-country-women-feminist
which sex workers argue makes them more marginalised and vulnerable, I’m still undecided about this. It isn’t a healthy industry to be in, and not because of discrimination, but because of what the work is.
I won’t be encouraging my girls to be sex workers.
Yes, and dentists have an unusually high suicide rate and soldiers a very high homeless rate but that’s not how we typically represent them. We don’t see them as two-dimensional victims of life, I think this is what this poster campaign is about.
That is an interesting point blue milk about how we represent . Statistics are just another weapon in wars if opinion.
As Catherine says, I am not sure if I would be OK with my daughter being a sex worker. But how would I feel if she wanted to be a dentist? Would my pride in her ability to get a job with good pay and generally high level of social respect suddenly make my qualms about the suicide rate dampened? It is really hard to separate concern from prejudice in a society with such rampant slut-shaming.
Awesome campaign, thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I can’t think about sex workers in the west without thinking about sex work in developing countries, and how many girls/women are traded/forced/raped/abused sexually. Often, for them, it isn’t a choice.
Is it OK for educated women who have real options to choose to do sex work, but not OK for uneducated women who have no options, and we should help them?
For women in western civilisations, doing sex work might be a more honest exchange than being financially dependent on someone you’re in a relationship with.
It’s complex.
I have had all the same thoughts Catherine!!!
Breaking down judgements is what should be happening. Accepting the notion that yes there are women out there that make this a career choice does not necessarily mean one should be happy to encourage the career choice to their children. At the end of the day all people are saying is that just because one person makes different choices and/ or has different views on things than you, doesn’t make them a lesser person for it. Sex workers deserve fair human and workers right just as much as you or your neighbour.
Complex, is exactly what this issue is too. The thing about sex work is that you cannot class all sex workers into the same category. For some it’s a choice as a career, despite the lack of appeal to some and societies judgement of it. Other’s do it as a quick fix for cashflow. Sadly, others are forced into this line of work through means of unlawful sex trafficking.
If sex workers had the same rights as your doctor, dentist, soldier, teacher, etc. the opportunity for those who create the underworld of sex trafficking and prostitution would surely decrease over time. Obviously, like any industry a black market so to speak may still exist but as long as we as a society keep judging others for their choices and making laws that make sex work more unsafe for the actual workers we are only enabling the continuance of such. It’s merely a cycle.
As someone who’s had an inside view into the world of the sex industry there are many people who are unaware of how a lot of sex workers go about their business. It’s not all junkies, unsafe practices, and standing on street corners or back alley brothels. Do these exist? Yes. But in every industry there are those who are doing it in a way that isn’t safe, or by best practice. People need to realise that there are sex workers who only participate in safe sex, only operate within safe working environments.
Finally here’s some food for thought:
– There are many dodgy and malpracticing doctors in the world… yet do you still go to a doctor?
– Do you judge all plastic surgeons merely because some blotch up procedures, or for the mere fact some practice on those who are clearly unhappy with how they look and use it a s a quick fix? If so, what about all those wonderful surgeons that change patients lives for the better after accidents and injuries?
– Statistically a lot of people who work in certain industries are more likely to encounter face-to-face robbery. Does that mean we tell our children never to work in banks, or service stations?
– I know a lawyer and a sex worker who’ve been very successful in their own careers for between 10-15 years:
The sex worker has strict working conditions and safe practices in place, and has never had a work related injury, sexually transmitted infection, a bad credit rating, owns their own home and car, has had their children private schooled, and has been married to the same person for 10 years and still counting.
The lawyer is successful, is a partner at the law firm, owns a home and car, is divorced, more than one sexually transmitted infection, is a recovering alcoholic, and is now undergoing investigation for fraud.
Yet who would you rather have as your neighbour if they both came to an open home next door and said their name and occupation?
Each to their own. Lets not discriminate. As a human race our strength and integrity comes from how we treat our weakest members in society.
Great points above. I have been thinking about the campaign a lot since seeing your post.
Like someone mentioned above, I don’t have a problem with women who have had choices and choose to be a sex worker. I also am all for doing what it takes to make the industry safer. I just worry this campaign encourage people to become complacent about the risks involved, and the atrocious conditions many of these women are faced with. That people will start to think the industry is a safe industry and not drive to make it safer and better for those who work in it.
My sister went into a phone booth and didn’t realise there was a guy was sticking up posters for sex workers. He grabbed her by the neck and threw her against the wall. It absolutely terrified me that someone could be so violent with someone making a simple mistake. What would the women who worked for him be subjected to?
And how can we make sex trafficking stop when even those within the system are part of the trade (thinking about The Whistleblower here).
Tricky, tricky one.
Some of the studies that found astronomical rates of drug use and mental illness amongst sex workers had really dodgy methodology. They did things like extrapolate results from street based sex workers (who are amongst the most marginalised sex workers) some of whom were sourced from places like drug and alcohol services to represent the entire sex industry. Other studies that studied brothel and private workers sourced via workplaces tend to find that while sex workers do have a statistically higher rate of drug use, it’s not actually that much higher than that of the general populace. Hospitality workers also have a statistically high rate of drug use, but you don’t see them being stigmatised and discriminated against for it the way sex workers are for our presumed “junkie” status.
The mental illness stuff is even trickier. Are we basing this on diagnosis, or symptoms? How do you measure symptoms in a way that is ethical, valid, and stands up to peer review? And if you manage to do so and still find that sex workers have a high rate of mental illness, is that caused by the work, or is it something we’re seeing because the structure of many forms of sex work makes it mental illness friendly work? I mean, I’m a sex worker with mental illness who got into sex work because of my mental illness: I needed a job where I could set my own hours, earn a decent wage doing a few hours a day, work only a few days a week, and have the freedom to not work if I couldn’t cope. Find me another job where those options exist!
I still don’t accept most of the studies producing these results as not entirely shonky and driven by an anti sex work agenda. But even if you accept the ‘sex workers have a high rate of mental illness’ presumption as valid, there’s a whole correlation =/= causation problem going on there.
I’m not embarrassed to say I would be mortified if my daughter became a sex worker.
I think the campaign is dodgy and whitewashing a dodgy industry.
For mine, sex work of all forms is the antithesis of feminism.
A psychologist friend of mine thinks there is no way for a woman to work for any length of time in the sex industry without becoming mentally damaged in some way.
I can’t articulate at the moment why I don’t agree with you, but I don’t agree with you. I will have to think about why and come back.
Am going to respond in detail to this.. tonight, hopefully. Please don’t read silence as no opinion.
“A psychologist friend of yours” doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s possible for humans to go to war for years on end, spending day after day killing other humans, and come out of it without “becoming mentally damaged”, as demonstrated by the fact that there are mentally healthy ex-soldiers. If we can thrive through that, we can certainly thrive through something far less traumatic, like sex work. Humans are resilient things. You only have to look at sex worker communities to see that we have fair representation of strong, stable, mentally healthy people who have been in the industry for years. The biggest strain on my mental health from being a sex worker doesn’t come from my work, it comes from having to face whorephobic attitudes like yours every day.
Furthermore, it says a lot about the way you see both sex workers and people living with mental illness that the easiest way you can find to devalue one group is to conflate them with the other.
Actually I don’t anyone who comes out of a warzone comes out of it mentally healthy at all.
It is interesting to me that you use the word traumatic to describe sex work. I see no reason to support the continuation of a traumatic industry. I see no benefits whatsoever to it, for anyone.
I have no interest in devalueing sex workers or the mentally ill. But I abhor the fact that a man can buy a woman. The ultimate in objectification.
I didn’t use the word traumatic to describe sex work. I said it was far less traumatic than war. For many people, sex work is not traumatic in the slightest. You may as well call it ‘orange’ for as much relevance as the word has to their experience.
A man cannot ‘buy’ a woman. If a man is ‘buying’ a woman, that is not sex work, that is slavery. Sex workers do not sell ourselves, we sell our time and sexual services.
As for the benefits of sex work, what about economic independence, rewarding and skilled work, disability friendly work, child friendly hours, the benefits of working for oneself, female dominated workforces, socialisation, the development of side skills related to sex industry business, and the ability to free oneself from oppressive circumstances caused by poverty?
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