Open your mind

"The debate as to whether or not becoming a sex worker is an “empowered choice” hinges on the greatest fallacy affecting the sex industry. Contrary to what this debate implies, sex workers don’t make a choice—we make choices, plural—all the time, every minute of every day, just like everybody else. We make a choice to talk to this customer or to that one, to stay or to go, to work tomorrow or to take the day off, to leave the industry or to remain. Like all individuals, we make lots of decisions: what to wear, how to spend our money, what to do on our days off. Some of these decisions empower us, others don’t. Like all individuals, we do not wish to be defined by any one of our choices. Contrary to how we are so often perceived, sex workers don’t define ourselves entirely by our occupation. We don’t sell ourselves, we sell sex. Abolitionists believe prostitution is a crime against poor people whereas individuals who advocate for the decriminalization of sex work often believe that poverty is the social ill, and that efforts by anyone to take away an individual’s source of income are what’s criminal—not that Lloyd or anyone could ever really stop a person from selling sex. Thinking of women as entirely unable to make decisions and ignoring the reality that such decisions may be necessary for survival denies poor women and other sex workers the dignity of their experience."