Why do we talk about sex work and that means professionally?

With Covid-19, sex work, particularly that performed online, has become mainstream. More and more people became aware of OnlyFans, so much so that in the first weeks of lockdown the platform recorded a 75% increase in users, in many cases this was a good thing; some discovered a new source of income or others found entertainment (but also comparison, and sometimes comfort) in a complex moment.  Carol Maltesi, a 26-year-old sex worker, had started this way, during the lockdown, right on OnlyFans. Then she decided to explore the red light industry, exploiting the popularity obtained on OF and making porn videos, more or less hardcore, professionally. Then, the feminicide, the obsession of the media aimed at spectacularization and clickbait, the moralistic judgments.

The mentality towards the sex market is culturally determined. It is the society in which we live, and the system of rules that derives from it, that decrees what is acceptable or not, and this depends on various factors. There is no question, however, that it has not always been this way and that, in any case, sex work exists and cannot be ignored. So we asked May Thai, a Thai-Italian sex worker and porn actress, to tell us about her experience in order to better understand what it means to do sex work.

What is meant by "sex work" and "sex worker"?

You know when in Euphoria Kat starts making cam videos? There, that's a form of sex work. But the people on Twitch doing ASMR in their underwear are also doing sex work.

Sex work or sex work is defined as any work that provides financial remuneration for services and/or performances of a sexual, erotic, or romantic nature in a consensual and explicit manner. Doing sex work "means confronting violence, prejudice and stigma, and suffering the effects of hypocritical and prohibitionist policies. Unfortunately, it also means fearing for one's life"; what Giulia Zollino writes in Sex work is work, is increasingly true, especially in relation to Carol's case. Abuse exists in sex work, but it does not define sex work, so it would be useful (and necessary) to stop making pornography of pain, giving prominence only to violence, and regain possession of the surrounding narrative, explaining the pros and cons, but above all reasoning in terms of rights and labor protection.

Why use the term sex work? For at least three reasons:

1. Because it shows people's agency over their career choice (i.e., their ability to act within certain structural constraints);
2. Because it indicates voluntary work and does not imply any kind of exploitation, so it is not to be confused with sexual exploitation;
3.  Because it separates the person from the occupation.

Let's think about the Italian verb "prostituirsi". We know it with the final -si. Yet until the seventeenth century it did not exist, and "prostituire" was used. The transitive form strips prostituted people of their reflexive abilities. Let's try to make an example: if we say "Mariavittoria is prostituted", then it is Mariavittoria who has made this decision. Before, on the other hand, we said "Mariavittoria is a prostitute", implying that she would have been a victim of someone or something. Reaffirming the agency of a person who does sex work means stopping saying "poor girl" and overturning the prejudice that every sex worker is a victim of exploiters, networks or their own biographical paths. They are not victims, but people who have made a choice that must be respected.

The term sex worker was coined in 1978 by activist Carol Leigh (also known as Scarlot Harlot, or Big Red), and became famous with the publication of the book Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (1987). Sex worker is an umbrella term for a person employed in the sex industry. It is a broader meaning of the term that should reduce stigma and reaffirm the empowerment of those who undertake this type of career. In Italian it translates into sex worker. This definition includes people who do indoor, outdoor, online, offline sex work.

A few examples:

• individuals involved in what is traditionally called prostitution;
• people who work in the world of porn (those who perform, those who direct, those who take photos, those who make-up and so on);
• sex performers (pole dancers, strippers, go-go dancing, lap dances, neo burlesque and peep shows);
• phone sex operators;
• cam "girls" (but we know the category is open to other identities as well);
• sex surrogates (people who work with psychologists and sexologists in therapy);
• sex assistants, or rather O.E.A.S (operator to emotionality, affectivity and sexuality);
• sex-toys testers;
• those involved in BDSM practices and meetings (such as pro-dom or pro-domme);
• those who do sex activism (activist and author Laura Meritt, during a speech at the Porn Film Festival in Berlin, told Inside Porn that she also considered herself a sex worker, since as an activist her field of interest and research is related to sex).
• OnlyFans model (and on equivalent platforms).

These are, therefore, different sides of the same coin, so it is essential not to define internal hierarchies, also known as Whorearchy. In order to put the theoretical discourses into reality, we contacted May Thai, an Italian-Thai porn star and a professional of the sector who has performed in large pornographic productions.

May Thai's experience in porn

"When I was a teenager I started to do shoots for passion, portraits for example. When I came of age, however, I started with erotic nude shots. I liked it, and I continued simply by switching, precisely, from photos to videos. And so in 2016 I entered the world of pornography, at the age of 19. In 2019, however, I continued with similar content, but on the OnlyFans platform."

This is how May Thai, model and actress in the world of porn tells about the beginning of her professional path in sex work, demonstrating full awareness of the decision driven by a passion. The main reason that drove her to do this work is her interest in bodies, art, and the combination of photography and body movement. 

"Having a lot of confidence with myself, with my body and few taboos, I simply decided to do this work, also because it takes up little time and I can dedicate myself to other passions." 

Working within the porn industry as an actress, May Thai is present on the main sites of pornographic distribution and Only Fans, also manages the various social, and does interviews for different channels, because sex work also requires the management of ther personal image, in the role of influencer.

The people who contact her for work are producers, modeling agencies, actors and actresses, and content creators, or names known through social networks, but also fans and people with whom she loves to message, while there is also another type of audience that comments negatively on her content and insults her out of frustration, unaware of the duties of the professionalism of sex work, where there are pros and cons as in all jobs. 

"If I had to choose a category for them (the haters), I would definitely choose the frustrated. Because they vent on the Internet to make themselves feel better, and honestly, they're not comments that I think are constructive, so most of the time I don't consider them, usually people who are prejudiced have them precisely because they're misinformed."

says May Thai, emphasizing that in order for people to understand that sex work is work, more outreach needs to be done on the topic. Her work is closely connected to the public, but despite skipping odd requests - such as requests for videos of her defecating - she has never felt threatened professionally.

 "But outside of my work, as I am always considered to be of the weaker sex. When I'm on my own, or walking alone, I don't feel 100 percent protected. Luckily, I've started doing some self-defense to make me feel safer."

At the level of rights, the category is still considered in ambiguity, as a taboo and is not talked about, according to the actress would need real steps forward.  At this link are all the handles to support May Thai.

Sex work is an economic and political issue

The prejudices that May Thai talks about constitute the stigma of prostitution, that is, those taboos that have accumulated over the centuries and have led institutions (such as policy makers, NGOs, churches) to repress and arrest sex workers, marginalizing and denying them a place in the public community. This happens because our society, as it is today and as it was partly yesterday, has always tried to regulate the sex market, tending to do so through criminalization and punitive measures. And this has happened both in the offline world (think of the "Swedish model" as the "red light districts") and in the online one. And it's always political.

The Storyville "District" (New Orleans) was the first legal red light district in U.S. history, operating until 1917.

All online platforms with erotic or sexual content, in fact, when they gain public attention they also become the object of public attacks (from a conservative, hypocritical, anti-porn crowd and political class) and risk heavy repercussions, as when Visa and Mastercard suspended payment processing on Pornhub. The only result of these policies is to push the market underground, and thus create ambiguous, not to say dangerous, working conditions. It is therefore necessary, first of all, to formally recognize sex work, so that there is also a normalization and social acceptance, and to "regulate" it in this sense, in terms of rights and, then, of duties. In this regard, the Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto is a document elaborated and approved by 120 sex workers from 26 different countries, presented during the third day of the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labor and Migration in October 2005. In the Manifesto there is a section called Our Work, which talks about both rights and duties.

Rights such as the right to join and form trade unions, in order to obtain the same possibilities of professional development; duties such as taxes and financial support of the society in which we live. But as long as there is no recognition of the right to legislative protection (to ensure favorable working conditions, adequate wages, social security and health care) it is impossible, trivially, to "pay taxes". But as long as there is no recognition of the right to legislative protection (to ensure favorable working conditions, adequate remuneration, social security and health care) it is impossible, trivially, to "pay taxes". Or rather: contributions can be paid, because the salaries come from the production companies, or directly from the OnlyFans users, but it is increasingly difficult to turn to the banks (which do not see these incomes in a good light, just because they are related to sex). And it's no coincidence, then, that often those who do sex work have found a turning point with cryptocurrencies. And it is no coincidence that, instead of turning to the banks (which do not accept this income, because precisely not regulated), those who do sex work have found a turning point with cryptocurrencies.

In the book Feminists in words, there is an essay by Giulia Garofalo (La fabbrica del sesso) that explains a theory by Paola Tabet, for which:

"In all sex-economic exchanges, including prostitution [and here we can talk about sex work in general, ed], the element of material support of men towards women coexists with that of a non-equal sexuality, tending to serve women to the advantage of men. What seems to distinguish the exchanges that are stigmatized as "prostitution" is that, compared to the others, they are transparent, explicit, and women can negotiate openly. According to Tabet's analysis, these characteristics are punished with social stigma and criminalization because they might otherwise undermine a system in which many other services provided by women, such as reproductive, domestic, and psychological services, remain largely informal, unrecognized, and unpaid."

Sex work can therefore be seen as a liberation and a reversal of the oppressive economic and social conditions historically suffered by women.