Is it Time to Decriminalize Sex Work? Wednesday, January 19, 2022

While sex worker advocacy groups have championed the need to decriminalize sex work, their advocacy has been separated from mainstream feminist organizations’ sexual freedom agenda. The decriminalization of sex work has been treated as niche or counterproductive to the goal of sexual freedom. Historically, feminists have embraced a narrow conception of sexual freedom, which prioritizes women’s ability to control reproduction while ignoring women’s freedom to profit from non-reproductive sex. This choice has contributed to the political embrace of access to abortion as the priority issue for feminist organizing, while women’s groups have openly contested women’s right to be free from criminalization while engaging in commercialized sex. In many respects, this choice reflects a hetereonormative ideal that prioritizes birth and non-birth and centers the family as the site of women’s choice — even as it protects women’s choices to not create a family. This approach to sexual freedom, which is tied to reproduction, is limited and has allowed feminists to see the criminalization of sex work as natural rather than as another way to restrict women’s sexual autonomy. In this episode, my guests Professor of Law at the University of Indiana and Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute India Thusi, author of the groundbreaking book "Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg," and Professor Erika K. Wilson, Wade Edwards Distinguished Scholar, Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy, and Director of Clinical Programs at the University of North Carolina will explain the limits of this approach to women's rights. We will also discuss how the criminalization of sex work serves to re-victimize some of the most vulnerable members of society, and perpetuates the discipline to sex work pipeline for many victims of abuse.