In our recent class discussions surrounding Maggie DeVries’ memoir Missing Sarah, about the disappearance of the author’s sister, an active sex worker, from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, we have been talking about how missing women and sex workers are often framed in the media. Countless stereotypes surround sex work and the reason so many women end up on the streets selling their services. Perhaps the most prevalent stereotype is that women turn to prostitution as a means to support drug addiction. A lesser known, but still present stereotype is the motive of survival sex; in other words, selling sexual services to meet basic needs, whether it be food, shelter, clothing, or drugs. However, there is another reason women enter the sex trade, and these women are often referred to as voluntary sex workers.
Voluntary sex workers are sex workers that work in the industry willingly. They may have the skill sets to work in other industries, but they choose sex work. One of the more well knows cases of voluntary sex work is the case of Jeannette Angell, the Ivy-Leage educated Ph.D recipient. Angell chose to work as a call girl to make money faster than she would have elsewhere. (Angell has written a book about about her experiences as a sex worker titled Callgirl, which you can read about here.)
Some voluntary sex workers don’t enter the sex industry willingly, as did Jeannette Angell, but some decide to remain in the industry even after they no longer need the income to support themselves. Susan Davis, a local Vancouver sex work advocate, is one of these cases. Davis has been an active sex worker for more than 25 years, spending three of those years as a drug addict on the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. Now, Davis is clean and frequently lectures at universities on the history of sex work in Vancouver and is involved in advocating for the rights of sex workers with organizations such as the BC Coalition of Experiential Communities. She is now a business owner in the food industry and still is an active sex worker. I had the privilege of hearing a lecture by Susan last year in a class here at UBC. She spoke about remaining in the industry not only to give sex workers a voice through her organizations but because she enjoys the work she does. She shared with my class her experience with a regular client client, an elderly man dying of terminal illness. She said what she provided her client was more than a service, it was both physical and emotional intimacy.
The stories of voluntary sex workers are seldom heard in the media. Media consumers are provided with dominant stereotypes of sex workers: the drug addicts and social deviants of marginalized society. If media representations of sex workers expand to include the experiences of workers like Angell and Davis, perhaps social attitudes might start to shift toward recognizing sex work as a legitimate profession. When sex work starts to become accepted as legitimate, its workers might stand a chance at moving away from the margins of society.
You can read more about Susan Davis and Vancouver’s sex trade here.
Rachel Safeek, a human rights advocate and founder of the #FightStigma campaign has a great blog post about voluntary sex workers that you can read here.