It is a pretty normal question, asked of people in a variety of professions in the pub. Work related anecdotes, mixed in with complaints about the latest England manager and questions about what the hell twerking is anyway.

If I tell you my day was good, that it involved spanking a man wearing a pair of black lace panties, a facial and a couple of very nice orgasms, what do you do you think about me? What assumptions do you make? If I tell you I am a sex worker, that those events happened with 3 different appointments, what different ideas and pictures leap to mind?

Everyone has an idea of sex work. From Belle de Jour to trafficked children, from glamour to disease riddled drug addicts. People tend to have formed these ideas from the media, social conventions and lurid films and books rather than any actual experiences though. That was until sex workers discovered the Internet, and in particular Twitter. All of a sudden people who imagined they had never met a sex worker (in fact they probably have, we do get everywhere) discovered we were tweeting, just like regular human beings.

About 5 months ago a few of us, sick of the prejudice, and often downright abuse we got, decided to set up Everyday Whorephobia. The aim was twofold, to highlight the abuse sex workers get online, and to tear down some of the myths that surround sex work. We didn't dream that five months on we would have thousands of mainly non sex work followers.

 

We still highlight abuse. Our sex work followers see rape threats, slut shaming, attacks on their looks or HIV status as a routine part of being a woman who steps outside the normal conventions society imposes. It doesn't mean we, or they, think people should get away with it. However the account has grown wider than we ever imagined. We have a blog, have been invited to conferences to speak on sex workers’ rights and the online abuse we get, and been locked out of others run by feminists who don't like the fact we do not toe the line of victimhood.

 

Now it might seem that feminists would stand with sex workers, advocating their human rights. While not all sex workers are cis women, many are. A large minority are trans women, fighting the double barriers of sexism and transphobia. Women are the most visible sex workers, and across the world are policed by patriarchal laws that still say you can only be the whore or the Madonna. In the early 70’s there was a flowering of understanding between those pioneers of sex workers rights and feminists. If you want to challenge the patriarchal idea that women are little more than breeding stock, controlled by men and barely able to consent to sex, who better to champion than sex workers?

 

Fast forward to the twenty first century and mainstream feminism not only reinforces the idea women should be split into “good” and bad, whore and Madonna, but refuses to believe women can consent to sex work. Sex work activists are seen as a threat, such as recently in Nottingham when a feminist conference left sex workers locked out in the car park for fear they would pollute the hallowed air inside the event. The only acceptable sex workers to mainstream feminism are those who recant and frame themselves as victims. They prefer women saying, yes, I was raped, to women saying, I can consent. Terms like Stockholm syndrome and false consciousness are trotted out, because the feminist trope of “I believe her” does not apply if you refuse to be a victim.

 

One thing we are certainly not at Everyday Whorephobia is victims. Nor are the sex workers who write, tweet, demonstrate and fight to be heard. One thing the internet has allowed is for the battle for sex workers’ rights to go global. French sex workers who face criminalization supported by American workers who already suffer it. Daily we see support for each other, intervene when workers are being trolled and challenge the idea that you must be damaged, diseased or drug addicted to sell sexual services.