Sex Workers: The Outside/r’s Outsider

Abstract

Brit Schulte posits that the sex working person is confronted by ever-increasing demand as well as proportionately increasing criminalization and persecution.  They also see the sex working person as representative of queer and trans*-- truly, of outsider subjectivity. The tension produced by these coextensive  increases creates the conditions that compel an outsider (sex worker) to fight for an end to stigma and marginalization. This necessary struggle that they  outline takes place in broader movement spaces, grassroots collectives, smaller mutual aid networks, and between fellow workers. Their essay highlights  experiences within the above categories of queer and trans* sex worker-led community organizing, specifically drawing upon full-service sex worker-run  mutual aid networks, harm reduction formations, tech-centred activism, and fetish provider-led collectives. Through personal and broader movement analysis, Schulte links sex workers' political fights to the broader struggle for labour justice under capitalism, locating sex worker organizing in our contemporary  moment in a rich tradition of hustle and survival.