So here's the problem with the knee-jerk urge to use the term "sex worker" to refer to every person involved in prostitution, pornography, explicit modeling, exotic dancing, etc. It is empowering to those very few people who choose sex work as their first and best choice of career. The huge majority of people in the aforementioned careers are trafficked against their will and interests, or choose sex work as a job of last resort. Joyful, thoughtful, self-realised, and self-respecting sex workers are a tiny minority of what we now automatically call "sex workers."
Women, children, (and to a lesser extent, men) are tricked, trafficked, pressured, and threatened into "sex work" every day, all over the world. The major profiteers from "sex work" are the men who exploit these vulnerable people--either because they are young, addicted to substances, living in poverty, in violent relationships, the sole supporter of their children/household, or (sad but true) in love with the man taking advantage of them--and many "sex workers" die as a direct result of their involvement in that work.
Like automatically referring to all crime victims--including those who are actively still being victimized, and (perhaps more vitally) those who do not self-identify as such--as "survivors," there is something about the term "sex workers" that erases the actually ugly reality of an industry that exploits vulnerable people, sometimes to death.
In particular, it's troubling that leftist and centrist men have caught on to this vocabulary, saying things like "sex work is work!" because they know they're "supposed to," but usually they are referring to strippers and escorts, who it's easier to imagine might be in that minority of "sex workers" who choose it and who are not beholden to a pimp or other person (including online sites that collect fees from content creators) who may compel them to work against their will/interests, but who is certainly taking some fraction--or all--of their money. Rarely is thought given to the fact that most sex work is done out of desperation.
The myth of the "happy hooker" persists, and the soft-focus, falsely empowering term "sex worker" casually applied to millions of exploited women, children, and men who are forced into "sex work" as victims of crime, violence, addiction, and poverty--and who likely wish they were doing anything other than "sex work"--feels like lefty feel-good-ism and language policing. It's almost unkind: "Don't call her a teenaged girl trafficked across state lines by a man she thought was her boyfriend, forced to have sex with strangers or face being beaten or killed--call her a sex worker!"
("people involved in prostitution," "victims of sex trafficking," "sexually exploited people," "people involved in the sex industry," "sexually exploited children,". . .there are plenty of respectful ways to talk about this industry in an honest way, and which can differentiate the endangered majority from the contented minority)
*Yes, I value crime victims over cops; yes, I value people who choose to call themselves "sex workers" over cops.
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