"I Don't Want Your Pity..."

"...But our idea of respectability is predicated on social and economic oppressions, to wit: being a sex worker is not respectable or morally acceptable. We assign a cultural significance to sex; it is for procreation and the preservation of the family unit. We are told it is for romance, it is special, cherished and not commodified, but meanwhile sex screams at us from every billboard and television channel. Sex can be used to sell everything except for sex itself. Sex work, then, is dirty, it is sleazy, it is something only truly desperate people do. The pity and subsequent marginalization of sex workers as people to be rescued, or damaged, goods is grossly offensive and contributes to the caricature of the street walker: it dismisses and erases the person behind the job, no more so than when we paint all fast food workers as high school dropouts. The desire to see people in work we would not choose for ourselves as victims is immature and reactionary, and it harms the people within those professions by creating a line between us and them."

--The HuffPost, "I Don't Want Your Pity: Sex Work and Labor Politics," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belle-knox/sex-work-politics_b_5148528.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046&ir=Women