Is sex work violence against women? This question has been posed countless times by friends within the women's movement. It is not necessarily asked from a moralistic viewpoint, but rather comes from a genuine need to engage in a contentious space that has pitted women in sex work against mainstream feminist thought and theory. Apart from arguments about the violence inherent in sex work, a key issue that feminists raise is that it reduces the female body to an object of sexual pleasure for men, bringing it into the marketplace to be exploited. While this general view remains strong within feminist and other circles, an increasing number of people are urging a broadening of or outright change in the manner in which the fundamental concepts around sex work are defined. For instance, the Sangli-based Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP, or Sex Workers Against Injustice), the collective of women in sex work with which I am associated, works specifically to challenge the notion of 'exploitation'. Instead, VAMP's members define sex work as adult, monogamous or polygamous sexual partnerships within a commercial context, including men, women and transgender people. For many, this has proven to be a very contentious position.
The contextualisation of sex work is critical, and needs to be understood as an act between consenting adults involving the exchange of money in return for services. This, of course, does not refer to situations of trafficking, wherein coercion and deception are the dominant features. Even with this caveat, however, the widely accepted image of the universally unwilling victim, exploited and forced to offer her sexual services, reeks of false construction. A more realistic view of the situation would recognise that the contract itself signifies the 'mutual' nature of the exchange – more than mutual, in fact, because the terms of the contract are controlled by the person offering the service.
The most significant challenge that sex workers pose to both mainstream and feminist constructs of sexuality is their view that there is nothing 'sacred' about sex – and that it can thus be offered as a service in exchange for money. Yet the unwillingness to accept that women would offer sexual services for money has been part and parcel of societal consciousness throughout Southasia and beyond, including in contemporary feminist discourse. Thus, women who seem to willingly offer such services are seen as debauched or debased – or worse, that they are unable to comprehend what they are doing at all. Such a judgemental attitude has contributed immensely to the marginalisation and denial of rights for all people in sex work.
Over the years, interacting with those engaged in sex work, feminists such as myself have had numerous lively debates. These have explored issues of sex, love, multiple sex partners and the idea, disturbing to many, that sex is a physical act that can be pleasurable even when part of a commercial transaction, and stripped of emotion. Alongside are notions that sex with multiple partners, especially over a short period of time, is inherently exploitative, violent or plain disgusting. Such stereotypes expose the common double standards and biases of activists and feminists when dealing with sex workers. The push to unravel concepts of sex-related issues – morality, sacredness, pleasure, preference, health, rights – has gradually become a crucial force in understanding perceptions of sex work, and is thus important to the life of sex workers. Unfortunately, activists often consider such discussions to be frivolous and 'upper class'; instead, more 'important' issues of poverty, environment, status and violence against women take centre-stage. However, as feminist theorist Gayle Rubin pointed out in a 1984 essay.