Gallery
Dr. Curran explains that because young people have such high expectations of themselves, jobs and managers which expect too much of young people or are too demanding eventually burn them out.
In a perhaps unforeseen rebound effect, people arrested for sex work — who are “encouraged” by the state to give up the sex trade — are often forced back into it because of the criminalization they face. In other words, giving sex workers — who the state and “rescuers” claim are powerless in their industry — criminal records only shuts them out of most “legitimate” jobs, legitimate in this case through the eyes of the state.
We have to challenge the idea that the only legitimate jobs are jobs that fall outside the bounds of sex work. If we can’t do that, we cannot support sex workers the way they deserve to be supported as valid workers.
We also have to show that by making it easier to do sex work and to transition jobs to and from sex work, we actually make it safer even for the trafficked to escape. Lastly, we must emphasize that sex work is work and that sex workers are members of the working class. We cannot build solidarity with these oppressed workers if we infantilize them or step on their necks.
In this book, many of the contributors went back to sex work for money to live on while doing clinical placements in school — there are jokes about the social-work-student-to-sex-work pipeline. Others moved on to nursing or care work; both also require unpaid clinical placements. All of these jobs are traditionally coded as women’s work.
