Sex Work, Feminism, & the Creation of the Carceral State

"Sex workers have both epitomized and defied the historic restrictions on women’s entrepreneurial spirit."

Kaytlin Bailey’s terrific piece on “Sex Work, Feminism, & the Creation of the Carceral State” is now up on our website, after first appearing in the Feminists for Liberty zine last summer. “Sex workers have both epitomized and defied the historic restrictions on women’s entrepreneurial spirit,” she writes

For much of our history, prostitution was one of the few paths available to entrepreneurial women who weren’t born into wealth. And today, prostitution funds more students, artists, and entrepreneurs than all of the available grants combined. But prostitution has become a symbol of exploitation and the ongoing criminalization of prostitution has derailed the lives of countless women.

Bailey—the Founder & Executive Director of Old Pros and the writer/performer of the one woman show Whore’s Eye View—takes readers through a brief history of efforts to control sex workers (and, by extension, independent women of all sorts) throughout the past century or so in America. Again and again, efforts to “save” women from sex work have wound up making their lives worse, while simultaneously expanding the reach of police into private lives.

“The police remain sex worker’s primary predators, literally hunting them with taxpayer dollars in the name of patriarchal protection,” writes Bailey.

You can read the whole thing here.

See last week’s newsletter for more info on our zine, Reclaim, as well as a call for pitches for our next issue.