Sex Work(er)

Women’s Studies (Humanities), 1979

Definitely not a prostitute. A word an intellectual™ uses to describe an entrepreneur sole trader running their own business of charging money in exchange for sex, or working to obtain cash through sex in person or videotape.

Author of “Unrepentant Whore” (2004), activist Carol Leigh suggested at the 1979 Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media_conference we all just call it the “Sex Use Industry”, before her Marxian call “Sex Workers Unite!” in 1984. By 1987 it was “Sex Work: Writings By Women In The Sex Industry” by Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander.

• https://oed.com/view/Entry/176989#eid23490098
• https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?&year_start=1950&year_end=2019&content=sex+work
• https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sex+work
• https://books.google.ca/books?id=Pthxt1aCnFEC
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Leigh
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Workers-Unite-Movement-Stonewall/dp/0807061395
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Work-Writings-Women-Industry/dp/1573440426