I'm Riftka Brown, commissioning editor and reporter for Nevara Media, and I have a question.

Why do we on the left find it so easy to defend but so hard to talk about sex work?

I think there are two reasons.

The first is obvious, we find it hard to talk about sex full stop.

The second is more subtle, it's that the narrative that sex work is suffering, fed

not only by the right, but also by the left, particularly during the feminist sex

wars of the 1970s and 80s, continues to have a hold on us.

There are a couple of contemporary contexts that have reinforced this narrative.

One is the renewed centrality that me too movement has given to sexual assault.

The other is the heightened awareness of human trafficking created by the refugee crisis.

Together these contexts have quietly strengthened the association between sex work and sexual

oppression.

We find ourselves defending sex workers without wanting to defend sex work, a position

not dissimilar to the one taken by the sex negative feminist of the second wave.

Or we find ourselves taking unthinkingly celebratory positions, claiming that sex work is inherently

feminist or anti-capitalist, something that few sex workers would claim themselves.

Which is to say that absent from a lot of leftist discussions of sex work are sex workers.

Of course they're not actually absent, just invisible.

Sex workers are your friends, your family, your teachers, your students, your colleagues,

your comrades.

It's just that few of them are open about the work they do.

When it comes to developing a radical politic of sex work, this invisibility makes it really

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