When people talk about sex work, they usually talk around it. They analyze it. They moralize it. They debate it in abstract terms that keep the actual people involved safely out of view. Especially the woman on the other side. She’s easier to flatten that way.
It’s more comfortable to imagine her as a symbol than as a person. A cautionary tale. A fantasy. A problem to be solved. Anything but a full participant with her own interior life. But the truth is much simpler and much more inconvenient. Sex workers are not invisible vessels for other people’s needs. We are thoughtful participants in an exchange that is far more human than most people are willing to admit. And when people refuse to admit that, something else quietly happens.
If the exchange is acknowledged as human, then the woman involved must also be human. She must have agency. Boundaries. Judgment. Discernment. She must be capable of choosing, consenting, enjoying, and refusing. And once you allow for that, it becomes much harder to place her beneath you. So instead, the humanity gets denied.
Reducing sex workers to objects, victims, or abstractions creates distance. It allows people to look without relating. To judge without recognizing themselves. To keep the work contained in a moral box that says this is not me.
Because if you admit that a sex worker is thoughtful and intentional, you might also have to admit that intimacy, care, and emotional labor exist in many forms throughout everyday life. You might notice how often people trade charm, patience, presence, or affection to get by. You might see how negotiated connection is not an anomaly, but a constant. And that recognition can be unsettling.
It is easier to believe that sex workers are somehow less than, rather than accept that they operate within the same human frameworks everyone else does. Desire. Choice. Boundaries. Mutual benefit. Emotional intelligence. Seeing sex workers clearly threatens a hierarchy people rely on. One that says some forms of intimacy are noble while others are shameful. Some women are respectable while others are disposable. Some choices deserve dignity while others do not.
Refusing to acknowledge the humanity of sex work keeps that hierarchy intact. But the woman on the other side does not disappear just because she is ignored. She remains observant, intentional, and fully present. A participant, not a prop. A person whose humanity exists whether it is acknowledged or not, and who might remind you of you.
❤️ Charlotte