
In October of 2021, Victoria Triece was attempting to join her son at his Florida elementary school for a pumpkin carving event when she was stopped by the school’s principal and told she was no longer allowed to engage with children on school grounds. As an avid volunteer and proactive school parent, this came as a shock to Victoria. The reason? The district’s board had discovered that Victoria supported her family by her work on OnlyFans, a legal social media platform where individuals create and publish their own adult content and profit from other adults purchasing subscriptions to their work. Upon this discovery, the board then voted that her presence as both a volunteer and mother were no longer welcome. Victoria hired attorneys that sent a letter to the district that same month, requesting her reinstatement into the volunteer program, a request that was not approved. With little recourse left, Victoria was forced to file a lawsuit against the Orange County School District, litigation that is currently ongoing.
It is not just employment that is threatened by participation in legal forms of sex work, but nearly every facet of living.
“Everyone's always telling sex workers that they can have a better life if they apply themselves, and so it was almost like a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don't’ kind of thing. Like, either way, you're just screwed.” -Nicole Gilliland
Legal forms of sex work are the primary issue in many types of disputes decided every day in our judicial system, from evictions to child custody cases. How is it that a citizen in this country can participate in legal work, pay their fair share of taxes on the work, only to be completely unprotected from losing everything, at any moment, for the rest of their lives because of it?
At the core of this problem is not sex work, but instead the tyranny of patriarchal dominion over sex itself. The male customers of sex workers are elected to the highest offices in government, while the workers themselves are considered subhuman pariahs, often left to fight for the most basic of rights.
Not the Oldest Profession but still…
Sex work, specifically prostitution, is an incredibly old profession. Although not accurate, prostitution is often labeled as the world’s oldest profession. Hunters, farmers, midwives, and shepherds predate any mention of prostitution. The first recorded mention of prostitution was as a holy practice in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk in 2400 BCE. The temple, which was also the first brothel, was run by Sumerian priests and dedicated to Ishtar, the ancient goddess of love, war, and fertility. The Code of Hammurabi, an ancient compilation and revision of earlier law codes of the Sumerians and Akkadians, consisted of 282 laws to guide nearly every aspect of society and six of the 282 laws were dedicated to the rights and punishment of prostitutes and their children. In ancient China, commercial brothels were started in the seventh century BCE by the statesman-philosopher Kuang Chung as a means for increasing the state's income. The locations of these establishments were confined to specific areas.
Around 478-323 BCE in Greece, a new form of sex worker boldly emerged and rose to the highest of possible ranks at the time, the Hetairai. Hetaira is the Greek word meaning “female companion.” The Hetairai differed from traditional prostitutes by being highly trained, educated, and cultivated. Although they were paid for their time, and for sex, their specialty was to make excellent company for men in higher classes, to satisfy them intellectually as well as physically. Hetairai women were free to choose their patron based on their own preferences, and it was not uncommon for them to be monogamous to the right match. They were not allowed to be wives or citizens, nor were their children allowed citizenship. Otherwise, unlike wives or concubines, their lifestyles were elevated and relatively free. They had many rights, the freedom to attend various events, and the only class of women at the time allowed to eat at the same table as the men.
Companion to Pericles, and the most historically famous of these women was Hetaira Aspasia. She was renowned for her keen political mind; Socrates was a frequent guest in her house. It is said that she greatly influenced the leaders and the politics of her time, influence still practiced and studied today.
Pornography is also not a modern concept. It did not arise from the creation and ability to film or take still photographs. Pornography is defined as “the depiction of titillating and sexually charged imagery, which is used in different mediums such as photographs, literature, film, statues, and so forth to evoke emotion and sexual desire on the behalf of the consumer.”
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The birth of Christianity was the beginning of the societal shift towards stigmatizing and criminalizing sex work. The new Christian code contained laws to abolish the prostitution tax, thereby incentivizing the state to lessen its financial interest in prostitution.
As Christianity spread, penalties for prostitution did as well. Prostitutes in the Kingdom of Spain were punished with 300 lashes, the highest number of lashes available under the law. In 1158, the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, attempted to eliminate prostitution traveling army by punishing the soldier and the prostitute. Soldiers could be severely punished, often by cutting off fingers or removing an eye. The women were punished by having their noses cut off to make them sexually unappealing. The disfigurement of prostitutes became a standard legal punishment, although there were only occasional efforts to punish the customers.
The development of western society followed a similar pattern in the ways of early U.S. sex work. Fortune seeking men form new towns in their quest for success. The earliest female inhabitants in the frontier were sex workers in disproportionately high numbers. In many Western frontier towns, they were virtually the only women to be found.
The Mann Act (also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910) is a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose. This was following an investigation by a commission appointed by congress to investigate immigrant prostitutes.
Despite being criminalized in every U.S. state through an array of labels and statutes, prostitution remained in every one of them. With the evolutions in technology, many new legal forms of sex work also emerged or evolved from previous versions of the work. In Nevada, brothels were criminalized as a public nuisance until 1971, when the state took control by passing ordinances that allowed rural counties the choice in licensing legal brothels. To date, Nevada remains the only state to have legal prostitution, although other legal forms of sex work are a booming economy in all 50 states. In the 1970’s, the U.S. also saw the rise of sex worker rights activism and advocacy.
The only legitimate objection to providing protections against slut-shaming in the judicial system are moral objections. All teachings about morality are about one’s character; integrity, compassion, treating people with respect, and recognizing the inherent dignity of every individual.
Consensual sex work, especially legal consensual sex work, cannot legitimately be defined as immoral. If anything is to be considered immoral on this subject, it is the devastation caused to both legitimate workers, as well as those being exploited, because of failures to acknowledge and implement proven and appropriate actions.
"For one true measure of a nation is its success in fulfilling the promise of a better life for each of its members. Let this be the measure of our nation.”
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