#CedarRapids may have been here

We’re not different from you. We’re just doing a job, the same way you are. Any kind of person could be a sex worker. You probably know more sex workers than you think you do.

Sex workers are entrepreneurs – we just look hot while we do the business thing.

Clinical psychologist and sex therapist Dr. David Ley has long been critical of the sex addiction framework, and wrote the book The Myth of Sex Addiction to explain why. I sat down with him to explore why sex addiction is a problematic concept, and how it contributes to whorephobia.

Whenever my job is mentioned in newspapers, blogs, or magazines, the same tropes tend to pop up: moral panic, drug abuse, violence. Journalists quote us selectively, so that it sounds as if we’re living out the sex-negative, whorephobic stereotypes the public are used to consuming.

Sex work as a sociopolitical issue is used as a scapegoat to avoid addressing larger issues like poverty and violence against femmes. Sex work is not the problem and trying to make it disappear makes the problems worse.