3 Myths About Sex Work That Harm Everyone

published on March 10, 2016 by Joe Scott, in Yes Magazine

It's not just young girls and big bad wolves. Lies and misconceptions about sex work can hurt women and keep negative stereotypes alive.

Iris, the 12-year-old prostitute in the movie Taxi Driver, defends her character against Travis “Are You Talking to Me?” Bickle, who won’t hear it. He says, “You walk on the street with these fucking degenerates and low lives and sell your pussy for nothing.” He calls her pimp a killer. When she says he isn’t, Travis says, “Looks like a killer to me.”

His story of her life is the only one he’ll accept. And, eventually, it’s the story that allows him to murder three people (her pimp and two clients) while Iris screams for him to stop, left behind in a whirlwind of violence and uncertainty.

This isn’t so different from what police do in dramatic busts—coming in guns ready, pulling the financial rug out from under the workers they’re there to save. These busts happen, in large part, because of widely believed myths about sex work, which endlessly echo back and forth between policy and pop culture. The politicians and activists who perpetuate these myths believe they’re saving people, but only through careful examination of the facts can governments begin to reduce the violence and marginalization that sex workers suffer. Here are three myths in particular that impact legislation and enforcement (and help keep those harmful stereotypes alive in our heads).

Myth 1. The average age of entry into sex work is between 12 and 14

It’s shocking, right? It tells the whole story of exploitation, stolen innocence, and society turning a blind eye to horrific tragedy. Good thing this is a widely debunked statistic.

In 2014, The Atlantic and The Washington Post tracked down the source of this erroneous information: a 2001 study from the University of Pennsylvania (funded in part by the U.S. Department of Justice) that looked only at minors. It was pretty problematic: The study was not peer-reviewed, the researchers themselves said it was out of date, and many questioned the findings (most research points to an average of around 16 or 17 for minors entering sex work, so 13 would suggest many 9- and 10-year-olds, which limits the conversation to be only about the rare circumstance of a kidnapped child). But the number lives on.

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BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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3 Myths About Sex Work That Harm Everyone

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