Sex Work

[Page 1467]Sex work, or working in the sex industry, is a construct that continues to gain visibility in psychological literature. Sex work is distinct from sexual exploitation, or situations in which a person is induced to perform a commercial sex act through force. While people involved in sexual exploitation (e.g., sex trafficking) are forced into sexual acts, sex work is not forced and is seen as the commercial exchange of sex for money or goods. Literature written in the 1960s and 1970s by various scholars used terminology different from sex worker, such as prostitutes, streetwalkers, and hookers. These terms often denote pathology or problematic, discriminatory practices. In later writings that critiqued these pathology-based understandings of sex work, authors such as Ann Weatherall and Anna Priestley ...