At the Intersection of COVID-19 and Sex Work in the United States: A Call for Social Work Action

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States in early 2020 has severely disrupted the lives of most Americans, and people engaged in sex trade are no exception. People in sex work encounter multiple challenges when trying to access the services they need, particularly as they fear arrest, stigma, and pathology related to their work. These barriers have been amplified during the global COVID-19 pandemic, as sex trade workers may further lack access to crucially needed health care and may not have a mechanism for generating a basic income to meet their daily survival needs. Using an intersectional feminist lens, in this article, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on people in sex work while highlighting sex workers’ resiliency and community action in the face of the pandemic. We highlight empowerment work led by black and brown sex worker communities. As authors and advocates, we call for critical feminist social work action that situates social workers as advocates for the human rights, well-being, and health of individuals in sex work, with a focus on centering the voices of those with lived experience and a focus on harm reduction, during and in the lingering aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Landscape of Sex Work Amid a Pandemic

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States in early 2020 has severely disrupted most American’s lives, and people engaged in sex work are no exception. The experiences of people trading or selling sex exist on a continuum—sometimes it is liberating, fun, joyful, adventurous, and sometimes it is painful, boring, gross, and unsafe. Most often, it is a combination of these sentiments. To be clear, however, engaging in sex work itself is not ever merely harmful. Instead, harm is created through the criminalization of sex work, policing, and incarceration. The criminalization of sex work perpetuates the cycle of poverty that many individuals in sex trades face. Sex workers, particularly those who are trans, undocumented, or women of color, are vulnerable to overpolicing and punitive measures linked to the enforcement of COVID-19 regulations. The global pandemic has also created a higher threshold for sex workers to report any abuse by clients or law enforcement, which creates a climate of punishment and exacerbates the risk of violence (Manuel, 2020). As such, sex workers have been compromised financially and physically, given that many workers are unable to stop in-person services (Platt, 2020). These practices create unsafe work environments and impair access to needed social services. In the United States, sex work’s criminalization differs by type of work, setting, and state. Although some forms of sex work are not confined by criminalization, federal laws continue to govern the lives of many who work in the sex industry. Stigma and criminalization impact the ability to access social services, and the U.S. government’s unwillingness to recognize sex work as a noncriminal venue of viable employment means that many workers are quickly being pushed into a state of financial desperation (Simmons, 2020).

A Precarious Situation Magnified for Marginalized Communities

While the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 have affected many marginalized communities’ lives, the pandemic has magnified some individuals’ already precarious situations in sex trades operating within the informal and formal economies. Despite the pandemic, some individuals in sex trades continue to work in person and provide sexual services including full sex indoors (at home), outdoors, or in other venues (strip clubs, brothels, massage parlors, hotels). In contrast, other sex workers provide services through phones or online (webcamming, films). Given the lockdown, there has been some movement to online work, but many have continued to work in person, thus placing their health at risk.

For individuals working within the informal sex economy, making ends meet becomes more difficult amid social distancing, quarantine, and other community containment measures to limit the virus’s spread. Conversely, for those individuals working within the formal sex work economy, the closure of brothels, strip clubs, and massage parlors have severely impacted sex workers (Global Network of Sex Worker Projects, 2020). Since sex work is not recognized as a “legitimate” profession, individuals in sex trades have been unable to access government relief programs in the United States where sex work is criminalized.

Most people working in sex trades are disqualified from receiving small business loans as disaster relief during the COVID-19 pandemic (Karlis, 2020; U.S. Small Business Administration, 2020). In fact, in the U.S. Small Business Administration Disaster Loan Assistance application, the applicant must confirm that they do not “present live performances of a prurient sexual nature or derive directly or indirectly more than de minimis gross revenue through the sale of products or services, or the presentation of any depictions or displays, of a prurient sexual nature” (SBA Disaster Relief, 2020). With the immediate loss of income due to the pandemic, people engaged in sex work have developed and implemented creative alternatives to counter their income loss, illustrating their resiliency.

Resiliency in the Midst of a Global Pandemic

For example, across the United States, not one sex worker–led organization has closed amid the global pandemic. Instead, they have created mutual aid networks, online fundraisers, and emergency relief funds in partnership with like-minded groups to support the most impacted sex workers (The Black Sex Workers Collective [BSWC], 2020; Karlis, 2020). Notably, these organizations continue operations during the pandemic while working on policy change at all levels including at the international level. Organizations, such as The BSWC, have intensified activities during the pandemic, working with other sex workers’ rights groups to get lifesaving support to sex workers (The BSWC, 2020). While these mutual aids and grassroots organizing efforts can offer immediate crisis relief, many sex workers continue to navigate barriers associated with the criminal legal system, the immigration system, social services, health care, housing, education, foster care, and welfare.

In this article, we turn to intersectional feminist theory to illustrate the interlocking forms of oppression that sex trade workers face as COVID-19 exacerbates the harmful conditions in those most marginalized workers’ lives. Next, we highlight how black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) focused and led sex worker organizations to serve as sources of inspiration and models to be emulated in the field of social work. These organizations center their community-based mutual aid work on decriminalization efforts and harm reduction approaches. We conclude with a call for social work action from a critical feminist theoretical lens grounded within intersectionality and the need to address underlying systemic forms of oppression experienced by sex workers exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Feminist Intersectional Lens for Understanding Harms in the Lives of Sex Workers During the Pandemic

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, sex worker organizations have remained opened, supported one another, and demonstrated resiliency and the impact of community action. We use an intersectional framework to center black and brown sex workers of color-led organizations and groups to amplify the voices of those most impacted by the intersections of systemic oppression. Our call to action for social workers is guided by our commitment to eliminating conditions that require poverty and social injustice.

We advocate that social work practice and policy approaches be grounded in strategies that challenge systemic oppression, which includes decriminalizing sex work. Social work engagement at the practice and policy levels should aim to circumvent the harm produced at the intersections of poverty and the lack of housing, lack of access to health care, high rates of unemployment, underfunded public schools, and the lack of access to mental health and harm reduction–based substance-use supports as well as the harm created by the criminalization of sex work.

Additional harms that manifest from individuals’ criminalization in sex trades include involvement in child welfare, foster care, and criminal justice systems (Capous-Desyllas et al., 2020). These harms are a result of worsening conditions in a late-stage capitalist economy fueled by neoliberal policies. Since neoliberal ideology and policies are rooted in individual responsibility when experiencing criminalization, sex workers might internalize abuse, stigma, and violence by law enforcement (Authors, 2020). Pervasive neoliberal fallacies like self-reliance and individualism allow for internalizing stigma, abuse, and violence by law enforcement when caught up in processes of criminalization. For instance, sex workers may believe that they cannot surpass their marginalized status, therefore cultivating feelings of unworthiness and self-blame for not being able to exceed the effects of systemic oppression. Neoliberal messaging is so deeply embedded in the United States that some individuals in sex trades feel that police have the right to beat them as part of moral punishment for their involvement in the sex trade (Rhodes et al., 2008; Simic & Rhodes, 2009).

When working with clients who trade sex for money or other material items, social workers must identify, acknowledge, honor, and learn from the skills of resiliency, resistance, organizing, and self-determination cultivated by sex worker communities themselves. Furthermore, an intersectional framework is necessary to address how social workers have been called to respond to the needs of racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, ability, income, and age diversities in sex work as it takes into account interlocking forms of oppression that are associated with identity categories. Understanding how sex workers experience individual, social, and institutional oppression based on their marginalized status can further our understanding of how they are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Intersectionality as theory, praxis, and analysis has been most prevalent in feminist discourse to describe the intersections of sexism and racism and describe the multiple interlocking forms of oppression experienced by women of color. Coined by Crenshaw (1991), the conceptualization of intersectionality as a practical and analytical tool for change was influenced by woman of color feminisms and scholars like bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Barbara Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, and the Combahee River Collective. Contemporarily, intersectional feminism (or intersectionality) is used to make meaning of, theorize, and respond to the interconnected production of injustices among systems of oppression such as racial, economic, gender, migration status, disability, and sexual identity (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1991; Mehrotra, 2010).

An intersectional lens is critical for understanding the multilayered experiences of workers trading sex during the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to support solutions that address the various ways that racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and ethnocentrism intersect systemically. Importantly, people engaged in sex work have a wide array of experiences, histories, and social group memberships that inform their realities. Racism, sexism, transphobia, classism, ableism, and heterosexism have persisted within the health care system long before the global pandemic of COVID-19. Trans, nonbinary, queer, undocumented, drug users, and sex workers have historically faced barriers to accessing health care and social services (Goodyear & Cusick, 2007). As Burns (2020, para. 21) notes, “Coronavirus has already strained the health care system to its limits, and the resulting economic fallout will only exacerbate existing disparities for trans people.” It is not a far reach to consider the impact of intersectional oppression on the experiences of people engaged in sex work.

Intersectional Feminist Theory to Situate Sex Workers’ Experiences

Intersectional feminist theory is useful for critically situating sex trade workers experiences’ in a systemic analysis of power. It is a powerful lens for understanding the experiences of people who live at the intersections of various oppressions and inequalities as COVID-19 further impacts them. Within the context of the global pandemic, understanding the multiple dimensions of power, historical structural inequalities, and the role of the underlying social and economic context and complexity of lived experiences is critical in informing social work praxis.

Lived Experiences of Everyday Harms

Depending on one’s positionality, a dangerous occupational environment for people who trade sex can become more precarious during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has for other marginalized, stigmatized, and criminalized groups who lack social, economic, and legal protections such as street-connected children in the global south (Reza et al., under review). With sex workers more vulnerable to punitive measures linked to the enforcement of COVID-19 regulations, sex workers are increasingly faced with the difficult choice of social isolation with no income or support or working with increased risk to their health and safety (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS [UNAIDS], 2020).

Due to the pandemic, “sex workers all over the world are experiencing hardship, a total loss of income and increased discrimination and harassment” (UNAIDS, 2020, para. 3). One report described a sex worker as having to restrict food intake due to a lack of customers (Tso, 2020). In the same story, it was noted that “sex workers run a higher risk of virus transmission, as many jobs—like stripping, escorting, and massage work—require in person gatherings and physical intimacy” (Tso, 2020, para. 4). An online interview with an undocumented woman working in a strip club described how the business closure forced her to work online. However, due to her precarious citizenship status, she feared that the lingering digital record could threaten her green card approval. As some club owners can pay their dancers anonymously, there is less risk working in the physical environment (Piper, 2020) than in an online environment. Sex work is often among the highest paying jobs for undocumented workers in the United States (Piper, 2020).

The everyday harms that people in sex work experience are compounded now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While criminalization of sex work and policing and incarceration practices are often root causes of harms for sex workers (Rekart, 2005), there are notable harms for some people working in sex trades. For sex workers who identify as transgender, have unstable living situations, have a disability, or are systems involved, the intersections of oppression are amplified during the pandemic.

Community Action and Empowerment of Sex Workers During the Pandemic

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, sex worker activists and sex worker–led communities started organizing across the world to ensure that they could help take care of one another. We highlight the meaningful social justice work of Lorena Borjas, a transgender Latina woman, who died at the age of 59 from COVID-19. Borjas was a beloved activist and organizer who tirelessly advocated for the needs of other trans-Latina immigrant women who engaged in sex work. Given her own experience as a BIPOC sex worker who frequently encountered the interconnectedness of xenophobia, transphobia, and cissexism, Borjas was dedicated to serve the needs of sex workers, trans women, and undocumented women. As someone with a history of sex work, addiction, abuse, arrest, trafficking, and precarious citizenship, she wanted others in her communities to know they had someone on which to rely.

Borjas was also interested in breaking the “arrest-jail-deportation cycle” (Gessen, 2020, para. 6) by helping women to manage police harassment, sex trafficking, substance abuse, health issues, and immigration processes; all issues compounded by racism, sexism, cissexism, heterosexism, and xenophobia. This is just one example of how sex worker activism is informed by a feminist intersectional lens that takes interlocking forms of oppression into account.

Although numerous sex work activist communities have organized around the needs of people trading sex, during the pandemic, we also highlight the work of The BSWC, the National Stripper Strike, and Whose Corner Is It Anyway as examples of intersectional sex worker–centered organizing to address the effects of COVID-19 on sex workers. The BSWC is driven by National Sex Worker Anti-Criminalization Principles and advocates for those impacted by labor issues, stigma, and criminalization. Their work addresses the needs of black sex workers by offering peer support, legal assistance, housing, financial, and other basic needs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the work, health, safety, and income of sex workers have been compromised, and black sex workers, in particular, are faced with the additional barriers created by systemic racism. Furthermore, The BSWC continues to enact its principles and meet black sex workers’ needs through various events. For instance, they host monthly meetings where they offer a US$25 stipend to the first 10 people in attendance (on Twitter), and during July, they held fundraisers to meet the goal of US$43,000 that would go toward black sex workers who had been impacted by Covid-19. Ultimately, they are guided by principles of anticriminalization of sex work so that black sex workers can have the autonomy to decide on the conditions in which they stay in or leave sex work while still having their needs met.

Another group that frequently collaborates with The BSWC and advocates for the labor-based rights and needs of black sex workers is the National Stripper Strike. Beginning in Portland, Oregon, when the Covid-19 pandemic escalated, and sex workers abruptly found themselves out of work, the Portland Stripper Strike (which led to the National Stripper Strike) emerged to demand fair treatment for black dancers who faced racist practices working in clubs with mostly white coworkers and white club owners. One racist practice common to strip clubs included minimal hiring of black dancers and giving black dancers nonpeak hours with the least earning potential.

The stripper strike movement’s goal is “to adopt non-discrimination policies and undergo cultural sensitivity training to create level playing fields for black dancers” (Dickson, 2020, para. 3). The movement is particularly important as the pandemic has negatively impacted the economy, and sex workers are excluded from governmental aid. As a result, over 30 dance clubs in Portland have agreed to cultural sensitivity training and listening sessions (Riski, 2020).

Whose Corner is it Anyway is a group in Western Massachusetts run by current and former low-income survival or street-based sex worker. They currently use or have a history of using stimulants or opioid drugs. This group is oriented by mutual aid, harm reduction, political education, and organizing within the greater sex worker movement. Whose Corner is it Anyway recognizes the unique and interlocking experiences of people who work in sex trades and use stimulants/opioids, who have been or are houseless, and who engage in sex work for survival. Those sex workers who live in poverty, working outdoors, and using drugs are often the ones who experience systemic racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism across health care, education, employment, and social service institutions.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Whose Corner is it Anyway has worked with a small cast of members to distribute needed materials such as cash honoraria, food, drink, cigarettes, reproductive health and hygiene items, handouts on harm reduction and sex work topics, and lockboxes for methadone take-homes during the COVID-19 pandemic (Simon, 2020). Holding meetings and drop-in hours every 2–3 weeks has provided members with larger stockpiles of harm reduction supplies, so they do not have to risk exposure and return regularly to receive supplies. Furthermore, during drop-in hours, participants access Suboxone treatment via telehealth and receive assistance in applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (Simon, 2020). Additionally, this organization continues to hold social justice and harm reduction–based workshops in collaboration with local experts in social work, health care, and the legal system.

Conclusion: A Call for Critical Feminist Social Work Action

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the inequalities, extreme marginalization, criminalization, and lack of social protection measures are amplified for vulnerable communities working in sex trades as with other public health crises. Sex workers encounter multiple barriers when trying to access the services they need, particularly as they fear arrest, stigma, and pathology related to their work. Barriers are amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, and people in sex work may further lack access to crucially needed health care and may not have a mechanism for generating even a basic income to meet their daily survival needs.

Intersectional feminist theory is a useful lens from which to understand how community action has been led by sex worker activists and organizations that center the needs of black and brown sex workers who experience intersectional oppression and who have been disproportionally impacted by COVID-19. Our call to action for social workers is guided by our commitment to eliminating poverty and the criminalization of sex work, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty. Our call to action requires approaches that recognize how the intersections of housing inequality, health care, unemployment, underresourced public schools, lack of access to mental health, and harm reduction–based substance-use support are a direct result of intersectional systemic and institutional oppression based on race, class, gender, disability, ethnicity, age, sexuality, citizenship status, and so forth.

As social workers, we are called to meet the most vulnerable communities’ needs and address the conditions that lead to and perpetuate poverty. Social workers must be informed by the organizing led by sex workers who are the most impacted by the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, citizenship, and ability status. As social workers, we must bring our full selves (in mind, body, and spirit) to our work while we come together with marginalized communities to create safety and harm reduction conditions including decriminalization efforts. As authors and advocates, we call on social workers to take immediate action, grounded in the values of critical feminist social work and with a focus on harm reduction and decriminalization of sex work, to protect the health and well-being of workers in sex trades within the United States. Activism in this spirit requires attending to personal and political power and reflexivity and pulling back the layers for critical examination.

It is the central aim of social change and “particularly social change focused on challenging systems and institutions that perpetuate power inequities, privilege and oppression” (Wahab et al., 2014, p. 456). By urging social workers to ground their practice, political action, research, and teaching about sex work in critical feminisms and harm reduction approaches, we imagine scholars, researchers, and practitioners interrogating cultures’ power and systemic privilege in their work, while suffusing a power, race, privilege, and oppression lens in this work.

Intersectional feminism is an example of critical feminism that helps us navigate the intersecting forms of oppression experienced by people involved in sex work and disenfranchised, marginalized communities. Inspired by the community-based mutual aid efforts of sex worker–led organizations, we are reminded of the importance of the phrase “Nothing About Us Without Us,” a sentiment that has been used by sex worker advocates and their allies to assert that sex workers’ rights to self-determination and that decisions impacting their lives should not be made without them at the table. As social workers, we should seek insight from community groups and sex workers’ activist efforts and seek to involve individuals in sex trades and mutual aid groups in the direct social work efforts to address institutional oppression. A critical feminist social work orientation situates social work to advocate for the human rights, well-being, and health of people in sex work during and in the lingering aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.