Sex work research: Positionality in practice

Abstract

Sex work research has the potential to drive policy shifts, reshape societal attitudes, and inform the reallocation of resources towards the improvement of sex workers’ lives. In this paper, we explore how conscious and unconscious biases about sex work come into play during the research process and, if left unquestioned, contribute to the drafting of research findings that misinterpret, misframe, and misrepresent sex workers’ collective struggle for rights and recognition. Drawing from our unique experiences as researchers with lived experience of the adult industry, we explore some of the possible challenges of sex work research that scholars - especially early career researchers and those with no sex work experience, who may observe the industry through their civilian gaze, should consider. Our paper challenges the epistemic injustice against sex workers and contends that reflecting on the stigma associated with sex work and sex work research, on the biases of the civilian gaze, and on the risks of research that lacks nuance and does not centre sex workers’ lived experience are crucial to produce studies that can truly benefit the community.

Sex work stereotypes are rooted in the historic construction of sex work as a gendered phenomenon oscillating between the evils of exploitation and the titillation of deviancy, and are so deeply embedded into our cultures that they are almost unescapable (Cooper et al., 2024; Smith and Mac, 2018; Stacey Clare, 2021). Whether they demonise workers as dirty and deviant, pity them as powerless victims, or glamourise them as bad bitches who fight patriarchal oppression by seducing it and turning it into a stream of income, these flawed understandings of the industry oversimplify individuals’ lives and obliterate their struggle for justice. Over the past two decades, academics - particularly those with lived experience of erotic labour, have actively contributed to reorienting the debate from pathologising narratives to a more nuanced understanding of the industry (Cooper et al., 2024). Nevertheless, despite this paradigm shift, the context in which sex work research is produced continues to be impacted by public discourses and policy debates shaped by neo-abolitionists rhetoric (Stardust et al., 2021). As a result, sex workers are still subjected to epistemic violence, the deliberate silencing of marginalised communities’ knowledge (ESWA, 2025; Gonzalez-Recio et al., 2025).

Our research is inspired by our experiences as “whoreademics”, a portemanteau developed from Waring’s conceptualisation of the ‘whoredemia’ - the intersection of sex work and academia (2022: 70) - and our desire to challenge the ‘epistemic exploitation’ (Berenstain, 2016) of sex workers for the production of research that pathologises, sensationalises, or overlooks their experiences. Drawing from feminist standpoint theory (Harding, 2004; Hartsock, 1983; Smith, 1987, 1992), we believe that, despite the inevitable tensions and anxieties it comes with, our position as whoreademics is a site for epistemic privilege - allowing us to enrich our scholarship with a unique perspective on the challenges of sex work research. At the same time, while our lived experience and community networks provide us with deeper insights into the industry than civilians - individuals with no direct experience of the sex trade - we acknowledge that we are not immune from making mistakes. In this paper, we insist on the importance of reflexivity as a method to assess how researchers’ unique meaning-making ‘semiotic technologies’ (Haraway, 1988: 579), backgrounds, and assumptions about the topic they study can influence their work. Reflexivity is as uncomfortable as it is necessary, including for researchers with lived experience. Throughout our paper, readers will be challenged to assess the limits of their positionality; sometimes their views will be validated, sometimes they will be questioned. However, this is not a personal attack on researchers - just a reminder that the knowledge we produce is not neutral and that it is directly connected to our unique experiences and circumstances. There will probably be difficult moments and, if it is of any consolation, we confess that our own practice as authors was also accompanied by long reflexive digressions during which, with the guidance of our peer reviewers, we (re)considered our own position.

Understanding that knowledge cannot be separated from the systems of oppression in which it is produced, we build from anti-colonial scholarship and Foucauldian theory to question the power dynamics that underlie academic knowledge production and highlight the importance of disrupting hierarchical, exploitative, and harmful frameworks that disregard lived experience (Fanon, 2021; Foucault, 1980, 2003). Additionally, grounding our work in Haraway’s theory of situated knowledge (1988) and in the idea that ‘different subject positions in networks of power intersect with one another to produce different experiences and perceptions’ of epistemic gaps (Simandan, 2019: 130), we contribute to the debate on positionality by engaging with recent sex work literature and exploring stigma’s impact on research. For us, assessing positionality and putting it into practice means that, as researchers, we should never assume that our intentions and expertise are sufficient to avoid harm. Instead, we should critically examine how our unique position, including our proximity to the industry and the ways in which stigma infiltrates our personal and academic spaces, can impact our research. It is by doing this that we can remain accountable to the communities we study and disrupt the power imbalances in knowledge production. These considerations are particularly useful for scholars who are new to research that engages with sex workers. However, since reflecting on conscious and unconscious biases against marginalised groups and stigmatised topics is an ongoing process, they can also benefit more experienced researchers, especially those who do not specialise in sex work research but may find themselves supervising projects that engage with sex workers. Finally, we hope that this piece can serve as reassurance to all the sex workers entering (or planning to enter) academia to research their communities but feel like their lived experience is a set-back: it is not, and your voices and perspectives are important and needed.

Sex work research: A feminist issue

Language matters

Sex work

Through this paper, we use the term sex work to refer to the consensual sale of in-person and online services. The term, coined by sex worker, artist, and activist Carol Leigh/Scarlot Harlot, is widely used by academics, advocacy groups, and sexual services providers (Smith and Mac, 2018). Globally, it has been either translated or incorporated into different languages as a more empowering alternative for terms that failed to convey the labour aspect of trading sex. Undeniably, defining all those who trade sexual services as sex workers and treating them as one community disregards the unique structural inequalities they face, as well as the fact that there are people who neither identify as sex workers nor align with sex worker-led activism (D’Adamo, 2017; Morris, 2021). Workers’ identities are further shaped by factors like their tenure in the industry, their ambitions beyond sex work, the level of coercion they experience, and their position in the whorearchy - the hierarchical system of value associated with providers’ rates, their services, the stigma associated with their work, and the likelihood of police interactions (Armstrong, 2022; Fuentes, 2023; Grant, 2014; Simpson and Smith, 2021; Webber and Sullivan, 2024). All these voices matter and, if anything, further demonstrate how nuanced the industry is.

However, because of the stigma against commercial sex and deviant sexual practices, there are aspects of individuals’ realities that transcend differences and connect them on the basis of a shared experience of discrimination, isolation, and harm. Echoing D’Adamo, we use the terms “sex worker” to refer the heterogeneous group of people who exchange (or have exchanged) sexual services for different reasons and though different modalities and “community” as a ‘loaded concept’ to refer to ‘those who are researched as individuals trading sex, regardless of where they fall in the constellation of choice, circumstance, or coercion’ (2017: 196-197). The labour landscape in which providers operate is extremely complex and, while completely separating empowerment and exploitation may be impossible, we believe that emphasising the work aspect of their experience is useful to acknowledge the community’s efforts to be included in the design of a fairer future (Beloso, 2012; Cruz, 2023). We see our community as ‘a heterogeneous alliance of people of different identities connected by a ‘joint struggle’ that prioritises the needs of the ‘people with the least privilege, whose lives are the most impacted by poor laws and policies’ (Stardust, 2020: 27). Given the increasing number of students who enter the sex trade and eventually stay in academia (D’Adamo, 2017; Simpson and Smith, 2021; Armstrong, 2022; Jones and Sanders, 2022; Webber and Sullivan, 2024), we also use this label to include researchers with a sex working identity, thus invalidating the assumption that sex workers cannot be academics, as neo-abolitionist feminists like Bindel (2017) claim.

Neo-abolitionist scholar Dempsey notes that researchers’ language conveys specific semantic choices and assumptions about both the level of agency that individuals exercise over their work and what the future of the sex trade should be (2010: 1730). Quite problematically, as demonstrated by her decision to use the terms ‘prostituted people’ and ‘people who sell sex interchangeably to refer to the people with whom prostitute-users engage’ (2010: 1730-1731), neo-abolitionists’s language is often problematically mixed with that of pro-decriminalisation groups. This is not casual but, as Quirk notes, actively aimed at conflating sex work with trafficking (2017). Neo-abolitionists, including individuals with lived experience of the sex trade, often criticise any linguistic effort to recognise agency as a strategy to ‘prettify trafficking’ (Jeffreys, 2009: n.p.) so that ‘pimps become “managers”, prostituted women become “sex workers” and rape is an “occupational hazard”’ (Bindel, 2017: n.p.). They even go as far as to deny individuals’ choice to identify as sex workers, accusing them of uncritically using the language of ‘sex trade apologists’ (Farley and Kennedy, 2024: 1034). Although these beliefs often stem from legitimate concerns for vulnerable people, it is important to understand that they can also harm both sex workers and their loved ones, as in the case of Sweden’s introduction of an end-demand model that, under the guise of rescuing workers, only puts them and their families at risk (Smith and Mac, 2018). Therefore, even when neo-abolitionists’ takes can be situated within feminist activism and lived experience in the sex industry, reflecting on the nature of anti-sex work biases and impact on the wider community is crucial to avoid replicating the same harms that we claim to want to eradicate. This is an uncomfortable process and all researchers - whether civilians or not - need to confront the wider ethical implications of their work and ask themselves who will truly benefit from it.

While the research produced by anti-sex work journalists and lobby groups is mostly aimed at advancing the implementation of neo-abolitionist legislation, rather than feeding scholarly debates, its arguments can still influence unreflexive scholarship, whether carried out by individuals with indutry experience or civilians. Sex work research, we believe, is not merely about lived experience or methodological frameworks; it is an ideological issue. As pro-decriminalisation activists, using the term sex work is a political choice that empowers us to revendicate the labour aspects of sex work, destigmatise the industry, and reinforce the transnational bond of solidarity that connects sex workers globally. We are open to work with the community to develop and embrace new, more inclusive terminology; what we will not negotiate is our unconditional support for sex workers’ right to self-determination, access to justice, healthcare, and rights - not rescue.

Civilian

Like many other categories of specialised workers, such as military personnel, sex workers refer to outsiders as “civilians”, people with no experience of their field. While this term is mostly used in English speaking spaces and, as far as we know, does not have a similar equivalent in other languages, it demonstrates how sex workers see themselves as experts. Referring to non-sex workers as civilians empowers industry professionals to reclaim their histories, build solidarity, maintain privacy, and mobilise the community against the reduction of their work to easy money, desperate choices, or moral failures. In ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ (2015), bell hooks writes that for communities who exist at the margin and reclaim their struggle as a starting point for radical worldbuilding language is a place of struggle and resistance. As whoreademics who often felt forced to out ourselves to add credibility to our research, we extend the use of this term to academic spaces to refer to scholars who were never involved in the sex trade and may potentially struggle to grasp its nuances.

This is not to suggest that civilian researchers oppose decriminalisation by default or do not encounter struggle; academia is, like sex work, a very precarious industry (Stardust, 2020; Webber and Sullivan, 2024) where the different intersections of individuals’ identities play a crucial role in their experience of it (Baltaru, 2023; Crew, 2024; Johnson et al., 2018). Neither do we imply that all civilian researchers are actually civilians. Many perform civilian identities as a stigma management tool, to maintain their academic credibility (Ahearne, 2015; Armstrong, 2022; Hammond and Kingston, 2014). Once again, drawing sharp lines - this time between civilian and sex workers’ experiences - is impossible. Nevertheless, civilian researchers are not exposed to the same risks as sex workers; they can move across multiple worlds without experiencing stigma, which is not as easy for whoreademics - and completely impossible for sex workers without university affiliations (Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Simpson and Smith, 2021; Stardust, 2020; Waring, 2022; Webber and Sullivan, 2024). Therefore, while leaving the ultimate choice over civilian status to individual researchers, in this paper we reverse labels and use this term to reclaim our lived experience and disrupt the academic normativity that distinguishes between sex work research and sex worker-led sex work research.

Framing research

The existing literature on sex work encompasses a wide range of disciplines, methodological approaches, and practical aims. Sex workers are the protagonists of academic and non-academic studies that focus on their encounters with healthcare providers (ESWA, 2023), police officers (ESWA, 2024), migration law (Vuolajärvi, 2024), financial discrimination (Franco and Webber, 2024; Stardust et al., 2023) and the digital transformations and anti-trafficking legislation that redefined their online existences and added yet another layer of surveillance and marginalisation to their lives (Morgillo and Lannier, 2025). Sex work literature reflects the unique convergence of cultural attitudes, legislation, regional contexts, and industry settings in which workers operate, as well as the researcher’s own beliefs about morality, justice, and human rights (George et al., 2010). In light of the gendered nature of the profession, with women and femmes being overrepresented in the industry, sex work has been a key concern for feminist scholars and activists since the Sex Wars of the 1960s. More than six decades later, the debate remains split between anti and pro-sex work stances (George et al., 2010; Gerassi, 2015; Smith and Mac, 2018). Notwithstanding researchers’ efforts to provide nuanced narratives and advocate for decriminalisation, neo-abolitionist feminists continue to produce sensationalistic accounts of sexual exploitation that weaponise survivors’ stories to perpetuate moral panics and push for end-demand policy (Cooper et al., 2024; George et al., 2010; Gerassi, 2015; Loue, 2001; Quirk, 2023; Tiefenbrun, 2002). While claiming to bypass the ‘pro-sex work lobbies’ and the ‘pro-prostitution scholars and doctoral students’ that dominate academia to expose the dangers of the industry (Bindel, 2017: n.p), neo-abolitionist narratives only offer limited and conflicting insights that can harm sex workers and their communities.

Although most academic scholarship has moved away from the monolithic representation of sex workers as victims, these harmful generalisations continue to reverberate in recent studies. Some examples include the configuration of the industry as a site for trauma (Farley, 2004, 2022; Farley and Donevan, 2021; Farley and Kennedy, 2024), the understanding of prostitution as self-destructive behaviour (Gorbatov and Arbuzova, 2024), and the pathologisation of workers (Rajbhandari, 2020; Çaya, 2015) and clients (Busch et al., 2002; Senent, 2019). These works are likely to occupy a marginal place in the academic debate but their existence shows that questioning anti-sex work biases is still not the norm and that such biases can bypass peer-reviewed publishing, as in the case of works (co-)authored by anti-industry, NGO-affiliated researcher Farley.

Echoing Dworkin’s construction of pornography as the most exploitative and degrading product of male dominance (1981), neo-abolitionist literature reduces consenting adults to defenceless casualties of patriarchal oppression and governmental failures. These studies operate within what George defines as ‘the victim paradigm’ (2010: n.p.). They see sex workers as ‘victims who always happen to be women (or girls) but never workers’ (Beloso, 2012: 50), ignoring providers’ perspectives (McGarry and FitzGerald, 2019). Neo-Abolitionist feminists reject the working element of sex work and refer to providers as prostituted women, abused by punters, ruined by fast money, and pimped by the men who exploit them, the platforms where they sell their content, and the state that profits from their work (Bindel, 2017; Dempsey, 2010; Høigård and Finstad, 1987; Jeffreys, 2009; MacKinnon, 1982). These views emerge from a very specific way to look at the industry - one that is shaped by centuries of whore stigma and that disregards nuance. Therefore, while they may be presented as pro-feminist statements, they are deeply problematic.

Pro-sex work activists and academics criticise neo-abolitionist research for the harm it poses to sex workers, as well as for its erasure of both providers’ agency in negotiating consent and of any sexual practice clashing with heteropatriarchal normativity (Gerassi, 2015; Morris, 2024; Smith and Mac, 2018; Stacey Clare, 2021). Another critique is that, by advocating for the Nordic Model, an end-demand regulatory framework applied in countries like Sweden and France that criminalises the purchase of sex, neo-abolitionists ignore the dangers of pushing the industry underground and mobilising resources towards rescue projects that target consenting adults instead of trafficking victims (George et al., 2010; FitzGerald and Munro, 2012; Levy and Jakobsson, 2014; Gerassi, 2015; Smith and Mac, 2018; Kingston and Thomas, 2019; McGarry and FitzGerald, 2019; Vuolajärvi, 2019; ESWA, 2022; O’Doherty and Bowen, 2024; Raguparan and Raguparan, 2024).

Over the past two decades, research has started to include sex workers in the creation of knowledge about them to produce more nuanced accounts about how the intersection of their identities impacts their quotidian and the ways in which the law is enforced upon them (Cooper et al., 2024; Mellor and Benoit, 2023). Their works approach sex work from a harm reduction perspective, focusing on the problems that providers encounter in the online and offline worlds they inhabit, and the academic spaces that they enter as students and researchers (Berg et al., 2022; Blunt and Stardust, 2021; Cruz, 2018, 2023; Hardy and Barbagallo, 2021; Shah, 2004; Simpson and Smith, 2019, 2021; Webber and Sullivan, 2024). Rejecting neo-abolitionists’ unidimensional arguments, these accounts engage the academic community in the discussion of the industry’s nuances. It is thanks to this scholarship, and especially thanks to the scholars who challenged stigma to share their personal connections with the industry (see Ahearne, 2015; Armstrong, 2022; Bruckert, 2014; Waring, 2022) that we feel empowered to conduct sex work research as whoreademics.

Mitigating risk

Researchers should always demonstrate their commitment to protect participants from any harm associated with taking part in the research (e.g. retraumatisation, outing, doxxing, institutional intervention) and ensure that their studies do not reinforce anti-sex work stigma (Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Sanders, 2006) or glamourise the industry. Research that fails to do so is extremely unethical and, even when individual research participants are not directly harmed from it, the consequences on the community can still be devastating. In the U.K., one of the most striking examples of unethical research is the infamous London Brothel Study, carried out in the early 2000s by neo-abolitionist group Poppy Project. The study excluded workers’ perspectives and relied on data collected from male collaborators’ phone conversations with brothel reception staff to ultimately determine that indoor work is violent and exploitative (Bindel and Atkins, 2008). It faced harsh criticism from academics and, despite the accusations of relying on unethical and flawed methodologies, the authors refused to issue an apology (Lipsett, 2008). In a later publication, one of the authors even reiterated the validity of the study and of its findings (Bindel, 2017). Since brothels are highly criminalised and workers are reluctant to share potentially incriminating information, the full extent of the harm generated by this study is yet to be determined. What we do know, however, is that apart from its sensationalist account of London’s underground sex industry and the increased police and public attention it directed towards these work settings, the report did not actually improve brothel workers’ lives; more than a decade later, they still live in fear of criminalisation.

Bad research does not absolve “good” research from the potential risks it can cause. Even the studies carried out with the best of intention - both by civilians and researchers with lived experience - have the potential to endanger participants by not rewarding them for the time spent sharing their expertise, by questioning their right to self-determination, by indulging in trauma-harvesting, by replicating the power imbalances between institutions and sex workers, and by potentially feeding into the body of scholarship used to promote neo-abolitionist frameworks (Sanders, 2006; Jeffreys, 2010; Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Hammond and Kingston, 2014; D’Adamo, 2017; Sinha, 2017; Ferris et al., 2021; Saunders, 2022; The Sex Workers Project, 2023). To mitigate these risks, researchers have highlighted the importance of paying participants, adopting collaborative methodologies, considering how the research could be manipulated by anti-sex work groups, and carefully reflecting on how stigma can shape research (Jeffreys, 2010; D’Adamo, 2017; Stardust, 2020; Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Simpson, 2022; The Sex Workers Project, 2023; Webber and Sullivan, 2024; ESWA, 2025). These mitigation strategies are not infallible and, as Saunders (2022) notes, if researchers are not fully committed to dismantling the power relationships between institutions and sex workers, their work can still be harmful. (2022).

Sex work research challenges

Courtesy stigma and dirty research

Despite the efforts to destigmatise sex work, it is generally still seen as a morally tainted occupation or, more evocatively, ‘dirty work’ (Ashforth et al., 2007; Hughes, 1958). Any association with the industry carries significant stigma, even in academic spaces. For whoreademics, academia can be a place of violence, isolation, and epistemic injustice (Ahearne, 2015; Waring, 2022). This violence extends to sex work research-even when carried out by civilians. These studies are often considered ‘dirty research’ - something that can taint researchers and institutions’ reputations (Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Keene, 2022; Sanders-McDonagh, 2014; Simpson, 2022). Dirty research is dismissed as lacking adequate rigour, over-scrutinised by ethics boards and, in the worst cases, completely silenced - particularly when the researchers conducting it are sex workers (Ahearne, 2015; Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Keene, 2022).

By engaging in dirty research, academics expose themselves to the risks of a ‘spoiled identity’ and of ‘courtesy stigma’, the stigma related to the association with socially deviant groups (Goffman, 1968). Once their identity is tainted, researchers have to deal with potential criticism from colleagues and institutional ostracisation (Ferris et al., 2021; Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Simpson, 2022; Sinha, 2017). For whoreademics, navigating the stigma of dirty research is even harder, between the delegitimisation of their field and the threats to their academic credibility (Ahearne, 2015; Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Waring, 2022). Researchers with lived experience are ‘routinely silenced in favour of “experts” who can claim more critical distance, or who come with the race and class backgrounds that help navigate academia’s hierarchies’ (Berg et al., 2022: 146-147). Because of this, many scholars with industry experience feel forced to conceal their identity and avoid providing detail about their research and motivations (Armstrong, 2022; Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Webber and Sullivan, 2024).

While the experience of carrying out dirty research is in no way comparable to whore stigma, it can still impact individuals’ personal and professional lives (Simpson, 2022). Researchers should carefully consider the implications of studying sex work and identify adequate coping strategies that can allow them to protect their dignity without compromising their integrity and reinforcing anti-industry stigma. These considerations are especially important for civilian researchers who have the privilege to dip in and out of stigma and whose scholarly ambitions are linked with the study of a community they are not part of. Seeking academic gratification through the study of sex work without contributing to the destigmatisation of the topic and to the transformation of academia into a space where owning a sex working identity is neither deviant nor brave is deeply unethical. Far from simply ticking all the correct institutional boxes, ethical sex work research requires civilians to fully embrace the ‘ongoing struggle’ of allyship (D’Adamo, 2017) and put it into practice to disrupt the multiple systems of oppression that keep sex workers at the margin, starting with the very institutions that perpetuate them.

Sex work research against whorephobic regimes of truth

The stigmatisation of sex work research often leads to significant setbacks, starting from ethical clearance (Ferris et al., 2021; Sanders, 2006; Simpson, 2022). When it comes to topics that are either criminalised or perceived to be at the margin of safety and legality, ethics committees’ decisions may be influenced by the discourses that construct sex as an exceptional human activity and stigmatise erotic labour, together with their inexperience about the real level of risk that sex work research poses (Ferris et al., 2021; Sanders, 2006; Saunders, 2022; Simpson, 2022; Webber and Brunger, 2018). As well as providing recommendations that may be at odds with the aims of the project or requiring multiple revisions that delay ethical approval, these decisions may invalidate community expertise and reinforce the marginalisation of the groups studied (Ferris et al., 2021; Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Saunders, 2022; Simpson, 2022).

During our encounters with ethics boards, we found that our insider knowledge was often disregarded in favour of the enforcement of the specific regimes of truth that regulate the understanding of sex work in the UK. As Foucault highlights, seeking the truth about a topic is never disconnected from power but rather related to ‘a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and functioning of statements’ (1980: 131–133). Knowledge production is never objective or impartial; it relies on specific regimes of truth, the ‘ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true’ (ibid, p.132). For Foucault, research is more than ‘useless erudition’ (1980: p.79) and the truths it creates are based on the strategic selection and elimination of knowledge to follow the logics of power and discourses (O’Farrell, 2006). For researchers who operate in countries where sex work is not fully decriminalised or, like in the UK, it is partially criminalised and at the centre of a debate in which multiple stakeholders continue to push for end-demand models (Flanigan, 2019; Garcia, 2023; House of Commons, 2016, 2025; NUM, 2024; The Economist, 2018; Wall, 2021) the academy is not a neutral space. Together with institutional setbacks, sex work research is further complicated by peer-review processes that, while supporting the inclusion of a more diverse range of voices in the scholarly debate, are not extempt from biases. As a result, neo-abolitionist standpoints continue to feature in some academic journals (for example, Farley’s aforementioned co-authored works appeared in peer-reviewed publications) while researchers whose work is grounded in autoethnography or other qualitative methods that centre individuals’ retelling of their experiences may have their papers rejected or delayed (Are, 2024).

As part of their reflective practices, researchers should evaluate whether the type of knowledge they pursue, their methodological approaches, and the dissemination spaces they plan to use for their work align with their values or echo the preoccupations, priorities, and agendas of institutional settings and funding bodies. Doing this is not easy. Having a project delayed - or completely blocked - by universities can inevitably lead researchers to question the legitimacy of their topic (Simpson, 2022). Yet, for sex work research to be valuable, it should strive to benefit the community by challenging its epistemic obliteration and creating ‘new politics of truth’ (Foucault, 1980: 133) that facilitate a more nuanced understandings of the industry and the recognition of sex workers’ right to safety and self-determination (Huysamen and Sanders, 2021; Jeffreys, 2010; Klein, 2015; Simpson, 2022; Stardust, 2020; The Sex Workers Project, 2023). This process requires the combined effort of all sex work researchers and, for civilians, it represents a true test of allyship.

Grasping the nuance of sex workers’ identities

Performing erotic labour is a nuanced experience and the material circumstances that justify the entry into the industry intersect with unique dimensions of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, citizenship, geography, stigma, and whorearchy rank. Grasping nuance is necessary to avoid polarising the industry between empowerment and exploitation. Academic research should refrain from falling into the trap of popular culture’s romanticised “happy hooker” narratives that celebrate sex workers’ agency without acknowledging their systemic exclusion from labor protections and social services, as this risk reinforcing the idea that stigma is a fair trade-off for bodily autonomy and sexual freedom (Smith and Mac, 2018; Stacey Clare, 2021). The other risk of drawing the line between empowerment and exploitation on the basis of workers’ consent is the obliteration of experiences that happen in the complex liminality between agency and forced decisions - between the freedom of choosing sex work and the unfreedoms of capitalism (Berg, 2021; Cruz, 2018; George et al., 2010; Smith and Mac, 2018; Stacey Clare, 2021; Stardust et al., 2021; Waring, 2022; Webber and Sullivan, 2024).

Yet, this does not imply that sex workers are merely passive victims of a system that turns them into commodities, as neo-abolitionists argue. Understanding and representing the nuances of sex work requires incredible effort (Sanders, 2006), even when researchers are in a position of epistemic privilege in relation to the sex industry. Hence, and, sex workers’ identities remain hard to define. Because of the varying degrees of criminalisation, stigmatisation and risk that sex workers experience, connecting with the community can be difficult. To overcome these issues, researchers without direct access to sex workers often resort to using information and contacts provided by social services and sex work outreach groups (Benoit and Shaver, 2006). However, since most providers only interact with these services when the benefits of seeking help are worth the risks of engaging with institutions, these recruitment strategies may fail to provide a truly representative sample (Smith and Mac, 2018). By only focusing on the most visible workers, research risks leaving out the lived experience of a still understudied cohort of invisible erotic labourers - those whose lives are most affected by stigma and whose survival depends entirely on the levels of secrecy they can maintain (Benoit and Shaver, 2006). Gaining access to these groups without any connection to the community - whether based on shared experience of commercial sex or an established relationship of allyship and trust - can be quite difficult. Even when access is granted and providers agree to participate in research, they may withhold information to protect themselves, distort events to avoid stigma, or only tell the researcher what they think they want to hear (Agustín, 2004; Shaver, 2005). These stigma management practices, which can be contextualised within the community’s legitimate distrust towards institutions and fear of judgement, can impact the reliability of the data gathered and the findings it leads to (Shaver, 2005; Support Ho(s)e, 2021). All researchers - especially civilians - should consider these challenges during the early stages of their inquiry (Benoit and Shaver, 2006) and consider implementing collaborative methodologies that value lived experience and actively include sex workers as consultants and co-authors, not just participants (The Sex Workers Project, 2023; ESWA, 2025).

Putting positionality into practice

Civilian gaze

Studies that exclusively convey the community’s experiences through researchers’ civilian gaze - whether authentic or performed as a stigma-management tool - risk presenting a voyeuristic, decontextualized, and reductive image of the industry. The idea of gaze refers to the power relationships that privilege the observer over the observed subjects and their knowledge of themselves (Foucault, 2003; O’Farrell, 2006; Schroeder, 1998; Sturken and Cartwright, 2009). The social configuration of researchers as knowledge authorities constructs their gaze as something capable of delivering objectivity (Foucault, 2003: xiv). Drawing from Foucault’s conceptualisation of the medical gaze as something that reinforces the inequality between doctors and patients (2003) and Fanon’s critique of colonists’ attempts to present racialised groups’ inferiority as an objective biological limitation (2021), we argue that the civilian gaze risks obliterating the multifacetedness of sex workers’ experiences to ascribe them to the researcher’s own rationality around sex work. Far from being a standardised perception and representation of sex workers that puts both anti-sex work and allies in the same box on the based of their shared civilian status, the civilian gaze is a unique structural standpoint, shaped by centuries of whore stigma and by the continued marginalisation of the most vulnerable members of the community, such as those who are queer, disabled, unhoused, or from global majority, migrant, and working-class backgrounds. The civilian gaze - as we often experienced it ourselves - sees sex work explicitely in contrast to, rather than in conjunction with, other forms of labour. It looks at the body as the object of the transaction and not as a source of knowledge. It seeks the thrill of the best and worst experiences in the industry but leaves out the reality of everyday struggle. It draws imaginary lines between choice and coercion without noticing their overlaps. It erases the nuance of individual experiences and reelaborates sex workers’ stories and needs centering the observer’s personal feelings towards workers, clients, and society. In academic contexts, where researchers have the power to institutionalise knowledge, the civilian gaze risks turning research into an extractivist practice that privileges researchers’ personal biases and career ambitions over community needs and expertise (ESWA, 2025). The civilian gaze can reproduce stereotypes, impose labels on categories of erotic labourers who do not want to be associated with sex workers, unknowingly reproduce inaccurate neo-abolitionist assumptions, build arguments through flawed methodologies (e.g. not compensating participants, ambushing them in their work spaces, adding clients and managers to research samples), fail to adequately include sex workers as collaborators, and miss unique aspects of individual workers’ experiences in the industry (e.g. race, class, disability, type of work performed) ¹ . When observing sex workers, researchers’ civilian gaze may focus on the aspects that most resonate with the researchers’ own assumptions about sex work, fit with current academic debates, or are relevant to the scope of the research - thus living out other important elements of workers’ experiences. Together with the potential misrepresentation of sex workers, researchers’ civilian gaze can impact their relationships with the people they investigate. For example, to avoid the distress of being subjected to stigma, sex workers may withdraw participation from research, withhold information, or imbue their answers with social desirability bias (Agustín, 2004; Sinha, 2017). Of course, they may do the same when it comes to projects led by researchers with lived experience, especially when participation is unpaid. However, in this case, more than being a consequence of the researchers’ (perceived) civilian gaze, these behaviours may be connected with the researcher’s (percevied) position in the whorearchy, the community’s distrust in institutions, and the precarity of sex work.

In a society that stigmatises sex workers, the civilian gaze does not exclusively belong to civilians. Even those with lived experience of the industry may, under certain circumstances, adopt a civilian standpoint - especially when their careers, reputations, and access to funding are at stake. Therefore, by pointing out the limitations of the civilian gaze, we do not mean to imply that the epistemic privilege of researchers with lived experience does not have limitations or that whoreademic-led research is perfect (interactions with the community can also be impacted by the researcher’s position in the whorearchy, their identity, the political beliefs they display, and the institutional affiliations they hold). Neither do we wish for civilian researchers to feel discouraged from investigating sex work, or recommend that they enter the industry as a way to gain practical expertise. To be effective, conversations around sex work must include both sex workers and allies. Civilian researchers are not only welcomed to continue shaping the debate - they are essential to provide further legitimacy to sex workers’ advocacy and produce research that centres sex workers’ needs, ultimately leading to meaningful change. All we ask them to do is to carefully assess the limitations and impact of their civilian gaze, starting from the ways in which their (ongoing and previous) research and connections with the community are shaped by their positionality in relation to sex work.

Assessing positionality

Reflecting on positionality to determine how the researcher’s experiences and stances in relation to their topic can influence their work is ‘a form of ethical accountability’ (Madison, 2005: 16) and a fundamental requirement for research that engages with marginalised groups. As a method, it builds from feminist and decolonial scholars’ call for a more transparent discussion of the researcher-researched relationship to assess how the power imbalance between communities and institutions, together with researchers’ unique subjectivities, shape the epistemic grounds of research projects and the knowledge they produce about the researched “Other” (Armstrong, 2022; Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Madison, 2005; Miled, 2019; Sinha, 2017). Evaluating positionality requires researchers to negotiate their insiderness/outsiderness to the topic - but also understand that the lines between the two can be blurry, particularly when they have direct connections with the communities they study and work for institutions that have historically othered them (see Armstrong, 2022; Kanuha, 2000; Miled, 2019).

Positionality is not fixed; we constantly develop new ways to see the world (and the sex industry). Hence, determining where we stand demands to engage in an ongoing practice of reflexivity, so that through our research we can actively dismantle the hierarchies of knowledge production instead of merely gate-keeping access to information or centre ourselves as authorities on the topic. Reflexity is a method that involves reflecting on the personal experiences, beliefs, assumptions, motivations, power relations, actions, and social and political contexts that influence our work, our interactions with communities, and the implications of our findings (Hsiung, 2010; Piscitelli, 2014; Rix et al., 2014; Alley et al., 2015). When it comes to stigmatised, polarising topics like sex work, reflexivity is crucial to produce knowledge that translates the community’s realities instead of replicating harmful stereotypes that erase, distort, and instrumentalise their struggle (Hart, 1997; Wahab, 2003; Sanders, 2006; Dewey and Zheng, 2013; D’Adamo, 2017; Sinha, 2017). Assessing positionality in relation to sex work is a difficult process. On one hand, it forces civilians to test their allyship and deal with the limitations of their lack of lived experience (Dewey and Zheng, 2013; D’Adamo, 2017; Sinha, 2017; Stardust, 2020). On the other, it requires researchers with lived experience to explore the tensions of straddling between insiderness and outsiderness when researching their community (Armstrong, 2022) and produce knowledge for whorephobic institutions that disregard their insider expertise (Ahearne, 2015).

Reflexivity is necessary to ensure that sex work debates becomes more nuanced and that research benefits the community. The commitment to improve sex workers’ lives is not enough; not when researchers fail to reflect on any eventual discrepancy between their understanding of the industry and workers’ experiences; between what institutions allow and what sex workers want; between the ideal future they envision and what the community needs. The first thing civilian researchers - or those presenting themselves as civilians to avoid stigma - should consider is the impact of their gaze. In a reflective account of her experience as a sex work scholar, Sinha presents the initial limitations of her civilian gaze, which made her see sex workers through the mediatic representation that construct them as ‘fallen, wicked, tainted, and outcast women bringing dishonor and shame to their families and society’ (2017: 894). Failing to recognise that sex workers’ identities are more nuanced than the labels imposed on them adds to institutions’ long history of disregarding community expertise and widens the power imbalances between researchers and researched subjects (Ferris et al., 2021; Mann, 2013; Sinha, 2017; The Sex Workers Project, 2023). At the same time, buying into popular culture’s glamourisation of sex work and only understanding it as an empowering choice can silence the voices of workers who operate at the limits of coercion (Smith and Mac, 2018; Stacey Clare, 2021).

Every researcher should start by positioning their understanding of sex work as legitimate labour, without conflating it to human trafficking (Jeffreys, 2010). Additionally, they should be cautious about affiliating themselves with organisations, institutions, and networks that endorse neo-abolitionist frameworks. While these affiliations can enhance researchers’ professional profiles and reach, they are deeply unethical. Where possible, researchers should instead align themselves with sex-worker-led organisations and unions. Echoing scholars’ concerns about how research often silences or misrepresents sex workers’ struggle for a fairer, safer, and decriminalised industry (Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Jeffreys, 2010; Sinha, 2017; The Sex Workers Project, 2023; Wahab, 2003), we encourage researchers to disclose their stance on sex work and eventual affiliations with rescue organisations to their participants and collaborators. This ensures that sex workers are fully informed about how their contributions will be used, and confident that their stories will not be exploited to undermine their struggle for self-determination.

Researchers with a personal history of sexual assault, discrimination, abuse, or other forms of victimisation - including those experienced in the context of commercial sex - should consider whether and how sex work research may constitute an emotional trigger and impact their relation with the settings and subjects observed. Additionally, they should consider whether their gender coding, together with any discomfort with bodies and sexuality, could impact interactions with workers and their environments (see Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Sinha, 2017).

Producing research that benefits the community requires researchers to acknowledge that sex workers are more than vulnerable prostituted women (Stella, 2013; Ward, 2020) or happy hookers (Stacey Clare, 2021) and that, despite their position in the whorearchy, they exist at the intersection of multiple systems of oppressions. Sex workers’ experiences are uniquely nuanced and, because of the multiple identity marks they carry, the ways in which they experience the industry and the stigma that inevitably comes with it are completely different (Armstrong, 2022; Dewey and Zheng, 2013; Sinha, 2017; The Sex Workers Project, 2023).

Researchers need to think about their positionality in intersectional terms. This does not only apply to civilians. As scholars with lived experience have discussed, those with a sex working identity should reflect on how to de-centre themselves as experts and further assess whether their unique background and position in the whorearchy impacts their ability to understand and represent other workers (Armstrong, 2022; Webber and Sullivan, 2024). Regardless of our personal circumstances, encounters with stigma, identity marks, or the type of work we may have engaged/continue to engage in, our access to higher education and current academic affiliations already place us in a more privileged position than some of the individuals we may work with. Insider knowledge does not guarantee shared experience (Stardust, 2020) and, while ‘stigma homogenises people with sex work experience’, lived experience alone does not grant academics the title of experts on sex work (Armstrong, 2022). Instead of assuming that our connections with the industry make us exempt from reflecting on our position and its impact on our representation of the industry, we must continue to interrogate ourselves on the insidiousness of the power imbalances that we bring into our research and the ways in which it shapes our interactions with the community.

Reflecting on positionality and the ways in which it shapes the knowledge produced about sex work is a necessary step towards producing research that is ethical and beneficial to the community. We see reflexivity as a revolutionary act that challenges the omnipotence of academic qualifications and allows researchers to weigh the practical impact of their positionality. For us, putting positionality into practice means to constantly interrogate our academic selves to examine the motivations, assumptions, and limitations of our research to understand how we can produce work that challenges stigma and benefits the community - not just our academic ambitions.

Conclusion

This article has highlighted the insidiousness of anti-sex work stigma and detailed the complexities of conducting sex work research, both as civilians and as researchers with industry experience. Sex workers operate at the intersection of multiple levels of oppression, stigmatisation, and criminalisation. Researchers who work with them should be particularly considerate of this and ensure that, in addition to keeping them safe from any harm that may arise from research participation, their research is committed to benefitting the community. Beyond good intentions and academic expertise, conducting sex work research requires researchers to navigate a set of unique ethical challenges that, if overlooked, can cause extreme harm. Research that facilitates predatory data-gathering practices (e.g. misrepresenting the purpose of the research, covertly accessing sex workers’ spaces, engaging with managers to mediate interactions with workers, imposing labels) and allows the rendition of the community through an unquestioned civilian gaze only increases its stigmatisation and isolation, invalidating its advocacy efforts and exposing them to epistemic harm. This is not to say that there is a way to completely eliminate harm from research; as long as sex work continues to be criminalised and stigmatised there is no guarantee that the community will be free from harm. Nevertheless, as researchers, we have the duty to acknowledge and disrupt anti-sex work discourses that dismiss the nuance of workers’ experiences. This starts by questioning our positionality and reflecting on how it impacts those we study.

Whether carried out in academic institutions or rights-based organisations, SsSex work research should never come at the expense of sex workers. As well as implementing appropriate mitigation strategies and avoiding predatory data-gathering methodologies, researchers should always centre the community’s lived experience. Therefore, while appreciating civilian contributions, what we ultimately wish for the future of sex work research is to see sex workers’s voices at the forefront of both the studies it produces and the social changes that it aims to facilitate. Getting civilians actively involved in the destigmatisation of sex work in academic spaces so that researchers with industry experience feel safe and welcomed to share their expertise is the first step of this transformation.