Sex work

Violet writes about the current state of Prostitution / sex work in LCSH, May 2022:

There have been many calls to replace the LCSH Prostitution with “Sex work.” This would not be a straightforward replacement, as sex work is a broader concept than prostitution, including things like filmmaking, Internet sex, and phone sex, as well as prostitution. One potential replacement for the heading Prostitution is “Full-service sex work,” which could be under a broader term for “Sex work,” or under the current heading Sex-oriented businesses. (Prostitution is work, but is it a business??)

For structural consistency, see the hierarchy of the LCSH Sex workers, which was added in 2017 thanks to Netanel Ganin.

Here’s a blog post by Netanel on this topic, from 2017 (as always, not speaking for his employer):
https://inevermetadataididntlike.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/finding-sex-work-in-lcsh/

And a 2019 twitter thread, where Netanel and Lena Gluck talk about potential replacements for “Prostitutes”:
https://twitter.com/LenaGluck/status/1194621199516676096 (be sure to click through to see the whole discussion)

In 2022, Dominican MLIS students Sarah Deer & James Stanton compiled the following resources:

• Benoit, C., et al. (2018). Prostitution stigma and its effect on the working conditions, personal lives, and health of sex workers. Journal of Sex Research, 55 (4/5) : 457–471. Retrieved 18 April 2022 from  https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1393652. “The term prostitution continues to be used in most government policy documents, including Canada’s 2014 Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (Benoit, Jansson, Smith, & Flagg, 2017). The word also remains in usage for some advocacy groups, including the English Collective of Prostitutes and the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective. Scholars continue to use the term, ranging from those who support the full criminalization of all sex jobs (Farley, 2004; Jeffreys, 2009; Overall, 1992) to those who support their decriminalization and normalization (Bernstein, 1999; Vanwesenbeeck, 2001; Wagenaar & Altink, 2012; Weitzer, 2009).” “Other researchers (e.g., Bruckert & Hannem, 2013; Bungay, Halpin, Atchison, & Johnston, 2011) prefer the term sex work because it underscores the labor/work and economic implications of involvement in the sale of sexual services; it also challenges accounts that depict sellers (sex workers) as victims of others’ wrongdoings and not, depending on the social context, as agents of their own fate (Kotiswaran, 2001).” “This suggests that we need to think about sex work as involving a continuum of occupational experiences, ranging in degree of empowerment/choice to oppression/exploitation. Utilizing an occupational framework … discussing other types of labor in late modern capitalist societies (i.e., services, emphasis on sex “work”) begins the task of normalizing this type of labor…Thus, much like other front-line service workers, people become involved in sexual commerce through diverse paths and their experiences are shaped by cultural and social circumstances and individual responses to these conditions (Benoit, Ouellet, Jansson, Magnus, & Smith, 2017; McCarthy, Benoit, & Jansson, 2014).”  “A final terminology matter is what types of activities are considered to make up sex work or “sex jobs” that are involved in the global “sex industry.” [There are many who] make a case for distinguishing between those who sell sexual services in face-to-face interactions from those who work …where bodily contact with paying clients is absent… (Hardy & Sanders, 2015).” “Reframing techniques include seeing sex work as a routine economic activity … [emphasizing] its normality and acceptability as a facet of one’s social identity.[It] is a normal business pursuit—a common human service in exchange for money (Koken et al., 2004; Morrison & Whitehead, 2005; Murray, Lippman, Donini, & Kerrigan, 2010; Wong et al., 2011). “The sex worker rights conference held in Nevada, and described by (Jackson, 2016) is an example of how individual sex workers can collectively resist stigma.”
• McMillan, K., et al. (2018). Usage of the Terms Prostitution, Sex Work, Transactional Sex, and Survival Sex: Their Utility in HIV Prevention Research. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47 (5) : 1517–1527. Retrieved 23 April 2022 from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1140-0. “The terminologies that seek to distinguish a range of economically motivated paid sex practices from sex work… [so as] to bestow cultural legitimacy on some locally specific forms of paid sex and positions those practices as artifacts of culture rather than economy.” (abstract)
• Lister, K. (2021). A history of sex for sale. Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 9 April 2022, from https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/YW6VZREAACMANUG7. “[Consenting] sex workers are forced to work in dangerous conditions and are further stigmatised for what they do, and those who are abused become even harder to find.” “It is said that sex work is the world’s oldest profession, but this is not true. In cultures without money, there were no professions at all and little evidence of prostitution – though, doubtless, sex has always been a useful commodity in one way or another.” “How we write about sex work, indeed how we think and talk about it, matters. It might not be the ‘oldest’, but it is a very ancient one.”

• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Full-service. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved 6 April 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/full-service. “Definition of full-service: providing comprehensive service of a particular kind.”