Portal:Sex work

Introduction

Sex work is "the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation". Sex work only refers to voluntary sexual transactions; thus, the term does not refer to human trafficking and other coerced or nonconsensual sexual transactions such as child prostitution. The transaction must take place between consenting adults of the legal age and mental capacity to consent and must take place without any methods of coercion, other than payment. The term emphasizes the labor and economic implications of this type of work. Furthermore, some prefer the use of the term because it grants more agency to the sellers of these services. (Full article...)

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A webcam model with camera and laptop setup, Venus Berlin event in 2019

A webcam model (colloquially, camgirl, camboy, or cammodel) is a video performer who streams on the Internet with a live webcam broadcast. A webcam model often performs erotic acts online, such as stripping, masturbation, or sex acts in exchange for money, goods, or attention. They may also sell videos of their performances. Once viewed as a small niche in the world of adult entertainment, camming became "the engine of the porn industry," according to Alec Helmy, the publisher of XBIZ, a sex-trade industry journal.

As many webcam models operate in the comfort of their own homes, they are free to choose the amount of sexual content for their broadcasts. While most display nudity and sexually provocative behavior, some choose to remain mostly clothed and merely talk about various topics, while still soliciting payment as tips from their fans. Webcam models are predominantly women, and also include noted performers of all genders and sexualities. (Full article...)

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Selected images

Image 1Tart cards in a British phone box advertising call girls, 2005 (from Prostitution)
Image 2A liberated Chinese girl who had been forced in to sexual slavery by the Japanese military sits on a stretcher and speaks to a Royal Air Force officer. (from Prostitution)
Image 3Boat based window prostitute in Utrecht (from Prostitution)
Image 4Sex workers demonstrating for better working conditions at the 2009 Marcha Gay in Mexico City (from Sex work)
Image 5Femmes de Maison, painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, c. 1893—1895 (from Prostitution)
Image 6A prostitute in Amsterdam's red-light district talks with a potential customer. (from Prostitution)
Image 7Women in an early San Francisco bordello in 1870 (from Prostitution)
Image 8A prostitute and her customer illustrated on an ancient Greek wine cup; the act of prostitution is indicated by the coin purse above the figures. (from Prostitution)
Image 9Statue to honor the sex workers of the world. Installed March 2007 in Amsterdam, Oudekerksplein, in front of the Oude Kerk, in Amsterdam's red-light district De Wallen. Titled Belle, the inscription to the piece says "Respect sex workers all over the world." (from Prostitution)
Image 10Fresco from the Pompeii brothel (from Prostitution)
Image 11An Ancient Greek urn depicts a prostitute and her client. (from Sex work)
Image 12A sex worker in Berlin in 2001 (from Sex work)
Image 13Stickers affixed to a payphone in São Paulo, 2006 (from Prostitution)
Image 14A detail from plate 1 of William Hogarth's (1697–1764) The Harlot's Progress, showing brothel-keeper Elizabeth Needham, on the right, procuring a young woman who has just arrived in London (from Prostitution)
Image 15The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen (1622) (from Prostitution)
Image 16News report about three brothels operating in Albuquerque, New Mexico that were raided by police in 1922 (from Prostitution)
Image 17
  Legalization – prostitution legal and regulated
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Abolitionism – prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism – illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – prostitution illegal
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Prostitution)
Image 18Kisaeng women from outcast or slave families. (from Prostitution)
Image 19Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam (from Prostitution)
Image 20A political cartoon from 1787 jesting about the notion of taxation affecting prostitutes (from Prostitution)
Image 21Prostitute c. 1890. (from Prostitution)
Image 22The red light district in Amsterdam (from Sex work)
Image 23An oiran preparing herself for a client, ukiyo-e print by Suzuki Haronubu (1765) (from Prostitution)
Image 24Prostitutes on display in Yoshiwara during the Meiji Period, Japan (from Prostitution)
Image 25World map of prostitution laws
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Legalization (regulation) – Prostitution legal and regulated
  Abolitionism – Prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism (Nordic model) – Illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – Prostitution illegal in all aspects (selling and buying)
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Sex work)
Image 26Brothel scene; Brunswick Monogrammist, 1537; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Prostitution)

Related portals

Selected general sex worker

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Julia Bulette (c. 1832 – January 19/20, 1867) was an English-born American prostitute in Virginia City, Nevada, a boomtown serving the Comstock Lode silver mine. She was murdered in 1867, and a French drifter named John Millain was quickly convicted and hanged for the crime. Subsequent legends surrounding Julia's life and status as a sex worker and a madam have grown over time and become a part of Virginia City's folklore. (Full article...)
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Gangubai Harjeevandas (1928 – 8 September 1977), better known as Gangubai Kothewali or Gangubai Kathiawadi, was an Indian social activist, sex worker and madam of a brothel in the Kamathipura area of Mumbai during the 1960s. Gangubai worked for the rights of sex workers and for the well-being of orphans. She gradually ended up operating her own brothel and is known to also have lobbied for the rights of commercial sex workers. (Full article...)
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New Orleans Police Department mug shot of Lulu White, 1920

Lulu White (Lulu Hendley, ca. 1868 – August 20, 1931) was a brothel madam, procuress and entrepreneur in New Orleans, Louisiana during the Storyville period. An eccentric figure, she was noted for her love of jewelry, her many failed business ventures, and her criminal record that extended in New Orleans as far back as 1880. (Full article...)
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Charlotte Rose is an English sex worker, dominatrix, sexual trainer and political candidate from Nottingham, who lives in London. In 2013 she won the award of "Sex Worker of the Year" at the Sexual Freedom Awards where she is now a resident judge. In 2014 she took up politics, campaigning for sexual freedom as an independent candidate in the Clacton and Rochester and Strood by-elections. (Full article...)
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Evelyn West (January 30, 1921 – November 14, 2004), a.k.a. Evelyn "$50,000 Treasure Chest" West, and "The Hubba-Hubba Girl", was a vedette and burlesque legend of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. (Full article...)
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Pearl "Polly" Adler (April 16, 1900 – June 9, 1962) was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2021, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Debby Applegate published a comprehensive account of Adler's life and times entitled Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Doubleday. (Full article...)
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Taylor on MTV Real World Tour at Chicago Vision Nightclub

Brianna Taylor (born May 30, 1987) is a reality show personality, singer and songwriter, having appeared on both the fifth season of American Idol and The Real World: Hollywood, the twentieth season of MTV's long-running reality television series, The Real World. In 2008, she released her debut, self-titled EP, Brianna Taylor, on Chamberlain Records; according to that label's website, she was later signed to Universal Music. (Full article...)
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Nightscene in Hamburg St. Pauli – where Domenica was considered "Queen of the Reeperbahn"

Domenica Anita Niehoff (3 August 1945 – 12 February 2009), also known as Domenica, was a German prostitute and activist. She appeared in television shows in the 1990s, where she campaigned for the legalization and regulation of the profession. (Full article...)
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Favor in 2016

Suzy Favor Hamilton (born August 8, 1968) is an American former middle-distance runner and escort. She competed in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Olympics. (Full article...)
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Carol Leigh (January 11, 1951 – November 16, 2022), also known as The Scarlot Harlot, was an American artist, author, filmmaker, sex worker, and sex workers' rights activist. She is credited with coining the term sex work and founded the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival and was the co-founder of BAYSWAN, the Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network. (Full article...)
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24 November 1888 Penny Illustrated Paper illustration of Kelly

Mary Jane Kelly (c. 1863 – 9 November 1888), also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger, Dark Mary and Black Mary, is widely believed by scholars to have been the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who murdered at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888. At the time of Kelly's death, she was approximately 25 years old, working as a prostitute and living in relative poverty.

Unlike the other four canonical Ripper victims—each of whom had been murdered outdoors and whose mutilations could have been committed within minutes—Kelly was murdered within the sparsely furnished single room she rented at 13 Miller's Court, affording her murderer an extensive period of time to eviscerate and mutilate her body. Kelly's body was by far the most extensively mutilated of the canonical victims, with her mutilations taking her murderer approximately two hours to perform. (Full article...)
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Lee in 1956

Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette, famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir, Gypsy: A Memoir, was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy. (Full article...)
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Air Force Amy in 2007

Deanne Salinger, known professionally as Air Force Amy, is an American legal prostitute, glamour model, adult model, and reality TV performer. MSNBC has called her "a living legend in the world of sex." (Full article...)
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Annabel Battistella (February 14, 1936 – February 10, 2021), known professionally as Fanne Foxe, was an Argentine-American stripper best known for being involved in a 1974 sex scandal surrounding Arkansas Congressman Wilbur Mills. At the time, Mills was the chair of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means and a powerful Democratic politician. The scandal was one of the most reported political sex scandals of the 1970s. In 2009, Foxe was on the Time list of top 10 mistresses, and her affair with Mills was on the Bloomberg list of top 10 U.S. sex scandals. (Full article...)
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Marble portrait herm identified by an inscription as Aspasia, possibly copied from her grave.

Aspasia (/æˈspeɪʒ(i)ə, -ziə, -ʃə/; Ancient Greek: Ἀσπασία Greek: [aspasíaː]; c. 470 – after 428 BC) was a metic woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son named Pericles the Younger. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan and was tried for asebeia (impiety), though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for either of these claims, which both derive from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life.

Aspasia was portrayed in Old Comedy as a prostitute and madam, and in ancient philosophy as a teacher and rhetorician. She has continued to be a subject of both visual and literary artists until the present. From the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as both a sexualised and sexually liberated woman, and as a feminist role model fighting for women's rights in ancient Athens. (Full article...)
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Morganna Roberts (born July 4, 1947) is an American entertainer who became known as Morganna or Morganna, the Kissing Bandit in baseball and other sports from 1969 through 1999. She was also billed as "Morganna the Wild One" when appearing as a dancer in the 1980s.

Morganna rushed the field on many occasions and kissed Major League Baseball players including Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, George Brett (twice), Steve Garvey, Len Barker and Cal Ripken Jr. She has been described as "baseball's unofficial mascot" and "the grand dame of baseball". She also crashed National Basketball Association games, where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was one of her most notable victims. (Full article...)
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Liara Roux is an American author, sex worker, pornography director, internet personality and sex worker human rights activist. (Full article...)
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Portrait by John de Mirjian, before 1929

Faith Bacon (born Frances Yvonne Bacon; July 19, 1910 – September 26, 1956) was an American burlesque dancer and actress. During the height of her career, she was billed as "America's Most Beautiful Dancer". (Full article...)
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Metairie Cemetery tomb originally of Josie Arlington

Josie Arlington (1864 – February 14, 1914) was a brothel madam in the Storyville district of New Orleans, Louisiana. Arlington started her life as a prostitute at 17–18 years old as a means to support her family. Arlington used her experience to open a brothel in 1890, which she named "Chateau Lobrano d'Arlington". Shortly after Storyville was established as the red-light district for New Orleans, Arlington moved her business into this area. After her building was destroyed by fire in 1905 she moved her business into a saloon owned by Tom Anderson, which was known as 'The Arlington Annex'. Josie retired from the business in 1909 and sold her assets off to Tom Anderson. Arlington died in 1913 and was buried in Metairie Cemetery, where her grave had to be moved because it had become such a tourist attraction. (Full article...)
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Chippendales dancers in Las Vegas with fans

Chippendales is a touring dance troupe best known for its male striptease performances and for its dancers' distinctive upper body costume of a bow tie, collar, and shirt cuffs worn on an otherwise bare torso with jeans and undergarment.

Established in 1979, Chippendales was the first all-male stripping troupe to make a business performing for mostly female audiences. The company produces Broadway-style burlesque shows worldwide and licenses its intellectual property for select consumer products ranging from apparel and accessories to slot machines. The Chippendales perform at The Linq in Las Vegas. (Full article...)
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Danni Ashe (and early in her career sometimes as Danielle Ashe; born January 16, 1968) is a retired American nude model, former erotic dancer and web developer who is the founder and former CEO of Danni's Hard Drive, a popular adult web site from the 90's. She started her adult Internet site in 1995. She has been an industry advocate and testified before a government panel. (Full article...)
Image 22

Film Quarterly (FQ), published by University of California Press, is a journal devoted to the study of film, television, and visual media. When FQ was launched in 1945 (then called Hollywood Quarterly), it was considered "the first serious film journal in the United States, with those most interested in the subject at the helm."

In addition to providing scholarly analysis of international, Hollywood, and independent cinema, FQ (according to its website) "also revisits film classics; examines television, digital, and online media; covers film festivals; reviews recent books; and on occasion addresses installations, video games, and emergent technologies." Over the decades, the journal's contributors have included many distinguished film artists, critics, historians and theorists. (Full article...)
Image 23
The Kaufmann Head in the Musée du Louvre, a Roman copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos, which Phryne is said to have modelled for.

Phryne (Ancient Greek: Φρύνη, before 370 – after 316 BC) was an ancient Greek hetaira (courtesan). Born Mnesarete, she was from Thespiae in Boeotia, but seems to have lived most of her life in Athens. Apparently, she grew up poor but became one of the richest women in Greece.

Phryne is best known for her trial for impiety, in which she was defended by the orator Hypereides. According to legend, she was acquitted after baring her breasts to the jury, though the historical accuracy of this episode is doubtful. She also modeled for the artists Apelles and Praxiteles: the Aphrodite of Knidos was said to be based on her. Phryne was largely ignored during the Renaissance, but artistic interest in her began to grow from the end of the eighteenth century. Her trial was depicted by Jean-Léon Gérôme in the 1861 painting Phryne Before the Areopagus, which influenced many subsequent depictions of her, and according to Laura McClure made her an "international cultural icon". (Full article...)
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Portrait by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1782

Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (28 August 1744 – 8 December 1793) was the last maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XV of France. She was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason—particularly being suspected of assisting émigrés to flee from the Revolution. She is also known as "Mademoiselle Vaubernier".

In 1768, when the king wished to make Jeanne maîtresse-en-titre, etiquette required her to be the wife of a high courtier, so she was hastily married on 1 September 1768 to Comte Guillaume du Barry. The wedding ceremony was accompanied by a false birth certificate created by Jean-Baptiste du Barry, the comte's older brother. The certificate made Jeanne appear younger by three years and obscured her poor background. Henceforth, she was recognized as the king's official paramour. (Full article...)
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Valérie Tasso is a French writer, lecturer, research worker, and sex therapist, currently living in Barcelona, Spain. She has several university degrees (Economical Sciences, Foreign Applied languages), and in 2006, she graduated in Sex Therapy from The Institute of Sexology (IN.CI.SEX El Instituto de Sexología,) in Madrid.

In 1999, she worked as a prostitute for six months, out of curiosity. In 2003, she wrote her sexual experiences in the book Insatiable – The sexual adventures of a French Girl in Spain. This first book has been an international best-seller, and is the basis of the script for the film Diary of a Nymphomaniac directed by Christian Molina. She has written three more books. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Lea Ackermann, a German nun of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, fought against forced prostitution and sex tourism in East Africa?
... that the posthumously released documentary Clean centered on the life of Sandra Pankhurst, a former sex worker, drag queen, and crime scene cleaner?
... that An Amorous History of the Silver Screen has been read as a biographic metafilm, paralleling its lead's rise from prostitution into film stardom?
... that Indonesian politician Sanusi's parents discouraged him from becoming a government employee, because his salary would be paid partly from taxes on alcohol and prostitution?
... that a Harvey's franchise known for being a hub for sex work was described by one artist as a "legendary Toronto icon"?