Sex workers are stigmatized as socially disruptive, dirty, and shameless, and society judges them more harshly than their non-sex worker peers. This has led to their neglect by policymakers, law enforcement, healthcare providers, and members of the public.1 The stigmatization of sex work leads to bad policy, which harms both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking. Therefore, a greater understanding of sex workers as complex and diverse people is a vital part of achieving human rights and ensuring greater access to resources and safety for both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking.
All sex workers suffer the consequences of dehumanization, which is when we see others as less than human2 and therefore less deserving of fair and respectful treatment.3 However, not all sex workers experience dehumanization at the same rate. The racial, class, and gender prejudices present in society also impact the treatment of sex workers, with low-income, Black and brown, and trans sex workers receiving harsher judgment and legal treatment than their white, higher-earning peers. More so, these biases also exist among sex workers themselves. Known as the “whorearchy,” the sex worker community has its own internal hierarchy based on the type of work and amount of money someone makes. Escorts who charge high rates or strippers who don’t provide full-service work may reject and maintain distance from street-based workers. This hierarchy, perpetuated inside and outside the sex worker community, leads to unjust treatment and inequitable access to resources and social support for sex workers.
Society continues to assume sex workers are a monolith, with little understanding of who sex workers are, their nuanced experiences, and the lives they live. This perpetuates the false assumption that sex workers are drastically different from the rest of the population, with unrelatable, or undignified, values and lives. This assumed otherness perpetuates dehumanization,4 leading to loss of access to advocacy, fair legal treatment, and humane policy. However, increased connection to sex workers’ emotions, experiences, and preferences would be an important step in overcoming dehumanization.
People make harsh, often untrue judgments about their moral codes, values, and lifestyles. The reality is that the only difference between a sex worker and anyone else is the type of labor they do. Sex workers go to the grocery store, take their kids to school, and clean their homes. They laugh, cry, grieve, and feel just like everyone else. And they care about their communities, families, and often, their clients. There should be no exceptions when discussing human rights. Human rights are universal and not dependent on what type of labor someone does.
Myth 1: Aren’t all sex workers treated the same?
No. While all sex workers experience elements of dehumanization, prejudice varies greatly depending on the race, gender, body type, and sexual activity of the sex worker.
Social prejudices against sex workers are prominent and impact how different sex workers are viewed and treated by external systems. For example, white, wealthier escorts are perceived as having greater morality or empowerment than full-service sex workers who are not white, cisgender, young, thin, and/or have lower socioeconomic status.5 6 These biases amplify already-present discrimination in law enforcement. Black and Hispanic people are already more likely to receive negative police attention than their white or Asian counterparts; the intersectionality of being Black or brown and a sex worker compounds the danger one might experience if they occupied only one of these demographic categories.7 8 9 10
Beyond race and class, sex workers also experience differences in treatment based on the services they provide. While both men and women attribute lower moral status to all women who partake in penetrative sex or nudity as part of their job,11 those working on the street are the most visible and most likely to be arrested for sex work. In contrast, those working solely online or as high-end escorts have a greater ability to evade unwanted police attention because they are less visible and often do not fit the stereotypical profile of a sex worker. In a 2024 focus group conducted by Woodhull Freedom Foundation to learn more about sex workers firsthand experiences, participants repeatedly reported that racism, classism, homophobia, fatphobia, and transphobia are imbedded in people’s perception of them, impacting their pay, others’ presumptions about the kind of sex work they do, and how they are treated by clients, fellow sex workers, and law enforcement.
This hierarchical stigmatization of sex workers is also perpetuated within the sex worker community, with people inside the group having more nuanced prejudices about different sectors of sex work.12 Referred to as the whorearchy, many sex workers judge each other based on the type of work they do, the degree of nudity or sexual activity they engage in, and the people or clients they are engaging with. For example, full-service sex work, in which a worker has sex with a client, is more stigmatized than pornography because porn actors are working with other performers and not clients. On the other hand, people who do camming, stripping, or professional dominatrix work are viewed more favorably because they sometimes don’t have penetrative sex,13 may have less contact with the client,14 and are viewed as having more agency.15 Sex workers who are cisgender women with closer proximity to whiteness also report being paid better and being more desirable by clients and third-party employers, such as strip clubs.16
The effect of both external and internal stigmatization is such that sex workers often avoid engaging or identifying with those who fall beneath them on the whorearchy,17 18 in an effort to preserve their social and legal status. This has resulted in a fragmentation of the larger sex work industry into smaller sectors, which minimizes sex workers’ access to social support and shrinks the advocacy power of sex workers to fight for policy change that would support the entire industry at large. Not only does it siphon the power of the entire sex worker labor force into smaller groups, but one group may defend their access to rights with arguments that undermine another group. For example, high-end escorts who argue they should be entitled to legally sell sex because it is empowering suggest that those who sell sex solely to make money and survive, and not for empowerment, are less legally legitimate.19
Decriminalizing sex work, along with improved bias education and training for service providers and law enforcement, could offset some of this stigmatization, allow for greater internal community support, and increase equitable access to resources and safety across this sex worker community.
Myth 2: Does understanding sex worker identities really impact human rights?
Yes. Currently, most people fail to see sex workers as humans with multifaceted identities and experiences, leading to a dehumanization that allows policy and social stigma to neglect sex workers’ well-being and survival.
Dehumanization occurs when we see others as less than human, lacking the emotionality and experiences that we might relate to.20 Dehumanized groups are often seen as less deserving of moral treatment and more deserving of harsher punishments and prejudice.21 Sexualized women, for example, are more likely to be dehumanized than non-sexualized women22 and people are more likely to be aggressive or withhold resources from women they perceive to be having casual sex.23 Occupations can also impact dehumanization, and those seen as morally, socially, or physically dirty are often most stigmatized.24 As such, sex workers are among the most stigmatized occupational groups25 and are more likely to face greater degrees of dehumanization and social isolation than others.26 This can include poor treatment by social service providers, law enforcement, landlords, and financial institutions, such as banks. Stigmatized groups also experience a greater likelihood of physical and mental health issues, and a lessened ability to access resources like healthcare and education.27
This systemic marginalization of sex workers relies on the assumption that most people do not know and cannot relate to people who would participate in sexual acts to make money. The mere presumption that sex workers must have fundamentally different or bad values can cause them to be viewed as subhuman,28 which allows them to be denied the same rights and comforts of other society members and/or to be viewed as victims without their own voice or agency; this gives way to limiting policy that over emphasizes sexual infections or injection drug use and under prioritizes health and social services that sex workers, and victims of trafficking, need.29
However, this is a false assumption, and the general public often fails to see the similarities between themselves and sex workers. Sex workers are people with their own relationships, preferences, and families,30 working to find the same balance of survival, ease, and fulfillment that others are also looking for in their careers. This understanding is important because when we can see parts of ourselves in other people, we can humanize and care for them more easily.
The diversity of sex worker populations is similar to the diversity of non-sex worker populations. A 2023 Canadian study found sex workers to have a diverse range of educational backgrounds, incomes, health statuses, and housing statuses, and this is often overlooked by grants and support programs. Similarly, there was a notably diverse group of sex workers present at Woodhull’s 2024 focus group on sex workers. All participants were sex workers and represented a diverse mix of identity markers; they were white, Black, Asian, Native American, Jewish, Straight, Gay, Pansexual, Bisexual, women, men, transgender, cisgender, and disabled sex workers present. They were parents, sisters, brothers, friends, students, advocates, uneducated, and highly educated.
While these markers still tell us little about the lives these sex workers lead, they serve as a reminder that sex workers look, learn, and love like all of us. Stigmatization relies on society forgetting this humanity and instead presuming that sex workers are drastically different from themselves and anyone they know. This has given way to the harmful treatment and discriminatory policy present today.
References
1. Dax J. Kellie, Khandis R. Blake, Robert C. Brooks; Prejudice Towards Sex Workers Depends on the Sexual Activity and Autonomy of Their Work, Hobbies and Daily Activities. Collabra: Psychology 4 January 2021; 7 (1): 24386. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.24386
2. Factors in workers’ dehumanization: Multiple stigmatization, social status, and workers’ sex. Agadullina, Elena R., Terskova, Maria A., Erokhina, Daria A., Vladislav V. Ankushev. Volume 61, Issue 4. 2022
3. Haslam, N., & Stratemeyer, M. (2016). Recent research on dehumanization. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.03.009
4. Imagined otherness fuels blatant dehumanization of outgroups, Austin van Loon, Amir Goldberg & Sameer B. Srivastava Communications Psychology (2024)2:39
5. Toubiana, Madeline, & Ruebottom, Trish. (2022). Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221075344
6. Toni Daniel, Lamb, Jessia, & Campbell, Christine. (2023). Avoidance and empowerment: How do sex workers navigate stigma? Sexualities, 28(1-2), 470-491. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607231201736 (Original work published 2025)
7. Widra, Emily 2024 https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/12/19/policing_survey_2022/
8. Ghandnoosh & Barry, 2023 “One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing”
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/one-in-five-disparities-in-crime-and-policing/
9. Wang, Leah. November 22, 2022. “New data: Police use of force rising for Black, female, and older people; racial bias persists” Prison Policy Initiative
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/12/22/policing_survey/
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12. Toubiana, Madeline, & Ruebottom, Trish. (2022). Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221075344
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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030191
18. Toubiana, Madeline, & Ruebottom, Trish. (2022). Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221075344
19. IBID
20. Factors in workers’ dehumanization: Multiple stigmatization, social status, and workers’ sex. Agadullina, Elena R., Terskova, Maria A., Erokhina, Daria A., Vladislav V. Ankushev. Volume 61, Issue 4. 2022
21. Haslam, N., & Stratemeyer, M. (2016). Recent research on dehumanization. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.03.009
22. Morris, K. L., Goldenberg, J., & Boyd, P. (2018). Women as animals, women as objects: Evidence for two forms of objectification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(9), 1302–1314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218765739
23. Dax J. Kellie, Khandis R. Blake, Robert C. Brooks; Prejudice Towards Sex Workers Depends on the Sexual Activity and Autonomy of Their Work, Hobbies and Daily Activities. Collabra: Psychology 4 January 2021; 7 (1): 24386. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.24386
24. Factors in workers’ dehumanization: Multiple stigmatization, social status, and workers’ sex. Agadullina, Elena R., Terskova, Maria A., Erokhina, Daria A., Vladislav V. Ankushev. Volume 61, Issue 4. 2022
25. Benoit, Cecilia, McCarthy, Bill. and Jansson, Mikael. (2015), Stigma, sex work, and substance use: a comparative analysis. Sociol Health Illn, 37: 437-451. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12201
26. Toubiana, Madeline, & Ruebottom, Trish. (2022). Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221075344
27. Toni Daniel, Lamb, Jessia, & Campbell, Christine. (2023). Avoidance and empowerment: How do sex workers navigate stigma? Sexualities, 28(1-2), 470-491. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607231201736 (Original work published 2025)
28. Imagined otherness fuels blatant dehumanization of outgroups, Austin van Loon, Amir Goldberg & Sameer B. Srivastava Communications Psychology (2024)2:39
29. Mellor, Andrea, and Cecilia Benoit. 2023. Understanding the Diversity of People in Sex Work:
Views from Leaders in Sex Worker Organizations. Social Sciences 12: 191.
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030191
30. Toni Daniel, Lamb, Jessia, & Campbell, Christine. (2023). Avoidance and empowerment: How do sex workers navigate stigma? Sexualities, 28(1-2), 470-491. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607231201736 (Original work published 2025)
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