Sex workers can face the attitude that because they work in the sex industry, they are excluded from having certain basic rights. This is often based on the view that sex workers are an inferior sort of person and not entitled to the same rights and treatment as the “better sort of people.” As put by Cardi B, “So what? You’re a ho. It don’t matter.” Misogyny and other bigotry can be factors here as well. One problem with addressing any philosophical issue related to sex is that people tend to approach this topic irrationally, but I will endeavor to do so in a rational and objective manner. As my focus is on ethics, to avoid possible red herring diversions in the form of debates about legality, I will focus on legal sex work, such as that done by porn actors.

An easy reply to the view that sex-workers do not matter is that the burden of proof rests on those who make this claim. After all, they are people and should be assumed to be entitled to the same moral rights that we get simply by being people. To disprove thus, it would need to be argued that by being engaged in sex-work, people forfeit these basic rights. While there are biases against sex-workers, there do not seem to be any compelling logical reasons that their choice of profession robs them of their basic moral rights.

One example of a perceived lack of rights is the view that sex workers do not have the right to complain about being sexually harassed or being expected to provide sex when they do not want to do so. While it might seem odd for a sex-worker to have the right to complain about being sexually harassed or having to engage in unwanted sex, there are at least two reasons this is as legitimate for them as any other worker. The first is that profession does not matter when it comes to the person’s basic rights. Just because a person is a sex-worker, it does not follow that they cannot be sexually harassed. To use an analogy, just because a person is a football player who engages in a violent sport for a living it does not follow that they cannot be assaulted. The same holds for sex-workers.

The second is that the sex-worker’s work is sex, so their being sexually harassed or being pushed to engage in sex when they do not wish would be compelled labor. If the director of a hospital coerced their doctors into giving her free medical services during their off hours, then that would be unacceptable. Or if the manager of a fast-food restaurant made their workers cook meals for them at home for free, then that would be wrong. The same applies to sex workers: they have the same right as any other worker to refuse to engage in compelled labor.

Another area of concern for sex-workers is their working conditions, broadly construed. This includes the acts they are expected to engage in, how they are treated, what language is used, and so on. While some might think that a sex-worker should expect to simply work with whatever conditions they are subjected to, this same attitude is not applied to other workers. At least by people with a sense of moral decency. As such, sex-workers should have the right to reject the conditions they wish to reject, without fear of retaliation. Obviously, this can have legitimate career consequences, and there is the question of what working conditions should or should not be considered acceptable. But this subject would go far beyond the scope of this short essay.  

An obvious criticism of this view is to argue that sex-workers’ work is, by definition, sex. As such, they must expect to engage in sex. To use an analogy, if a person is working as an engineer, then they must expect to engage in engineering when they are at work. If they do not want to engineer things, then they need to find another line of work. Likewise, for sex-workers. While this reply does have some intuitive appeal, it does fail.

While a sex-worker must expect that their work in sex involves sex, that does not entail that they must accept any conditions in their field. To use an analogy, a professional boxer must expect that they will be punched. As such, if a boxer does not want to get punched, then they need to find another line of work. However, if after agreeing to a normal match and they are confronted by a knife wielding opponent and expected to fight in a pool of pudding, then they have the right to refuse the fight. Also, if they enter into an agreement to fight a normal match, and then things are changed on them during the fight, they would have the right to refuse to continue. So, just as agreeing to box does not entail that a boxer must accept whatever violence might be done to them, agreeing to sex-work does not entail that the sex-worker agrees to everything that might be done to them.

Some might think that worrying about how sex-workers are treated is silly or a waste of time, but that view is exactly the problem. To think that sex-workers somehow lose their basic rights because they are sex workers is the problem. Sex workers are as entitled to basic moral rights as anyone else who works for a living.