NEW YORK — A Daily Dot article out today highlights the movement to make sure academic research on sex work reflects the voices and experiences of actual sex workers, a goal of which mainstream academia has historically fallen short.
The article is part of the Daily Dot’s new sex work-oriented vertical, Pleaser, and was written by journalist Jake Hall, who specializes in sexualities and queer issues and authored the book, “The Art of Drag.”
Hall chronicles recent efforts to platform and amplify the voices of sex workers, including those by U.K. activist Vee Holt and the Sex Work Research Hub, a “sex worker-led academic network” that works to “engage with policy-makers, connect researchers, and fight the impact of existing, stigmatizing research.”
Also featured is New York-based Dr. Angela Jones, who sent out a call on Twitter for “sources written or produced by sex workers.” Her mentions, Hall reports, “were quickly flooded.”
Jones then collaborated with Dr. Heather Berg and Dr. PJ Patella-Rey, fellow academics who are also former sex workers, to produce a Sex Worker Syllabus, unveiled in August 2021.
“In the spirit of mutual aid and crowdsourced knowledge — both staples of sex work activism,” Hall writes, “the Sex Worker Syllabus is a living document that continues to grow and shift in response to feedback.”
The Daily Dot article calls projects like the Sex Worker Syllabus “crucial in bringing the perspectives of actual sex workers into academia, an arena that too often relies on claims of impartiality to evade accountability.”
As Jones explained, “A lot of academics, especially those without lived experience, are writing about sex work. They’re building careers on that work, but they’re not actually citing sex workers.”
These civilian researchers, Vee Holt noted, now “have to contend with the fact that we’re in the room with them too, and we’re holding them accountable.”
To read Jake Hall’s “Academia excludes sex workers. A new generation of sex work researchers is changing things,” visit the Daily Dot’s Pleaser.
