Sex work, advertorial news media and conditional acceptance

Abstract

Media depictions of sex work and workers are a key site where perceptions of the sex industry are established and contested, particularly for audiences who may have little to no direct interaction with it otherwise. The presence of an advertorial framing or function of news media coverage of the sex industry has been identified in previous work. This article analyses news media coverage in New Zealand post-decriminalisation to consider how advertorial frames are used to construct indoor low-volume sex work as acceptable, and identify the conditions which are attached to this acceptability. The advertorial frames often emphasise the respectability and/or desirability of the clientele, potentially indicating to male readers that they may be a client-type man. Simultaneously, this construction of clients as desirable is used to underpin a discourse of authentic pleasure on the part of the workers. These narratives obscure the sexual and emotional labour involved in low-volume sex work, stripping it of its status as work, and positioning work-sex as akin to non-transactional sexual contact. Such renderings often draw meaning and legitimacy by shifting existing stereotypes about the sex industry as dangerous or damaging to other workers: typically those who charge less for their services or who are perceived to see more clients. This article concludes that the establishment of one kind of sex work as more acceptable at the expense of other sectors of the industry may serve to further entrench existing inequalities among people who work in the sex industry.

Stigma, invisibility and unattainable ‘choices’ in sex work

“…In the case of sex work, the stigma it bears is reflective of the ways that it has historically been produced as socially or culturally unacceptable or undesirable. Sex workers who work indoors may be produced in media as more acceptable and consequently be less subject to the stigma traditionally associated with the work (Easterbrook-Smith, 2021a; Farvid and Glass, 2014). Other sex workers, often street-based or high-volume workers, are produced as unacceptable and comparatively subject to greater stigma.…”

“…Sex workers work in different ways for a variety of different reasons: sometimes for reasons of personal preference, sometimes because their individual subjectivity makes particular ways of working impractical, inaccessible or insufficiently profitable. Within the New Zealand context, sex work which is carried out indoors, working by appointment and at a low-volume is often constructed as the ‘best’ or most acceptable way of working (Easterbrook-Smith, 2021a). In many cases work perceived as more socially acceptable is still in managed brothels, despite observations from researchers in New Zealand that managed work can still be a site of exploitation, while private (self-managed) work permits greater autonomy and ability to decline clients (Abel and Fitzgerald, 2012; Abel and Ludeke, 2021).…”

“…Sex workers with complex physical or mental health needs may choose to do managed sex work rather than private work, because it reduces the administrative work they need to carry out for each appointment (Caradonna, 2020). Additionally, sex workers who choose to work in high-volume brothels sometimes explain the dynamic there is better suited to the kinds of services they prefer to provide (Easterbrook-Smith, 2021a: p. 418). Post-decriminalization, sex workers in New Zealand articulated the ‘trade-off’ that they perceived to be involved in different ways of working: a managed environment was often understood to be safer, and to provide camaraderie with colleagues, but with ‘less money and less autonomy’ (Abel and Fitzgerald, 2012: p. 13).…”

“…The reduction of sex work stigma in New Zealand is uneven. Acceptability is sometimes extended to a small number of sex workers, often through positioning them in comparison to other sex workers (Easterbrook-Smith, 2021a). Street-based sex workers have been subject to stigmatization and harassment, with this particularly evident in news media in the period between 2005–2015 when attempts were made to pass two private member’s bills which would have restricted where they could work (Armstrong, 2016; Easterbrook-Smith, 2020).…”

“…Some news media texts that discuss modes of sex work which are routinely constructed as less respectable or less acceptable include calls for sex workers to change how and where they work. Suggestions that sex workers would become more acceptable if they worked indoors, in the case of street-based sex work, or in lower-volume agencies, 1 in the case of indoor workers, frequently ignore the material realities of the different kinds of sex workplaces (Abel and Fitzgerald, 2012; Easterbrook-Smith, 2020, 2021a). The ‘solutions’ being proposed for sex workers are typically made by outsiders to the industry, who generally do not acknowledge the benefits, drawbacks and barriers which sex workers perceive to be attached to different ways of working (Abel and Fitzgerald, 2012).…”