The Role of Technology in Modern Sex Work
Introduction
Sex work has changed tremendously throughout the years, as has the stigmatization around it. Sex work through technology can look like porn, only fans, selling nudes or feet pictures, or even meeting the person buying from the worker. These changes came from a couple different things, but today we are going to talk about the role of technology in modern sex work. We are going to be analyzing the positives and negatives of technology but more specifically how technology affects modern sex work. The positive aspects begin with safety and harm reductions, empowerment and destigmatization, advocacy for rights, and education and awareness. The negative aspects include potential for misinterpretation, privacy concerns, vulnerability to exploitation, content restrictions, as well as legal and ethical challenges.
The Positive Impact of Technology in Modern Sex Work
To begin let’s discuss the first two positive factors when it comes to technology and modern sex work. Safety and harm restrictions are a major part of sex work. “The term sex work is often conflated with prostitution. However, we know that sex workers perform a wide variety of erotic services.” (Jones 230). Whether it be through the person they are working for, coworkers, police, and clients. With technology it gives the sex worker an upper hand from the viewer. They pick and choose how they want to be perceived and how long they want the viewer to be able to see them. This allows the sex worker to feel safe while they are working. They don’t feel as judged as before. “In the last decades of the nineteenth century, America was becoming a more open, diverse society; its traditions of individualism, free speech, and free enterprise provided a favorable social environment for porn to flourish” (Seidman 235). Hence this a positive aspect when it comes to the role of technology in modern sex work. Next, technology in modern sex work has helped the empowerment destigmatization that sex workers have. The stigma being that they break up homes, raise crime rate, and contract and share STDs. When they work through technology such as only fans, they can’t spread STDs like some people tend to believe. The crime rate goes down because the work is now moved online so it doesn’t affect the communities. Lastly, sex workers don’t break up families anyway no matter what they believe. They are working. The person who has that family is the one breaking them up. As well as sex workers become more empowered because when they post online and sell sex online, they decide what goes one and how they look. That is powerful to be able to decide 100% how you look online and how people think of you. This is a great asset that technology has provided modern sex workers. Moving on to the two final positive aspects that we will be discussing.
The last two positive ways that technology has become a good thing for sex work are, advocacy for rights, and education and awareness. Women and men who are sex workers can use their online platform to not only promote their work but also advocate for sex workers rights. They want to decriminalize it. Therefore, this is a positive because they can use their voice and online community to reach across the world to fight for their rights. They weren’t able to do this as much as before because they couldn’t reach as many people or have the sources they do today. They now have other people advocating for them, so they don’t have to fight alone. Continuing onto the final positive that will be discussed, which is education and awareness. Technology allows people to educate themselves because people have open ended places to search for their answers and to make their own opinions on sex work. Instead of listening to what everyone else has decided. Such as google, libraries online, and any internet browser. This makes people aware that sex workers are just like them with a different job. “By the early decades of the twentieth century, sex was becoming part of the public world; it was in magazines, books, art, and movies, and it was evident in the new dance halls and taverns which even respectable women were now frequenting” (Seidman 235–236). It also makes people aware of when they are the buyer in this exchange, such as porn. Overall, safety and harm reductions, empowerment and destigmatization, advocacy for rights, and education and awareness are great assets for sex workers to have because of technology.
The Negative Impact of Technology in Modern Sex Work
The negative side of modern sex work through technology are sometimes dangerous. The first two reasons that are more on the danger side are potential for misinterpretation, privacy concerns. How technology creates room for potential misinterpretation is simple really. “Unlike traditional; pornography, the live-streaming video and interactive components of webcamming allow workers and customers to create unique for each performance.” (Jones 229). Someone who sees a sex worker online and through sex chats, they can see these special performances as true flirtation and think the worker wants to be in a relationship with them. “It is reasonable to assume if you are selling sexual favors regularly that the sex will lose some of its pleasurable qualities and become just work” (Seidman 258). A lot of people don’t want to believe that sex workers have sex or commit sexual acts with them just for work, so they convince themselves that the worker is attracted to them romantically. This can lead to stalking and can cause a lot of hurt for both parties involved. This moves us into our next negative side of modern sex work, privacy concerns. People may seek out the worker because they are infested by them or get obsessed. Which is one of the things that makes this job extremely dangerous to do. But this can also mean the sex workers are worried that their family or someone from their private lives sees what they are doing, this would matter if the worker wanted to hide this part of their lives. It can become awkward and nerve wracking running into someone offline that has watched the worker work. Next, we will discuss the last three negative sides for now.
The final three downsides to the role of technology in modern sex work that will be discussed are vulnerability to exploitation, content restrictions, as well as legal and ethical challenges. To start off, some sex workers who work through the internet and are newer are at more risk of being exploited. “The market in sex presents an ever-changing panorama of choices in which the individual is encouraged to construct their own identity through a form of erotic ‘window-shopping’” (Hawkes 115). Because the sex work industry is always changing people who are newer come in and don’t know what to fully expect, which makes them more vulnerable to exploitation. Since they are newer and don’t know the ropes as well, they are more likely to allow someone to tell them, whether that person wants free things or some of the pay the sex workers are more willing to fall for it. This is especially if those that are in their personal life such as partners, family, and friends don’t know that they are a sex worker they can even be blackmailed into giving someone money if that person was threatening to tell them. Next, is the fact that some sites have content restrictions. This hinders the sex worker from doing some things that they want to do as well as they can’t provide to their audience some of those desired things. This costs them to lose out on very valuable money. This is a huge negative side of modern sex work through technology, because it affects how much the sex worker makes. Finally, legal and ethical challenges are difficult especially if you don’t know they are there. There has always been a debate on if sex work should be legal and if it is ethical. So, some of the stuff that is put online and some of the things that the sex workers do won’t be seen as ethical or even work. This can cause workers to feel judged and vulnerable to be ridiculed. “In the public mind, prostitution continues to be associated with crime, drugs, immorality, and social decadence.” (Seidman 255). When working as a sex worker online you have to get permits and make it a business surely. There is some legal action that sex workers have to take. So, they need to find a good lawyer and make sure they have met all the criteria in order to not get in trouble with the law. Overall, there is a lot of negative sides involving the role of technology in modern sex work, most of those involve the legal system, dangers, and what other people perceive them as.
Conclusion
Overall, sex work is a hard job to do emotionally, physically, and mentally, with or without technology involved. But with technology there is a safer side to it which is privacy and not seeing the customer in person. The positive aspects begin with safety and harm reductions, empowerment and destigmatization, advocacy for rights, and education and awareness. The negative aspects include potential for misinterpretation, privacy concerns, vulnerability to exploitation, content restrictions, as well as legal and ethical challenges. The role of technology in modern sex work is a complex change compared to what sex work was years ago.
References
Hawkes, Gail. A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality. Open University Press, 2009.
Jones, Angela. “‘I Get Paid to Have Orgasms’: Adult Webcam Models’ Negotiation of Pleasure and Danger.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 42, no. 1, 2016, pp. 227–256, doi:10.1086/686758.
Seidman, Steven. The Social Construction of Sexuality. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.