It was a rainy evening, and my colleague and I were on the train, on our way to work. I have worked at various strip clubs over the past seven years, and my friend for five. It’s a long enough time in the adult industry to know most of its downsides: precarious working conditions, an unstable income and inescapable discrimination.
“Look,” my colleague handed me their phone. “There is something off with this.”
Their Instagram feed suggested a pop-up event organized by a group of pole dancers using the catchphrase “unstigmatize the stigmatized.” The word stigma in the context of pole dancing left a weird taste in my mouth. It reminded me of another reel I found on a fitness influencer’s page, which tackled the question: “Should you quit your muggle job to go into pole full-time?” It’s a question sex workers often get asked the most by people who are fantasizing about getting into sex work.
“Muggles” is how pole fitness dancers call people who don’t do pole, in the same way as sex workers use the word “civilians” to call non-sex workers. However, we don’t separate “us” from “them” because we want to gatekeep; we don’t believe sex work gives you “Potteresque” magical powers. But it’s crucial for us to define our community because of the isolation and discrimination we experience. Non-sex workers appropriating us reminds me of the nature of queerbaiting.
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Many of us are getting better at detecting queerbaiting, the practice of using a perception of queerness to gain money or clout, and calling out why it’s exploitative. Similarly, it feels necessary to identify when someone is playing the sex-worker card without actually being one. I call it “whorebaiting” when people in sex-positive communities appropriate sex work narratives, language, and labels to market themselves and profit off it, for money and clout. But they’re not sex workers and never have been.
And while I’m not comparing the experiences of queer people to sex workers, these are both marginalized communities whose lifestyles are often emulated and appropriated while the people who actually belong in them are discriminated against.
For the record, when I use the term “sex worker,” I am referring to people working in the sex industry: escorts, porn performers, strippers, professional dominatrix, but also phone sex operators and camgirls. Working in a strip club or as a pro domme for a client, for example, makes you a sex worker — teaching pole dance in a studio and domming in your private sex life does not.
To me, whorebaiting can be broken down into two problematic behaviours. The first one is the appropriation of sex work language and discourse. I mentioned the use of the word stigma, which implies a victim narrative. There are no laws that police pole dancing, and I haven’t read about increasing rates of violence against people who pole dance for fitness.
Stigma is not attached to pole dance itself. It’s attached to strippers who work for money, and what they symbolize.
These narratives — that position kinky performers, burlesque and pole dancers as vulnerable and stigmatized — are sometimes used as bait to attract a bigger audience or appear more evolved than they are. They want the vibes without having to deal with everything actual sex work entails.
The second behaviour characteristic of whorebaiting is identity appropriation. Actress Julia Fox, for example, has leveraged her six-month experience as a dominatrix in numerous interviews as a marketing tool, even making it the central topic of discussion. Diablo Cody, screenwriter of the film “Juno,” worked in a strip club for barely a year and turned that short period into a memoir titled “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper.” In both cases, Fox and Cody turned an isolated adventure in sex work into their whole identity.
It’s also not uncommon to find dancers who have worked a couple of shifts in a strip club using the label “stripper” as their marketing identity, to teach striptease classes and lap dance workshops.
Suppose your experience as a sex worker is so limited, and the marginalization that comes with it hasn’t had any influence on your life. Does that give you the right to claim the label for your own advantage?
I’m always suspicious of people who claim they have been sex workers, but who are very vague about details, especially concerning the time they spent in this profession. Whorebaiting behaviours aim at creating an ambiguity aimed at earning the same stripes as sex workers who actually can’t be open about their lifestyle because of possible repercussions.
When you hint at your sex-work experience as leverage, people will have questions. And, if a person is marketing themselves as a sex worker, I think the verification of their identity by the community is totally fair. By carrying your body as a possible representative of a marginalized group, you automatically acquire a responsibility. And so, inaccurately claiming to be a sex worker feels disrespectful to people who experience discrimination and sometimes even violence just to do their jobs.
Even in Berlin, the city where I am currently based, where sex work is legal and sexual freedom is an anthem, sex workers are assaulted with eggs or even pepper-sprayed in the streets, by both passersby and neighbours.
I’d be remiss not to address why people try so hard to be seen as whores in the first place. R.F. Kuang, author of the bestseller “Yellowface,” explains in an interview with The Rumpus that the desire to belong to a minority group is based on the flawed perception that marginalized people have gained an advantage in today’s society. This, of course, is just a facade and devalues the struggle of people who actually live this life.
I would argue that today, whorebaiting is a form of cultural appropriation. It takes away income, space, and visibility from sex workers. The label comes with violence, laws that police our bodies, criminalization, travel bans, fear, limited access to bank and payment services, erasure from history, censorship and silencing on online platforms. The list goes on, and as long as sex work is criminalized, sex workers are in danger.
The spaces we can claim are very limited, and so are the advantages and opportunities for work. And so, leave them to us. It’s not about gatekeeping — it’s about recognizing the entirety of our experiences, rather than just the ones that feel sexy.