A New Zealand woman described herself as an ethical pimp in a Huffington Post personal section article a few days ago. I found it all very agreeable with one exception: she referred to the women she arranged meetings for as “sex workers.”
Wait a minute. Sex is not work even if you get paid for it. At least it shouldn't be. Unless you're getting forced into it, sex is play. So why not “sex players?”
We don't have major league baseball workers. We don't have workers in the NFL. Lebron James is not a fantastic basketball worker who makes a fortune plying his trade.There's a good reason why we don't call them workers, but there's no good reason why we don't call people who get money for sex “sex players.”
The problem here is the ancient notion that sex is evil and dirty and shouldn't be pleasurable under any circumstances. That notion is all too pervasive. Even the NZ woman who had taken a very progressive view of her occupation found no other term than “sex workers” to describe the women on her speed dial. And I find the term itself degrading in that it creates a mindset that makes it easier for people look down on those who engage in sex for pay. We don't need that attitude in 2021.