Sex workers' rights encompass a variety of aims being pursued globally by individuals and organizations that specifically involve the human, health, and labor rights of sex workers and their clients. The goals of these movements are diverse, but generally aim to legalize or decriminalize sex work, as well as to destigmatize it, regulate it and ensure fair treatment before legal and cultural forces on a local and international level for all persons in the sex industry.
The term sex work refers primarily to prostitution, but also encompasses adult video performers, phone sex operators, webcam models, dancers in strip clubs, and others who provide sexually-related services. Some extend the use of the term to include "support personnel" such as managers, agents, videographers, club bouncers, and others. The debate over sex work is often characterized as an issue of women's rights, especially by those who argue that prostitution is inherently oppressive and seek to criminalize it or keep it illegal, but in fact, there are also many male and non-binary individuals engaged in providing sexual services. Most sex workers do not wish to be branded as criminals and regard laws against prostitution, pornography, and other parts of the sex industry as violating their rights.
Since the use of red umbrellas by sex workers in Venice, Italy, in 2001—as part of the 49th Venice Biennale of Art—a red umbrella has become the foremost internationally recognized symbol for sex worker rights.
Views
Discrimination and stigmatization
In most countries, even those where sex work is legal, sex workers of all kinds feel that they are stigmatized and marginalized and that this prevents them from seeking legal redress for discrimination (e.g., racial discrimination by a strip club owner, dismissal from a teaching position because of involvement in the sex industry), non-payment by a client, assault, or rape. Activists also believe that clients of sex workers may also be stigmatized and marginalized, in some cases even more so than sex workers themselves. For instance, in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, it is illegal to buy sexual acts, but not to sell them (the buyer is said to have committed a crime, but not the prostitute). In response to the growing sex liberation movement in the United States, the United Nations declared the 70's as the 'Decade of Women'. However, the US voted against a 1949 UN convention calling to decriminalize prostitution, and prostitution continues to be illegal in every state except for a few rural counties in Nevada.
Pornography debates
During the 1970s and 1980s, the main topics in the feminist discourse on women's sexuality were pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking. This led to the birth of the mobilization for sex worker rights in America. Carol Leigh is credited with coining the term "sex work" in the early 1980s and it was later popularized by a book published in 1989 called Sex Work. Around this time, pornography, in particular, was a prominent debate among feminists campaigning for women's rights. The feminists involved in these debates held opposing views on how to eliminate sexual violence against women, and those involved were either classified as "liberal feminists" or "radical feminists". The third group of feminists is described as "pro-sex" or "sex positive feminism", and this view is considered the true feminist defense of pornography.
Radical feminist
The argument of the radical side rests upon the premise that pornography depicts women as subordinates and perpetrates violence against women. Some of the main anti-porn feminists involved in the debates included Page Mellish, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon. Dworkin insisted that the oppression of women occurs through sexual subordination and that for gender equality to exist, subordination must be eliminated. Thus, she states that pornography and prostitution are incompatible with gender equality. Similarly, MacKinnon states that pornography is an act of sexual violence. On the grounds that pornography violated women's civil rights, she and Dworkin proposed a law named the "Anti-Pornography Civil Rights Ordinance" that allowed women to seek reparations for damages done by pornography through civil courts. Likewise, Page Mellish, the founder of Feminists Fighting Pornography (FFP), believed that issues facing feminists were rooted in pornography. Mellish allied with conservatives in 1992 to fight for the passing of the "Pornography Victims' Compensation Act", which was modeled after Dworkin and MacKinnon's ordinance.