Portal:Sex work

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Introduction

Sex work is "the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation". Sex work only refers to voluntary sexual transactions; thus, the term does not refer to human trafficking and other coerced or nonconsensual sexual transactions such as child prostitution. The transaction must take place between consenting adults of the legal age and mental capacity to consent and must take place without any methods of coercion, other than payment. The term emphasizes the labor and economic implications of this type of work. Furthermore, some prefer the use of the term because it grants more agency to the sellers of these services. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

Prostitution in Thailand is not itself illegal, but public solicitation for prostitution is prohibited if it is carried out "openly and shamelessly" or "causes nuisance to the public". Due to police corruption and an economic reliance on prostitution dating back to the Vietnam War, it remains a significant presence in the country. It results from poverty, low levels of education and a lack of employment in rural areas. Prostitutes mostly come from the northeastern (Isan) region of Thailand, from ethnic minorities or from neighbouring countries, especially Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. In 2019, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated the total population of sex workers in Thailand to be 43,000. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Selected images

Image 1Stickers affixed to a payphone in São Paulo, 2006 (from Prostitution)
Image 2Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam (from Prostitution)
Image 3News report about three brothels operating in Albuquerque, New Mexico that were raided by police in 1922 (from Prostitution)
Image 4Prostitutes on display in Yoshiwara during the Meiji Period, Japan (from Prostitution)
Image 5
  Legalization – prostitution legal and regulated
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Abolitionism – prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism – illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – prostitution illegal
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Prostitution)
Image 6Brothel scene; Brunswick Monogrammist, 1537; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Prostitution)
Image 7A prostitute in Amsterdam's red-light district talks with a potential customer. (from Prostitution)
Image 8The red light district in Amsterdam (from Sex work)
Image 9An oiran preparing herself for a client, ukiyo-e print by Suzuki Haronubu (1765) (from Prostitution)
Image 10A detail from plate 1 of William Hogarth's (1697–1764) The Harlot's Progress, showing brothel-keeper Elizabeth Needham, on the right, procuring a young woman who has just arrived in London (from Prostitution)
Image 11A liberated Chinese girl who had been forced in to sexual slavery by the Japanese military sits on a stretcher and speaks to a Royal Air Force officer. (from Prostitution)
Image 12Femmes de Maison, painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, c. 1893—1895 (from Prostitution)
Image 13Sex workers demonstrating for better working conditions at the 2009 Marcha Gay in Mexico City (from Sex work)
Image 14The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen (1622) (from Prostitution)
Image 15Prostitute c. 1890. (from Prostitution)
Image 16Boat based window prostitute in Utrecht (from Prostitution)
Image 17A sex worker in Berlin in 2001 (from Sex work)
Image 18Kisaeng women from outcast or slave families. (from Prostitution)
Image 19Fresco from the Pompeii brothel (from Prostitution)
Image 20Statue to honor the sex workers of the world. Installed March 2007 in Amsterdam, Oudekerksplein, in front of the Oude Kerk, in Amsterdam's red-light district De Wallen. Titled Belle, the inscription to the piece says "Respect sex workers all over the world." (from Prostitution)
Image 21World map of prostitution laws
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Legalization (regulation) – Prostitution legal and regulated
  Abolitionism – Prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism (Nordic model) – Illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – Prostitution illegal in all aspects (selling and buying)
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Sex work)
Image 22A political cartoon from 1787 jesting about the notion of taxation affecting prostitutes (from Prostitution)
Image 23A prostitute and her customer illustrated on an ancient Greek wine cup; the act of prostitution is indicated by the coin purse above the figures. (from Prostitution)
Image 24Women in an early San Francisco bordello in 1870 (from Prostitution)
Image 25Tart cards in a British phone box advertising call girls, 2005 (from Prostitution)
Image 26An Ancient Greek urn depicts a prostitute and her client. (from Sex work)

Related portals

Selected general sex worker

Image 1

Kaylani Lei in 2011.

Kaylani Lei (born Ashley Spalding) is an American pornographic actress. (Full article...)
Image 2

Patrick attending the AVN Expo in Las Vegas, 2010

Tera Patrick (born Linda Ann Hopkins; July 25, 1976) is an American former pornographic actress who was the Penthouse Pet of the Month for February 2000 and is an inductee of the NightMoves, AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame. She is a recipient of the Hot d'Or Award, NightMoves Award, AVN Award, XRCO Award, Venus Award, Adultcon Award, Adam Film World Guide Award, Eroticline Award, FOXE Award, FAME Award, Fanny Award, XBIZ Award, and ASACP Service Recognition Award. (Full article...)
Image 3

Niki Belucci as a DJ in 2010

Niki Belucci (born Nikolett Pósán, on 10 March 1983) is a Hungarian DJ and former pornographic actress.

Born in Budapest, at young age, Belucci practiced gymnastics and won several medals in youth competitions, before stopping at the age of 15 years because of a serious injury. She later got a diploma in hotel management school and, at the age of 19 years, started working first as a nude model and later as a pornographic actress. Belucci eventually left the porn industry shortly after getting married. During her adult career, she starred in about thirty films. (Full article...)
Image 4

Photograph of St. James by filmmaker George Csicsery

Margaret Jean "Margo" St. James (September 12, 1937 – January 11, 2021) was an American sex worker and sex-positive feminist. In San Francisco, she founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an organization advocating decriminalization of prostitution, and co-founded the St. James Infirmary Clinic, a medical and social service organization serving sex workers in the Tenderloin. (Full article...)
Image 5

portrait of Laura Thistlethwayte by Richard Buckner

Laura Eliza Jane Seymour Bell (1829–1894, married name Thistlethwayte) was an Irish-born courtesan of Victorian England. She was most notorious for the Nepalese Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana reputedly spending £250,000 on her. She later experienced a religious conversion and became a revivalist preacher on morality. (Full article...)
Image 6

Tuppy Owens in 1998

Rosalind Mary Owens (born 12 November 1944), known as Tuppy Owens, is an English sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and former adult model. (Full article...)
Image 7

Thaïs of Athens with Torch (1781)
by Joshua Reynolds

Thaïs (/ˈθaɪs/; Greek: Θαΐς; fl. 4th century BCE) was a Greek hetaira who accompanied Alexander the Great on his military campaigns. Likely from Athens, she is most famous for having instigated the burning of Persepolis, the capital city of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, after it was conquered by Alexander's army in 330 BCE. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, who was one of Alexander's close companions and generals. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander's lover on the basis of a statement by the Greek rhetorician Athenaeus, who writes that Alexander liked to "keep Thaïs about him" without directly classifying the nature of their relationship as intimate; this may simply have meant that he enjoyed her company, as she is said to have been very witty and entertaining. Athenaeus also states that after Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Thaïs married Ptolemy and bore three of his children. (Full article...)
Image 8

Carolin Ebert on 23 October 2010

Sexy Cora (born Carolin Ebert, civil name Carolin Wosnitza; 2 May 1987 – 20 January 2011) was a German pornographic actress, model, singer, exotic dancer, wife of Tim Wosnitza, and reality show participant.

Cora was born in Berlin. She was one of the participants of the 10th season of Big Brother Germany. Cora released two music singles after her Big Brother participation: "My Love – La, La, La" and "Lass uns kicken (Alles klar wunderbar)". (Full article...)
Image 9

De La Mora c. 2010

Brittni De La Mora (née Ruiz; born 1 April 1987) is an American pastor, and former pornographic film actress who performed under the name Jenna Presley. Having founded the Love Always Ministries alongside her husband, she has subsequently become an outspoken critic of pornography. (Full article...)
Image 10
Hitomi Shiraishi (Japanese: 白石ひとみ, Hepburn: Shiraishi Hitomi) is a former Japanese model, adult video (AV) actress, and a movie and TV actress from the 1990s. After retiring from performing, she went on to a second career as a movie screenwriter under the name Yukie Ochiai (落合雪恵). (Full article...)
Image 11

Lee in 1956

Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette, famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir, Gypsy: A Memoir, was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy. (Full article...)
Image 12

Sydnee Steele (born September 23, 1968) is an American sex therapist, author, free speech activist, and former pornographic actress. She appeared in over 300 pornographic films before her retirement in 2005. (Full article...)
Image 13

Crissy Moran

Crissy Moran (born December 22, 1975) is a Christian public speaker who is a former American pornographic actress. She began working in adult entertainment in 1999, and between 2001 and 2006 had performed in over 50 adult films. In 2006, Moran became a devout Christian and quit working in the adult industry. After retirement, she began speaking about her experiences in porn and appearing in national media projects addressing what she considers "the harms of pornography," associating adult films with human sex trafficking and the exploitation of women and children. (Full article...)
Image 14

Anderson at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo; January 21, 2012

Capri Anderson (born Christina Walsh; March 30, 1988) is an American pornographic actress. (Full article...)
Image 15
Max Konnor is an American-French gay pornographic film actor and webcam model. After starting his pornographic career under the name Isaiah Foxx in 2009, he left the industry in 2012 to pursue a career in stage and television acting. In 2017, he became a webcam model on CAM4 and started pornographic accounts on OnlyFans and Twitter. He soon started performing in studio-made pornographic films and later became the most-followed Black gay pornographic actor on Twitter and CAM4's first male ambassador.

As a pornographic film actor, he has won five Grabby Awards, five GayVN Awards—including for Performer of the Year in 2022—the XBIZ Award for Gay Performer of the Year, and two Fleshbot Awards. Outside of pornography, he was one of the subjects of the 2021 documentary Being Black in Porn, has appeared as a main cast member on the OutTV reality television series X-Rated: NYC since 2023, and starred in the off-Broadway musical Waiting in the Wings: The Musical in 2023. In 2019, he launched Haus of Konnor, a pornographic agency and studio geared toward gay pornographic actors of color. (Full article...)
Image 16

Nance on the poster for Eraserhead (1977)

Marvin John Nance (December 21, 1943 – December 30, 1996) was an American actor. A longtime collaborator of filmmaker David Lynch, Nance portrayed the lead in Lynch's directorial debut Eraserhead (1977). He continued to work with Lynch throughout his career, which included a recurring role as Pete Martell on Twin Peaks (1990–1991). (Full article...)
Image 17

Andrews attending Bloomingdale's 150th Anniversary event in 2022

Jessie Andrews is an American designer, producer, model, DJ, and former adult film actress. and was eventually awarded for her performance in Portrait of a Call Girl. She also received several Best New Starlet awards.

In 2012, Andrews launched her own jewelry line Bagatiba (bagātība being Latvian for opulence). She has modeled for clothing companies including American Apparel. She writes a sex advice column for Galore Magazine. (Full article...)
Image 18
Sabrina Barsotti, best known as Emanuelle Cristaldi, is an Italian actress and pornographic actress.

Born in Piombino, Barsotti made her debut in erotic/soft-core cinema, appearing among others in Tinto Brass' Paprika. In 1992, she entered the adult industry, and, in 1996, she semi-retired, still continuing to appear in live-shows. She also became a promoter of and responsible for Piombino of "AIDAA", which is an Italian animal rights organization. She also works as a DJ with the stage name Shangai 69. (Full article...)
Image 19

Arad in 2018

Mahmoud Reza Asefi (Persian: محمودرضا آصفی; born November 27, 1989), better known by his stage name Arad Winwin, is an Iranian American gay pornographic film actor, model and bodybuilder. (Full article...)
Image 20

Dawn in 2007

Anett Bocsi (born May 9, 1978), known by her stage name Anette Dawn, is a Hungarian call girl, make-up artist, ceramist, model and former pornographic actress. She rose to prominence for her career as a model and adult film actress that she made during the 2000s. She is known for playing in both lesbian films and solo scenes.

Dawn began her career as an erotic photography model in Budapest, and made her adult film debut with the film Wild Adventures (2002), produced by Private, which was followed by several adult films throughout the 2000s. She subsequently appeared in the films Girl + Girl 9 (2004) and Street Heat 2 (2004). Her most prominent role was as a supporting actress in the film Butterfly (2005), in addition to appearing in other Viv Thomas productions, including Our Movie (2005) and Viv's Dream Team (2005). Dawn also played a softcore solo scene in the film Prime Cups 1 (2007), followed by a major supporting role in the high-budget production Downward Spiral (2008). (Full article...)
Image 21

Marcello Bravo in Berlin in 2018

Markus Schlögl (born 4 January 1978), known professionally as Marcello Bravo, is an Austrian pornographic actor, director and film producer for the studio Little Caprice Dreams. (Full article...)
Image 22

Amber Lynn at the 50th anniversary screening of "Deep Throat".

Amber Lynn (born Laura Lynn Allen; September 3, 1964) is an American pornographic film actress and mainstream actress, radio host, model, exotic dancer, advocate and humanitarian. (Full article...)
Image 23

Serenity at the 2001 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo

Serenity (born October 29, 1969) is an American former pornographic actress who worked with Wicked Pictures and Hollywood Video. In 2002, she was ranked one of "The Top 50 Porn Stars of All Time" by Adult Video News. She also worked as a reporter for various news channels and is an outspoken advocate for animal rights. (Full article...)
Image 24

Love in 2014

Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989. Love has drawn public attention for her uninhibited live performances and confrontational lyrics, as well as her highly publicized personal life following her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. In 2020, NME named her one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years.

Love had an itinerant childhood, but was primarily raised in Portland, Oregon, where she played in a series of short-lived bands and was active in the local punk scene. After briefly being in a juvenile hall, she spent a year living in Dublin and Liverpool before returning to the United States and pursuing an acting career. She appeared in supporting roles in the Alex Cox films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987) before forming the band Hole in Los Angeles with guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group received critical acclaim from underground rock press for their 1991 debut album Pretty on the Inside, produced by Kim Gordon, while their second release, Live Through This (1994), was met with critical accolades and multi-platinum sales. In 1995, Love returned to acting, earning a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Althea Leasure in Miloš Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which established her as a mainstream actress. The following year, Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), was nominated for three Grammy Awards. (Full article...)
Image 25
Steve Drake (born April 20, 1954) is a pornographic actor and director. He has performed in over 800 films since the 1980s, and was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 1999. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Indonesian politician Sanusi's parents discouraged him from becoming a government employee, because his salary would be paid partly from taxes on alcohol and prostitution?
... that a Harvey's franchise known for being a hub for sex work was described by one artist as a "legendary Toronto icon"?
... that the posthumously released documentary Clean centered on the life of Sandra Pankhurst, a former sex worker, drag queen, and crime scene cleaner?
... that Lea Ackermann, a German nun of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, fought against forced prostitution and sex tourism in East Africa?