A woman sits down in front of me. Her brilliant red pompadour rolls over shoulders, lightly caught here and there on the many studs affixed to her leather jacket. Though she wears a pair of black glasses with thick plastic frames, and I see her only through the heavily pixellated screen between us, the power of her gaze is hardly dulled. This is Wendy van der Jagt, a sex worker, activist, educator and therapist. She is fifty-four years old and brimming with life.
As we sit here together, I find it increasingly difficult to imagine how anyone could meet Wendy with anything other than total openness. Unfortunately, however, this is not the reality. So I ask her: what makes a good ally for sex workers?
Good allies, Wendy says, talk with, and not about sex workers. Good allies, Wendy says, ‘don’t judge, and they let people be who they want to be regardless of their profession, and who, what, or how a person is.’ Good allies, Wendy says, should remember this simple, almost uncannily effective line from Elvis: ‘walk a mile in my shoes.’ Looking at her now, I think: what fantastic shoes they must be.
Sex work is work
While speaking with Wendy, we both found ourselves using the phrase 'sex work is work' – often, and with feeling. It is a simple enough phrase, and one many of us have heard or used during discussions about the historically stigmatized profession. Yet these four words tend to conjure thousands of others in the endeavour to deconstruct and defend the values they stand for.
Wendy’s colleague in SekswerkExpertise, a Dutch advocacy network for sex workers’ rights, ISS associate professor Karin Astrid Siegmann, has produced a body of research that places equal emphasis on the work aspect of the equation as well as the (arguably more titillating) variable of sex. Indeed, to say 'sex work is work' raises surprisingly controversial questions like: what is work? Who has the right to work? And who protects the worker? As of 2025, the International Labour Organization, a significant UN body discussed briefly in the first part of this series, has not openly advocated for sex workers’ right to decent work – in contrast to other major international organizations like the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
'Good allies talk with, and not over, sex workers.’
Wendy van der Jagt
Special Attention
The choice/coercion binary
The cause for this silence is likely based in what Siegmann identifies as the central binary of choice and coercion deployed in discussions about sex work. In her own words, the ‘choice/coercion [binary] is used to exceptionalise sex work… as compared to the other things we do with our bodies in our lives.’ In other words, if we are mine workers, sales assistants or university teachers, nobody questions what we do with our bodies from the perspective of whether we entered it out of free choice or coercion. This question is only raised when it comes to sex work.
Coercions, however, are not unique to sex work. On the contrary, the vast majority of the global labour force works out of poverty, compelling people to take up often unattractive, poorly paid, risky or demeaning jobs. In professions outside the sex industry, however, these coercions are not used to argue that workers do not deserve labour rights protections or that these professions should be criminalised.
The perspective of labour
According to Siegmann, taking ‘a labour approach enables you to look at sex work from the perspective of livelihoods, and how people can sustain livelihoods in a dignified manner.’ Then, she says, you don’t have to operate solely within the choice/coercion binary, which Siegmann identifies as ‘irrelevant’ to the process of regulating sex work as legitimate labour to ensure the protection of workers.
Siegmann and her colleagues have made an effort to impress this approach on the ILO, and in 2023 were successful in putting together the first panel at an ILO conference to discuss sex work as a profession and not from the perspective of forced labour or HIV/AIDS prevention. They are currently in the process of putting together a special issue on the findings of this panel for the ILO’s flagship journal.
Whether the issue is approved for publication or not, Siegmann rightfully considers herself ‘proud’ of this accomplishment, which adds to a body of research on sex work that has prioritized advocacy over conventional academic outputs. This people-first approach has led to some personal reflections that, after meeting with Siegmann’s colleague Wendy, ring true. Siegmann says:
'I don’t think I have learned as much [in my professional life] from any other group of workers. People pushed so much into the margin have showed me so much creativity and strategic clarity… It has you reflecting on your own practices, priorities, and what you silence. I’m deeply grateful.'
To explore Karin Astrid Siegmann’s research on sex work through the lens of labour rights, in addition to her other work on related labour rights issues, click here.
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Written by Gabriella Leidam, research communicator
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