It seems most people’s attitudes to prostitution and sex work stem from if they have any visceral distaste for the work and/or sex. (Usually sex, I’d guess.)

It never seems to have a bit to do with the evidence, what the women (and some men) involved say, or what would actually help or even harm them.

I know, people hate anecdotes, but a close friend of mine when I was in the army had been a sex worker about a decade before I met her, and she was not the least regretful about what she’d done and in fact missed a lot of it – most specifically not having a 9-5 job.

She’d used the money she made to attend the University of Florida and to become a nurse practitioner. The last time I heard from her, she was making somewhere north of 100,000 a year, and that was back in the late 1990s.

She told me that she’d never been able to afford that degree without the work she did stripping and occasionally escorting.

So even though it shouldn’t be necessary, knowing someone pretty closely who had been a sex worker really served to make me re-evaluate a lot of the propaganda I’d heard about how evil it all was.

I know, most people who hate sex work and sex workers will talk about how all that’s just anecdotal, these women who like the work don’t exist because no one actually likes sex work, blah blah blah, but no one likes working at fucking McDonald’s either, or Wal-Mart, so why the obsession with shaming and belittling sex workers alone? Why not go ahead with your bad selves and shame Wal-Mart workers, too?

Oh yeah, it’s sex phobia. That’s all it is.

I can assure you that this person did exist. Her name was Mary and because I was getting into photography in a big way then (and I was training to be a photojournalist) I have hundreds of photos of her – because she was a willing and enthusiastic subject and also very lovely.

Thanks, Mary, wherever you are now for making me appear to be a better photographer than I was! You got me an A on many assignments in those classes.