Beyond exploitative or empowering: Tilly Lawless on sex work and feminism
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What sparked Tilly Lawless’s entry into sex work and how did she start?
Hey, Nat Tenchich here and happy International Women's Day. To celebrate, I'm excited to share with you this in-depth conversation with queer sex worker, feminist, writer and advocate Tilly Lawless. Now, feminism and sex work have a complicated relationship to say the least. Feminism in the past has largely taken a pretty binary view of sex work, that it's either exploitative or empowering. In her writing and activism, Tilly has been calling for a more nuanced view of sex work that captures the reality of her day-to-day with the necessary rights and respects of any job. In this chat, we get into the misconceptions around her industry, why Tilly doesn't find it empowering, and how to combat the shame and stigma that still hangs around sex work.
Tilly Lawless, thanks for being with us on The Hookup. My pleasure. Lovely to be here. So I guess for those who are less aware of your work and what you've been doing, can you talk us through like how you got your start in sex work? It was like quite a while ago now, right?
Yeah, I started almost eight years ago. So I started when I just turned 20 and I started because I'd moved to Sydney for uni and obviously Sydney is an expensive city to live in when you live out of home and if you don't come from a wealthy family. And so I needed a job that would be like financially lucrative but also still allow me to study. And I was like, you know, sex work, drug dealing, sex work, drug dealing and decided to go with sex work because I'm not very discreet. I thought I'd probably be bad at drug dealing.
more fun too surely your talk that you're um part of for the all about women festival is around feminism and sex work two things that you are very much passionate about and you know they're kind of like kind of your bread and butter basically but where do you think feminism sits with sex work in 2021 because i see it getting a bit better um
Yeah, no, totally. I feel like a lot has changed in the last five years. I feel like we're kind of in this sort of like moment of like burgeoning sex worker rights conversations like globally. And I feel like, you know, traditionally feminists have been pretty anti-sex work, but I really feel like that's changing with a new generation of voices. And it's definitely, I would say most people I meet in Australia are are definitely accepting of sex work these days. Like that can't be said for internationally. Like obviously most places in the world still have anti-sex work legislation. And so I feel like that carries across to people's attitudes. But I do feel like I'm seeing more and more sex workers be included at feminist events and things like that, which is really good.
Yeah, you're talking about international attitudes having an impact. And I think it's none so obvious than like the way that the US is still issues like serious, like Freudian issues with sex work are still rippling out to sex workers around the world. You know, passage of laws that have destroyed spaces like Backpage and the like.
Oh, totally. You
know, sex workers are getting blocked, banned and silenced online. Like, what do you think needs to change?
The US is a whole other ballgame because it, you know, the way it began historically, I mean, obviously not the way it began, but the way it began with white colonialists was Protestants fleeing various countries that they were persecuted in. So like it began as a religious country and that religion is just so ingrained in their culture that there's a vein of puritanism in America that really clashes with sex work. And I honestly don't know if that's something that will ever change or change any anytime soon. Like I'm not versed enough in American culture to know. But yeah, as you said, like America's attitudes to sex work has a ripple effect across the whole world because you see like legislation like
foster sester which affects sex workers on the internet everywhere because most of us use american hosted websites and for example america is the only country in the world that doesn't allow sex workers to enter the country like immigration wise so like other countries in the world will refuse sex workers entry if they think you're planning to work while you're there
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What sparked Tilly Lawless’s entry into sex work and how did she start?
0:00–5:18
2
How does Tilly describe the current relationship between feminism and sex work in 2021?
5:18–10:06
3
What are the biggest misconceptions people have about who does sex work?
10:06–15:17
4
Why does Tilly argue that the ‘empowered sex worker’ narrative is reductive?
15:17–18:57
5
How does Tilly differentiate between exploitation and empowerment in sex work?
18:57–23:29