Social Class Episode 1: Social Class and Prostitution

Seth Walsh

Seth Walsh

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1. Economic Function
Prostitution trades sexual access for income, arising where wealth and poverty meet. Extreme poverty is a primary supply‐side driver

2. Class Stratification of Sex Work
Sex markets stratify like any other: luxury escorts serve elites; street workers serve the dispossessed. Working conditions, pay, and police risk correlate with class position.

3. Entry Pathways
Low wages, debt, child trafficking, and migration funnel lower-class women and LGBTQ+ people into sex work.

4. Stigma as Class Control
Prostitution stigma marks those at the bottom, reinforcing class and gender hierarchies. Result: six-fold higher affective-disorder rates versus the general population.

5. Legal Regimes
Individualist, high-income nations lean toward legalization or regulation; collectivist or unequal states lean toward prohibition, compounding class penalties.

6. Urban Illustration
Cambridge: biotech wealth and £1 m houses coexist with hidden brothels staffed by trafficked women—an archetype of class polarity.

7. Exiting Constraints
Leaving sex work demands capital, alternative jobs, and social acceptance—resources scarce for the poor.

8. Policy Frame
2024 UN guidance: treat sex work as labor, secure rights, end punitive policing—aimed at class harm reduction.
 
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