How the Left Gagged on Sex Work

And dismantled a revolution

Aug 13, 2025

Welcome to The Ick, Season 4: DISGUST. This season I’ve invited a brilliant cast of writers and friends to explore what makes us recoil and why.

Season 4 will culminate in a print magazine and live reading in San Francisco. Subscribe here so you don’t miss event info and updates. Every paid subscription helps us cover printing costs.

Next up, Kit recounts her adventures in sex work activism in New Orleans, and the triumphs and disillusionment along the journey to justice.

In March 2020, I got my nose pierced at Downtown Tattoo on Frenchmen Street. It was their Friday the 13th special.

Later, I went to work a private party with my colleague—she’d booked us a bachelor party of Michigan men visiting New Orleans. The warning bells of COVID had begun ringing, but the shutdown hadn’t been declared yet. I remember we made a little game out of saucily rubbing hand sanitizer on their hands before we gave them a lap dance.

It seems dumb now, but I, like many people, feel ashamed of the things I did in early COVID. I will never feel shame for working as a stripper, or for getting a piercing that occasionally bled while I grinded on some dude’s lap—but I do feel disgust for the leftists who turned their backs on me.

I can tell you where you got those Pleasers

In 2020, I’d spent a few years working at strip clubs on Bourbon Street. I was going to school part-time and playing in a band, so it seemed like the best way to make money and keep a flexible schedule. Plus, I liked it, as much as I can like any job. I liked the performance, the money, all of that.

The seasons were unpredictable, so I started branching out. During the big money times like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest I’d taken a couple full-service clients. One week I made over three grand in eight hours. I’d made decent money dancing, but never that much.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t love the work. I’m not going to pretend that it was all feminism rah rah empowerment. The money did make me feel powerful, but the work was essentially a balancing act between letting (mostly) men objectify me while convincing them to pay. I wouldn’t call it degrading, but it was hard to keep my facial expressions locked away as I tried to give the customers what they wanted.

While dancing was physically exhausting—shin bruises from the pole, creaking knees from Hustler Club’s granite stage—escorting was much more emotionally taxing. I once got booked for a six-hour date where we spent most of the time cuddling. I couldn’t stand being touched for a week afterward.

I probably would have gotten more desensitized if I’d continued, but it was the emails that really broke me. The gig culture made me feel like I was always leaving money on the table, always worried a dry spell was around the corner. I had to be ready to slot a date into my schedule with little notice. I was constantly monitoring my inbox.

When the lockdown hit, all that was over. Every virtual option for sex work either required advanced pole dancing skills (which I don’t have) or the dreaded administrative work needed to run an Only Fans (you know how I feel about emails).

In the first months of quarantine, I had a pretty typical experience: I doomscrolled, I rewatched TV shows, I tried and abandoned workout routines. I found a lot of solace in online communities.

One day on Instagram, I saw a local nonprofit was hiring sex workers and allies for a project. They were going to bring a decriminalization bill to the Louisiana legislature. The work was part time but paid well, so I joined.

If I’d thought the emails were the worst part of sex work, I wasn’t ready for the emotional labor of social justice.

A short history of sex work advocacy

For the next year, we worked remotely to pull together research and testimonials. We recruited community members, professionals, and politicians to our cause. Our bill wasn’t about making new laws, it was about repealing old ones—10 anti-sex work statutes to be exact. That’s the decriminalization strategy: charges can’t be brought against sex workers if there’s no law to violate.

It was a long shot, but the world felt like it was changing. Crowds were marching in the streets all over the country. They were organizing en masse to demand defunding police and reallocating money to communities. People were tired of the same old, same old and they weren’t going to stay silent anymore. We knew it probably wouldn’t pass—this was Louisiana after all. New Orleans had a bit of a salacious reputation, but the rest of the state was less interested in laisser les bon temps rouler.

In the 20th century, there were two major attempts to suppress prostitution in Louisiana. Red light districts were first shut down during World War I, when they were pronounced a public health threat to soldiers and sailors. The same rhetoric was used during World War II, when a military commander blamed New Orleans for the increase in venereal disease among troops. Colonel Halloran kicked off an anti-prostitution campaign that likened sex workers to agents of the Axis.

*anti-prostitution campaign posters from WWII, comparing sex workers to communists; courtesy of the National Library of Medicine (source)*

Decades later, in 2018, a joint task force raided Bourbon Street strip clubs—ostensibly to investigate human trafficking and prostitution. This led to the creation of new police oversight in New Orleans, the Bourbon Alliance of Responsible Entertainers (BARE). In 2020, when we endeavored to bring decriminalization to the State, everyone was glued to their phones. Something as audacious as a repeal of anti-prostitution laws would definitely make headlines, so at least we could start the conversation.

The work was hard for me. I was sick of Zoom, everything moved slowly, every decision needed consensus. We painstakingly edited our info packet line by line via screenshare.

Around this time, a friend of mine suggested starting a leftist reading group for sex workers. This was much more invigorating than packet edits. We read the foundational texts of Lenin, Trotsky, and Marx. Then we delved into the queer writers of the 20th century like Leslie Feinberg and Judith Butler, as well as foundational philosophers like Foucault, Fischer, and Parenti.

We found a podcaster that demystified historical texts like State and Revolution and The Transitional Program. This podcast made the readings accessible and helped everyone feel able to participate.

I was awash with ideas and excitement during such a dark time. All of these great thinkers were putting words to feelings I’d had and were showing me a path forward. Solidarity, comrades, abolitionists—we were all in it together. When everything seemed shrouded in uncertainty, it gave me a sort of faith. I wasn’t passively quarantining, I was participating in a revolution.

Sex work was still a divisive topic, but I now had the vocabulary to defend it.

One of the pillars of the leftist ideology is the importance of the Worker. Sex work was exploitative, certainly, but no more than any physically laborious job. The fact that sex organs were involved was a question of morality, and should not hold weight in arguments against the labor itself. The work traded on the norms of the patriarchy, but that was a systemic problem, not an individual one.

So how could we fix the system? There are three main frameworks for sex work advocacy: the Nordic model, legalization, and decriminalization.

The Nordic Model criminalizes pimps and johns, not the sex worker. Most leftists agree the person buying sex should face the legal consequences. This seems fair, right? However, studies show placing the legal risk on clients makes it harder for sex workers to negotiate price and safety. If you’re safe from arrest but your client isn’t, your bargaining power shrinks. When a nervous john insists on meeting somewhere isolated or skipping condoms, you’re more likely to agree—because refusing could mean losing the money, and you have bills to pay.

Legalization also has its downfalls. Take Nevada for example, where sex work is legal. The process of licensure is incredibly difficult, and requires a spotless criminal background and negative status on all STIs. The stringent requirements leads to a lot of illegal sex work which can be just as dangerous if not moreso. If one does manage to obtain a license and a position, the brothels are essentially modern day company towns. Workers have little choice when it comes to food, rent, and weekly STI screenings. Brothel owners are free to line their own pockets with withheld wages for expenses.

Decriminalization is the most harm reductive approach, and evidence supports this.1 Decrim is the only option that empowers the worker, allowing them to seek health or legal assistance without fear. Decrim means workers could transition out of the industry with a clean criminal record.

Certainly well-reasoned people would be persuaded by these rational arguments. I was armed and ready for verbal sparring at the drop of a hat.

We’d started with a goal to start the conversation, maybe the bill would make it out of the Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice. But I was beginning to dream that Louisiana could pull off what no other state had. The momentum was intoxicating. I started to hope we could win.

A Marxist goes to the Capitol

Caught up in my radical hopefulness, I decided to join a revolutionary leftist organization. In 2021, I even spent the cancelled Mardi Gras weekend attending their Marxist school. There were plenty of people in the org who shared my views concerning sex work, but the man who did my onboarding interview was not one of them.

Sex workers were welcome to join, he said, but we would be the weakest link. “Having members who engage in criminal activity might paint a target on us,” he said. After all, Marx labeled sex workers and drug dealers the lumpenproletariat, who were “bribed tools of the reactionary intrigue.”

“When we bring the work above ground,” he said, “we may not be able to afford members who break the law.”

Still, I had a head full of theory and was ready to debate, so I joined anyway, assuming I could change some hearts and minds along the way.

“Marx wrote that 150 years ago,” I said to my friend Alex from the leftist reading group. “We’ve come a long way since then, right?”

Alex shook her head. “I’m too tired to keep having these conversations,” she moaned.

But I wasn’t too tired. Not yet, anyway.

On May 4th, we were finally ready to present our bill in Baton Rouge.

I remember it was already pretty warm for spring. I don’t remember what I wore now—I changed my outfit three times at 5:30 a.m.—but I do remember being worried about sweat stains.

I was nervous about what the opposition would bring, worried they would drown us out. But the turn out was insane. We had so many people come to speak in favor of our bill that they had to cut off the list of speakers. Everyone else contributed little green squares to show solidarity: 200 green squares (in favor) versus 40 red ones (against). People were standing in the aisles and in the back because there weren’t enough chairs in the chamber. There were many sex workers who showed up, as well as health care professionals, lawyers, and business owners. The biggest score was a former anti-trafficking agent who described sting operations where sex workers were pressured to say they’d been trafficked, so the task force could falsely justify their work.

Everyone spoke clearly, spoke powerfully, spoke from the heart. The voices in solidarity drowned out the few dozen in dissent. After hours of testimony, we sat back. We waited with bated breath as the legislators took the microphone.

“I, uhh, move we vote?” one representative said, a baffled look on his face. This was probably the first time he’d heard anyone talk about prostitution as something other than a sad, societal blight.

All the representatives were silent, looking at one another, hesitant to second the motion. Then one suggested with more certainty, “What if we move for further study?”

The representatives loved that, a deferment of their responsibility as public servants. The motion passed easily, and it was over. I sat there in disbelief.

We had lost. And not only that, but they had placed us in bureaucratic limbo. We were welcome to join the study, whenever that happened, but that would mean sitting in a room full of police officers and outing ourselves with our legal names.

I tried to hold onto hope, to remind myself that movements take time. We’d done something amazing, and the turn out was proof we were doing something that resonated with the people of Louisiana.

Then, the final blow came.

The sex work ick

On May 11th, one week after Baton Rouge, my favorite leftist podcast released a sex work and proletariat feminism episode. I felt excited as I hit play, certain that this was a continuation of the national momentum I’d been feeling. What I heard made my heart sink.

The guests on the podcast introduced themselves as “survivors of the sex trade.” This should have been my first clue. No doubt they had truly tragic backstories. Both had felt trapped in the work, and their time in the industry showcased the unacceptable treatment of sex workers.

They talked about the recent slate of pro-sex work rhetoric as some neoliberal, petite bourgeoisie movement. I was so confused. I had worked for decrim alongside diverse, dedicated people, most of whom did not come from privileged backgrounds. They gave a whole year of their lives to work on this bill. They knew that even passing the bill wouldn’t win the battle, just provide a harm-reductive stopgap. These were not the petite bourgeoisie, these were revolutionaries and abolitionists.

“The moment you rely on the sex trade to pay your bills, pay your rent, to feed yourself, consent is out of the question,” one of the guests asserted. “The only people that actually do this out of their own free will are those who are independently wealthy.”

I kept expecting the host to push back on this analysis, to offer some interrogation of these sweeping statements, but nothing came.

“The Western left seems to only cherish the free market when it comes to the buying and selling of women’s bodies. The capitalist class will do anything in their power to control the narratives of all industries.”

If sex workers do the job full time, they can’t consent? These were the most insulting, infantilizing takes I’d ever heard. Under capitalism, no worker is truly free to quit at will, yet this doesn’t erase our personal agency.

Also, “selling women’s bodies” is so dehumanizing. No one “bought” my body—no one got to take it home with them at the end of the night and keep it on a shelf. However, the podcast guests preemptively shut down any counterargument by claiming that the very idea of choice in sex work is just a capitalist psy-op.

The reading group Discord blew up. We were so angry that we’d been promoting this podcast to our sex worker peers only to have the host turn on us. While on previous topics he’d been very willing to engage in discourse on Twitter, he shut down any arguments on this one. He tweeted something along the lines of “if you have a problem with my recent episode, write down your thoughts, seal them in an envelope, and throw them straight into the trash.”

Naive little me, I still expected a retraction. I thought the host would get enough DMs and replies that he’d entertain another perspective.

Like in Baton Rouge, we were telling everyone what we wanted, and they just acted like they couldn’t understand. The more I learned how to debate these things thoughtfully and rationally, the more frustrated I became that no one was listening. My fellow sex workers were some of the most well-spoken and well-read people I’d ever met, yet their perfectly-crafted arguments fell on deaf ears.

“Why can’t they just hear us when we say this stuff?” I asked the people in my reading group. “We’ve learned all this theory, why can’t we bring them around?”

“They think we’re icky,” Alex said plainly.

It was so simple, and devastating. That statement encapsulated the powerlessness I’d struggled with in all my efforts.

There is an ingrained revulsion when it comes to sex work. You, reader, may be feeling it right now. We’ve had a lot of bad press, from the U.S. military to Christian fundamentalism, to plain old misogyny. This disgust response makes it too easy for leftists to slip into hypocrisy. The villainizing propaganda has dug in deep. Whether sex workers are enemies of feminism, or tools for the Nazis, we just can’t be trusted.

Sure, sex work can be gross—it’s often unpleasant, dangerous, and dirty. But so is coal mining, oil drilling, and farming—but leftists are desperate to get those workers on their side. Even the most environmentally destructive industries are given the grace to be replaced by degrees in most Socialist models. I doubt any leftist recruiters warned oil workers would be a liability when the revolution comes.

There’s a meme going around on lefty social media as our economic situation gets more precarious. It’s something along the lines of “if you see someone stealing food…no you didn’t.” And I agree with the sentiment, but feel like these nuances get applied unequally. Stealing and selling drugs is illegal, but I never hear former thieves or dealers come onto a podcast to preach the harms these criminal activities have on the leftist movement.

Despite all this, the sex workers of New Orleans are inching closer to justice. Just this spring, May 2025, a soft version of decriminalization passed in the city, but the rest of Louisiana has no such committees nor protections.

This is good, but for me it’s not nearly good enough. I don’t think I’ll be satisfied until no one is left out in the cold, no matter what kind of work they do. The Marxist organization where I was a member disbanded in 2024, and reformed under a new name. Could this rebrand signal a change of heart on the topic of sex work? If that’s the case, they know where to find me.

I haven’t given up on the Cause, but I lost hope in the Movement. Communists and socialists need to overcome a century of negative rhetoric, so maybe it’s time to reassess the guiding principles. If the revolution comes and you don’t want to include everyone, what are you really fighting for?

Sex workers have courageously pointed out this hypocrisy to the Louisiana legislature, and podcast hosts, but I guess we’re just too icky to listen to.

Kateleen is a writer and artist. You can find her on Substack, Threads, or her website.