‘We are here!’ The Importance of ‘Sex Worker Proof’ Imagery against Harmful Ignorance

• In Event: Gender and justice

Abstract

This presentation problematizes and unravels the notion of harmful ignorance that has been pervading political and media discourse around the persistently stigmatized phenomenon of sex work. The contribution is inspired by and based on the sex worker led project ‘Reimagining Sex Work’, which strives towards the destigmatisation of sex work in the Netherlands. Most notably, the project worked towards the production of a ‘media guide’ comprised of ‘sex worker proof’ photos that were made available through an image bank, and exhibited in academic and institutional spaces throughout the Netherlands. The impact of and discussion around these photo exhibitions, as well as the project’s various other interventions, suggests that a participatory, visual approach enables sex workers to reclaim control over their embodied representations and, in a radically democratic way, demand access to privileged spaces. The authors argue that collaborating across differences – with media, academic, governmental and other actors – created space for alternative, more respectful and inclusive representations of sex work, which have the power to penetrate resistant structures of willful ignorance and agnotological zemiology.

Keywords:
1) Sex work; 2) Representation; 3) Visual criminology; 4) Participatory action research; 6) Harmful ignorance; 7) Transgressive imaginations

Author

• VASILEIOS GERASOPOULOS, Utrecht University