The Atlantic’s CityLab is publishing a series I reported while on book tour, on sex work and policing in America. From the series introduction:
I spent the spring between a handful of U.S. cities toting around a bag printed in gold with BIG BROTHEL IS WATCHING YOU. In TSA lines and hotels, I turned the words toward my chest. As wedded as I was to my gear, I couldn’t risk a hassle. I didn’t know how much those guards and attendants were accustomed to what they’d consider the sexual underclass – even though the people who inhabit it move about those same spaces, too. I didn’t know how long I’d be afforded a moment to explain: I was on business, but not that kind, and if I was, what does it matter?
What will follow over the coming days are a series of stories from the American cities whose sex work economies, laws, and human rights advocates I detail in my new book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work. There is no sex work without the city, though you aren’t likely to see much overt evidence of that today. Unless you’re a potential customer or a member of law enforcement – men whose business it is to look – people who sell sex might be invisible to you. But even in a state of crackdown, sex workers have always been able to find one another.