Stigma In Sex Workers

Sex workers have a hard time narrating their own stories and therefore expressing their agency in the matter. Street or outdoor have even less agency when it comes to being able to tell their own stories or narratives. “Who gets to speak and who is silenced, or who gets to tell the story of the sex trade, (…)” (Jeffrey 147) is a big issue when it comes to learning who has agency and who is able to act upon their agency. How does whore stigma and stigma against street or outdoor sex workers negativity impact their own agency or their view of their agency?
Stigma
Street/outdoor sex workers face a huge amount of stigma towards their work.
Stigmatizing attitudes that paint sex workers as backward, victims, uneducated, addicted, and whores are, according to sex workers, common among the wider public as well as among police, government, and the media, and they contribute to the climate of violence and marginalization that sex workers face. (Jeffrey 37) …show more content…
Like in “Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss” by Maggie De Vries, Maggie De Vries tells the story of her sister Sarah De Vries. Sarah De Vries having been murder lost her agency to tell her own story, therefore making Maggie and Sarah unreliable narrator (Ferris). “Goffman defined stigma as an “attribute that is deeply discrediting”, with the stigmatised individual possessing an “undesirable difference” and a “spoiled identity”(Lazarus & Deering 2). Goffman’s definition of an individual with a spoiled identity and undesirable difference passes an identity of othered on to the sex worker and putting the sex work against everyone else. This identity then goes about discrediting them more and making them loss more of their agency when they cannot exercise it against the