The Whorearchy Illustration
This illustration is one of my favorites done in the month of May (my first month as an illustrator for Tryst)
here is the article by Jack Parker, a sex worker in the UK.
https://tryst.link/blog/whorearchy-101-sex-work/
While those of us who sell sexual services can all be united under the label of “sex worker”, not all sex workers face the same kinds of whorephobia. There is a hierarchy with respect to who is considered to be a more acceptable kind of sex worker, aptly named the “whorearchy”. As sex workers are attacked on a legal and social level, we are not attacked equally depending on where we sit in this whorearchy.
To understand who is placed where in this hierarchy, we first have to consider why some sex workers experience more severe whorephobia than others. The most stigmatized sex workers are those who have the closest contact with our clients and earn the least money from our work. Those with the closest physical contact with clients are the most likely to be criminalized, and the criminalization of sex work breeds stigma.
We must understand how sex workers are categorized and who is deemed more acceptable so that we can effectively dismantle these ideas. Our ultimate goal should not be to merely understand how we are ranked by the general public, but to abolish the whorearchy completely.
Who goes where in the whorearchy?
Street sex workers face high rates of criminalization, are hypervisible, and are subjected to an extremely high rate of violence. They interact closely with their clients and often engage in sex work on a survival basis, for a relatively low financial reward. People often refuse to believe this kind of sex work could be a choice, failing to respect these sex workers’ autonomy when they state that it is. In combination, these factors place them at the bottom of the hierarchy, and this is rarely contested.
Other types of full service sex workers, who may work for an agency, independently or in a brothel, make up the next “rung” on the whorearchical ladder, though they are not necessarily clearly delineated within that hierarchy. Independent escorts are likely to be placed higher than brothel or agency workers, however this, as always, depends on the socio-economic class of the workers and whether their work environments are criminalized. A wealthy sex worker who sees clients in a legal brothel is likely to be more privileged and face less stigma than an independent sex worker who is breaking the law by meeting clients.
Dominatrixes and other professional dominants are often placed just above indoor full service sex workers in the hierarchy – even when they also meet with their clients in person and charge similar rates – because the contact they have with their clients is viewed as being less intimate. The general public tends to view heterosexual penetrative sex as a singularly sacred act. Even for sex workers who do include sex acts in their domination sessions, such as pegging or even full service work, if they can keep the veneer of their work being about whips and bondage, then they retain a certain level of assumed respectability.
As sex workers are attacked on a legal and social level, we are not attacked equally depending on where we sit in this whorearchy.
Strippers have less intimacy with clients, whether the clubs they work in allow some touching or none at all, and thus stripping is less stigmatized. Nudity and sexual performance are involved, which many people view as demeaning, but the skill involved in pole dancing or floor work often allows the job to be framed as “erotic dancing” with a lesser focus on the lack of clothing. The class status of strippers is also obscured by the portrayals of the profession in popular media, playing into the common belief that sex work becomes more empowering and less degrading if it pays enough. Criminalization does, however, still impact strippers, as licensing permission may be removed from their clubs which renders their work illegal and forces the closure of their workplaces.
Online sex workers, because they have no physical contact with clients, are near the top of the whorearchy pyramid. With the ability to curate an online presence and persona, alongside varying levels of financial success which are based on an unknown volume of sales rather than charging by the hour, these sex workers are more easily able to conceal their class and face much less criminalization. Clients are less likely to target them for violence because they simply have less access to them, which makes online-only sex workers safer on average. Online sex workers have often made efforts to distance themselves from other, full service, sex workers.
Sugar babies, despite typically having sexual contact with their clients, are in a social position that allows them to deny that they are directly being paid for sex. This places them in a unique set of circumstances where they will be higher or lower in the whorearchy purely depending on how well they leverage this plausible deniability. Even sugaring websites themselves deny that these relationships are a form of sex work. If the line between client and romantic partner who spoils someone is sufficiently blurred, sugar babies can find themselves in the most privileged position among all sex workers by hiding that they are sex workers at all. Conversely, a working class poor sugar baby who cannot play the role convincingly may be treated just like any other escort.
You might notice that these groups are separated out as if people neatly fall into only one category. As usual, reality is messier than the boxes we are expected to fit ourselves into. Many sex workers engage in more than one type of sex work, such as full service sex workers selling porn on a subscription basis to supplement their income, further entice potential clients for escorting services, and vice versa.
You might notice that these groups are separated out as if people neatly fall into only one category. As usual, reality is messier than the boxes we are expected to fit ourselves into.
As sex workers, our position in the whorearchy may shift depending on what kind of work we are engaging in at the time or what our work is perceived to be. A stripper who offers extras may face lateral whorephobia from their fellows, who consider themselves above being paid for sex acts, but still be less stigmatized relative to other full service sex workers in contexts where people are exclusively aware of their work as a stripper. Resentment can build between more and less stigmatized workers.
This lateral whorephobia functions to enforce the whorearchy, as some sex workers may report others to the authorities or weaponize the harsher stigma against them to gain favour with their shared employers. They reinforce the structural bigotry against sex workers as a whole in the hope that doing so allows them to maintain a slightly higher position within the hierarchy, because they fear falling to the bottom if they show solidarity with their fellow workers. We are pushed into the whorearchy by outside forces, but many of us are complicit in maintaining it.
What else impacts the whorearchy?
Whorephobia is exacerbated further by how it intersects with other forms of bigotry. Sex workers may be further stigmatized due to racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia as well as other types of prejudice.
There is a noteworthy gap in pay between BIPOC sex workers and white sex workers, sex workers who are immigrants and those who are citizens, trans sex workers and cis ones. These pay disparities exist partially because marginalized people are more likely to begin doing sex work in worse circumstances and with fewer options, due to employment discrimination or eviction and housing discrimination, and because clients are often unwilling to pay these sex workers a similar rate to their more privileged counterparts.
Visibility is another huge factor in the risk posed to sex workers and the discrimination they face as a result. A sex worker who works in a brothel and does not show their face in any advertising is less likely to have their work discovered by their friends and family than a cam model or porn actor who is face-out and has a large social media presence. Even accounting for how much more negative the reaction would be towards the full service sex worker, the fact that the risk of discovery is higher for the online-only sex worker will have a significant impact on their livelihood and the likelihood they will become isolated.
Because marginalized people are more likely to be sex workers in the first place, it is not uncommon that we will be targeted by multiple forms of bigotry alongside whorephobia. A disabled person of colour who becomes a sugar baby may face more discrimination than a white able-bodied stripper, due to racist and ableist beliefs which make others more likely to view someone unfavourably in the first place, let alone for engaging in sex work.
For these reasons, roughly ranking which types of sex work are the most stigmatized is not a shortcut to determine the amount of whorephobia individual sex workers face. We should educate ourselves on the ways that marginalized sex workers experience harsher treatment and criminalization so that we do not fail to see this.
Ultimately, we must all excise our whorephobia, internalized or otherwise, and view the whorearchy solely as a framework to help us understand what types of sex work are more stigmatized. We must not buy into it or perpetuate it.“
