Former Gentlemen’s Club Worker Reveals The Hard Truth Many Wives Don’t Want To Hear

It is time we remove the benefits men receive when some sex workers are pushed under the rug. The majority of women support abortion rights. And women are rallying to promote the expectation that we — and not the majority-male government — are the rightful decision-makers when it comes to our bodies.

We should also be able to choose what job we do with our bodies. If we can exchange our labor for all sorts of terrible and dangerous, mind-numbing work, we should be able to exchange sex work for profit. When we marginalize sex workers as not worthy of naming their price, we endorse a sexist status quo that allows men privilege at our collective expense.

The double standards need to be eliminated. To do so, let’s do what we can, including voting, to decriminalize all forms of sex work. If we don’t act soon, bots will be recognized as legitimate sex workers before we are.

RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, has a 24/7 hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) and a chatline at online.rainn.org.

Megan Thiele Strong (she/they) is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San José State University in California and a Public Voices Fellow at TheOpEdProject. She holds a doctorate and has 20 years of experience teaching a breadth of courses, including environmental sociology. She researches at the intersections of social and environmental justice, mental health and education. They know we are meant to queer the status quo in order to be diverse, equitable, sustainable, creative and inclusive.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in November 2024.