The idea of race has a complex history. It has been used for centuries to categorize, reward, and penalize people based on perceived differences. Despite often being misguidedly defined by skin tone and other physical features, race has no genetic basis. This powerful social construction has a tremendous impact on individuals’ lives because it is often employed to establish and maintain privilege and power dynamics. Access to resources and opportunities are often distributed along racial lines.
According to the common classification1, there are different types of racism that can appear in every area of life and work, and sex-industry is not an exception either. First of all, let’s look over what kind of racism exist and how and what form they can turn up in the different branches of sex-industry and what prejudice is behind them.
Individual or internalized racism exists within individuals. It is when one holds negative ideas about his/her own culture, even if unknowingly. Xenophobic feelings or one’s internalized sense of oppression or privilege are two examples of individual or internalized racism. Internalized racism, for example, is the learned form of prejudice we have towards people of different races or ethnicities. It is present in our thinking process and actions, and it can manifest in two ways. Internalized oppression: an assumed racial inferiority on people of colour. The other way is internalized privilege: the assessment of racial superiority for white people.
Individual racism is what is most present in sex-industry. Sex industry mainly consists of direct adult-entertaining services, such as prostitution or escort services, and indirect sex-related past-time services such as printed, online and cinematic pornography. Of course the industry is wider but these are the areas where racism can turn up. The most common form of internalized racism is the refusal of servicing sex-clients from other race or ethnicity. For example, it can often happen that a white escort doesn’t overtake carrying out sexual services to a sex-client with other skin colour than hers, most typically black people. On ethnic ground, the same can happen when the sex-worker and client are from the ethnicity that bear hatred toward each other from a reason that lies in the bloody history of their nations. Without naming any nations bearing grudge towards each other, it is not hard to imagine an escort, whose country have been invaded and ruined by its neighbour, refusing to do sex-services to a sex-client from the oppressive nation somewhere in a major multinational country where she works as an adult service provider.
Racism is sometimes misinterpreted when an adult entertainment provider on an escort site specifies what sort of guests she carries out sexual services for. Some say that this is purely individual racism, drawing parallel between this situation with the case when a buyer is not serviced in a shop because she or he is Asian. They argue that adult entertainers sell their body as goods and refusing to give it to an individual from a specific race is racism. But this is more than just the sale of body and sexual services because a body is the most personal belonging, not just an object. This is why drawing parallel between a body and any commodity is inept as being objectification is against the human nature.
One of the most common prejudice towards black people is smell, which is why escorts tend to turn down their request. This comes from the prejudice that the colour black is associated with dirt and impurity. Another one is that no escort would like to expose themselves to intense physical involvement while implementing sexual services so they often choose not to service black men because of their larger genitals. Although it is not exactly racism, still most of black sex-clients can feel and interpret this to be a negative discrimination, especially when a white escort asks for more money for the service than a coloured colleague, saying she’s used to it. This can work vice versa, though, when a white sex-client feels degraded to use the sexual service of a coloured escort. This kind of individual racism is hard to be detected as most sex-clients can say it is the matter of personal taste, to which every man has the right to use. And indeed, it is impossible to persuade any man to like a body structure that he doesn’t really like or gets excited about. For instance, if someone feels sexually attracted by slim women, he cannot be excited by oversize ladies. Or if someone gets crazy about Asian women, he cannot be told to prefer black escorts as this is a psychological disposition, which is impossible to change. Similarly, white men with taste for white escort cannot be just interpreted as racism as it can easily be sexual preference, but anyway, this sort of individual racism is insignificant because like in any other service sector, in sex-industry what matters are the needs of the sex customer and their satisfaction. On the contrary, individual racism or sexual preference becomes a problem if sexual service provider makes it clear, for example, in their advertisement or on an escort site or in person at a brothel, since it hurts the refused sex-client and breaches his right to equal treatment, even if it’s about a prostitute.
The above mentioned case rather belongs to the next class of racism, which is called interpersonal racism. This is the racism that occurs between individuals. It is the holding of negative attitudes towards a different race or culture. Interpersonal racism often follows a victim/perpetrator model. Most times individual racism turns to be interpersonal racism is lively situations when dealing with people, with customers. The two types of racism cannot exist independently without each other as the latter presupposes the former. While in case of individual racism, it is hard to detect if it isn’t manifested in any form. Most times if it is manifested, we can rather talk about interpersonal racism, which takes place between sex-worker and client relation. However, individual racism can be detectable in sexual advertisement on an escort site where escorts and prostitutes can indicate what sex-clients they accept, especially regarding their race or ethnic origin.
Interpersonal racism can motivate sex-clients as well, even in its most extreme form: lethal violence. Due to geopolitics, amid the growing anti-Asian sentiment in the USA some people tend to think that Asian women are all prostitutes and all massage parlours are brothels. This is what happened in Atlanta recently and indicates2 what extreme interpersonal racism can lead to. This is when we have to bring in the term white supremacy as it is one of the strongest motif of prejudice. Fuelled by white supremacy, anti-Asian racism has increased during the coronavirus pandemic, with bigots blaming Asians for COVID-19. Even in Canada, with national leaders urging kindness and patience, there’s a dramatic increase in violence against Asians in public spaces – so it is easy to imagine what can happen in a brothel to them. The violence, racism and misogyny targeting Asians in North American public spaces is distilled and intensified in the racism of sex buyers at massage brothels where sex buyers are shielded from public view and protected by public authorities. These male sex-buyers are paying for the women to gratify the men’s racist and misogynist stereotypes of Asian women as submissive, exotic, or hypersexual in a setting where the women’s lack of power is all too real. But the sex buyers are protected by the pretence that they are there for a legitimate service3.
Interpersonal racism in Sweden, especially in escort trade is also a growing problem. According to the authorities, the number of incidents of racist and xenophobic hate speech has been rising over recent years, in particular in the context of large-scale arrivals of migrants and refugees and in spite of serious efforts by the Swedish authorities to prevent such hate speech. The main target groups are migrants, Muslims, Black persons and Roma. Anti-Semitic hatred remains a problem, and the clearance rate of hate crimes remains low.4 This also appears in escort trade where sex-clients with migrant background suffer discrimination by escorts. There is loophole in the legal system that exposes sex-clients to racism, and this is the Swedish legislation on prostitution that criminalizes the purchase of sexual services. As it is illegal in Sweden, racially discriminated sex-clients cannot turn to the police since they would just inflict legal consequences on them. In this legal defencelessness, sex-clients with migrant background often have to experience racial discrimination on escort sites where sex-sellers stipulate what sex-buyers with specific ethnic background they are willing to sex-service. For instance, the race is frequently indicated that is not accepted, ergo the sex-client is discriminated on racial basis, and he or she cannot do much about it. Also, escorts and sex-sellers are encouraged to do in their advertisement so as they are aware that clients cannot do anything to stop this sort of racism and discrimination because of the illegal nature of the business.
Leaving individual level, the next type of racism in sex industry to be discussed is institutional racism. Recognizing that racism need not be individualist or intentional, institutional racism refers to institutional and cultural practices that perpetuate racial inequality. Benefits are structured to advantage powerful groups as the expense of others. With other words, institutional racism means racial discrimination that derives from individuals carrying out the dictates of others who are prejudiced or of a prejudiced society5. In sex-industry there aren’t that many institutions like in educational field, but if we take a closer look at the possible occurrence of institutional racism, we cannot say the industry is free of it. But of course, we also have to talk about the institutional organization of sex industry first so that we could turn attention to racism appearing within it. One of the most institutionalized branch of sex industry is porn industry where institutional racism turns up. For example, in the emergence of porn industry, porn-actors and actresses were definitely selected by their race, so in mainly in the beginning, only white people were allowed to work in this field of sex-industry. The production was managed by white males so it was not surprising that white actors and actresses took part in cinematic porn. Sometimes other races turned up as just rarities to make it more interesting, not diverse of course. Fortunately, the situation has changed significantly for the better but still far from ideal with serious issues. One of them is female black porn actresses are usually paid less than their white colleagues. The official reason is that white porn actresses are more popular so it’s natural they are employed in greater number in porn-industry. In addition, in interracial scenes white porn actresses make more money than in the same role their counterparts just to make them take the job, which is obviously racism. Even the film titles and porn terminology exhibit crude racism that many activists have begun fighting against with moderate success, although producers argue that it is just marketing tactic.6 As for the content of pornographic film production, there are shocking examples of black porn-actresses being ill-treated and abused in the story, even if it is an imaginary scene. Often historical traumas from the time of slavery are brought up in the stories. To make it worse, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, internet searches for “racist porn” tripled. And between May and June that year, searches on Pornhub for Black porn—which can return racist results—spiked. Unfortunately, the fact that this type of content is growing shows there’s an audience for it—that the audience is growing and that they’re willing to pay for it. A part of the problem is that in the porn industry there’s no black representation at all, only white men on managerial and executive level. Black women have historically made as much as 75 per cent less per scene than white women, according to a research. And in some cases, they still make less than 50 per cent of what their white co-stars do7. Maybe more black producers should be involved in porn industry to mitigate this racial injustice. Another problem is that porn and porn-sites bolster racist tropes by design. Racist tropes in porn are an industry-wide problem that not only dehumanises the actors cast in those roles, but disseminates ideas and stereotypes rooted in slavery and colonialism. It is believed that the issue in the porn industry is a product of the society in which we live. Moreover, the owners of the porn companies, the producers, the writers, the directors and even the white performers have a particular perception of people of colour where they think we are either accessories to their lives or they fetishize coloured people in ways that's then put into the screen. Whether it's the trope of the Black thug, the spicy Latina, or subservient Asian, these things just get recycled over and over again because none of these people have challenged these perceptions in their minds. In 2020, black performers from the adult industry came together to call on porn sites to stop using racist terminology when labelling content, but the racist language used to describe videos continues to be a problem. Not only that, but the way in which many sites are designed means that porn featuring people of colour is resigned to a niche category — most frequently "ebony" or "interracial" or "Asian" — presenting whiteness as default when it comes to sexual desirability. Porn is part of our sexual culture and the tropes that it disseminates do have consequences. Racist tropes in porn fuel and maintain the hyper sexualisation of coloured people8.
Racism seems to have turned up on the others side as well because more and more porn-content producers make scenes where white people is overtly suggested being inferior in terms of sex and sexual satisfaction to women compared to black ones. For instance, on the website Blacked white man is often said to be less potent and effective in bed and white women are encouraged to cheat on their white boyfriend. In cuckold videos white men are depicted as unable to satisfy their partner, which is a downright humiliation. So, racism appears to be raging on both sides.
Taking the advantage of being coloured for accusing someone or something for being racist to get benefit in a situation also has to be mentioned. The word racist has become a weapon to defy norms and decency. Just an example to see how it works: a gypsy sex-client is sent to have a bath by the massage prostitute or escort who finds it very offensive saying this is because he’s gypsy and this is just a prejudice that they are thought to be dirty by the majority, however, this is a normal procedure for sex-clients. What has contributed to worsening the situation is the using the word ‘racist’ in any situation where someone feels offended, even if it has nothing to do with skin colour. A recent example shows how misunderstood the term ‘racism’. Without naming any nation, let this white escort in the example be from the imaginary country Loveland to avoid any offence, so this escort complains to the escort site operator why her bio writes she’s from Loveland. The people of Loveland usually have a bad reputation so she feels offended by the fact that her country of origin is seen in her bio on the escort site, and this is why she calls the site racist, without anything to do with racial bias as she’s also white and her origin is just a fact.
Another structural organization of sex industry is the indoor sex market, the house of ill-repute, with its most current name: brothel. Brothel is an institution with the same structural organization where, not surprisingly, institutional racism is not a rare phenomenon. The most common one is very similar to the above mentioned case: white female prostitutes in brothels can earn more money for the same work than their coloured colleagues. It is not the prostitutes who set the prices of different sexual services but the management of a brothel that feels no same to show the different costs of sex-workers for the same service according to their skin colour.9 As institutional racism refers to the policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favour, or put a racial group at a disadvantage10. The practice of brothels that prefer white sex-workers to any other race is purely institutional racism. This is conspicuous when brothels in Eastern Europe employ, for example, Asian or Indian sex-workers just in a limited number because they are considered to be rarities there, so employing more of them would contradict to their curiosity or exotification in the region. As a result of exotification, many sex-workers of colour tend to feel dehumanized or magical. The view of women as “hypersexual” and “exotic” has had an immense impact on their experiences in the commercial sex industry. This depiction of, for instance, black women is harmful as it sends an implicit message to black women that this is who they are, how it is and what black women are here for. This existing sexualised image of black women is also continuously perpetrated by white men as an excuse for their continued sexual exploitation. When a black prostitute in North Europe in this profession, there is already a sexualisation surrounding her, and this sexualisation intensified because of the existing representation of black women in media11. Nevertheless, it seems that some prostitutes of colour are quite sensitive when being not treated as an average woman, although there are several other issues that prostitutes usually have to cope with. This is due to the recent racial scandals and the ensuing movements like Black Lives Matter.
Structural racism is the next type of racism that can make the life of sex-workers of colour more difficult. Structural racism extends beyond the institutions of the sex industry and can be observable in the whole operation of the society in relation with prostitution and race. The most typical one is when a black woman is mistaken for a soliciting prostitute thus taken into custody. The explanation is rooted deeply in history of slavery: black women in the past never had an opportunity to control their bodies, as they were always publicly available for sex-clients who thought everything could be done to a black female12.
#racism #sex #sexindustry #porn #escort #sweden #prostitutes #sexworkers #slavery
1 https://www.shorelineschools.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=3131&ViewID=DEDCCD34-7C24-4AF2-812A-33C0075398BC&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=24891&PageID=1951&Tag=&Comments=true
2 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/18/atlanta-spa-shootings-anti-sex-worker-racism-sexism
3 https://scheerpost.com/2021/03/25/prostitution-is-a-racialized-hate-crime-against-women/
4 https://equineteurope.org/sweden-racist-and-xenophobic-hate-speech-on-the-rise-despite-considerable-preventive-efforts/
5 https://www.aclrc.com/forms-of-racism
6 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/racism-porn-industry-protest-1010853/
7 https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a34642666/racism-porn-industry/
8 https://mashable.com/article/porn-racist-tropes
9 https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/the-sex-industrys-secret-problem-with-racism/news-story/f2907ebc9dfc0eff3a8f2b914ff735c0
10 https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/structural-racism-definition/
11 chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhj.diva-portal.org%2Fsmash%2Fget%2Fdiva2%3A1222020%2FFULLTEXT01.pdf&clen=830931
12 https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-female-sex-work-prostitution-police-arrest-jail-lapd-daniele-watts-90974