Rhetoric, reality and risk outcomes in sex work

This paper examines the way individuals' discourses about risk can function to 'credential' a speaker, counter any potential accusation of risk-taking and occlude attention to evidence of risk and risk-taking. This phenomenon was studied in the context of a 3-year, qualitative cohort study of 31 women who worked in the New Zealand sex industry. This paper considers the way participants' discourses explaining their uptake of sex work operated to mask risk behaviour and potentials for risk and danger that were reported in their talk but not attended to. These discourses operated differently among street workers and among women who worked the 'inside' sector. 'Inside' workers put the case for their uptake of sex work in terms of 'quick', 'good' money, and workplace freedoms. In the absence of such 'good' money and where workplace freedoms' allowed personalised and individualising control by management, women were pushed towards competition and risky practice. Street workers expounded arguments of personal agency and of being 'in control' of risks and dangers on the streets, which were known well and depicted graphically. Such argument refused acknowledgement of personal vulnerability. The importance of such 'discursive' readings of individuals' understandings of risk and risk-taking is discussed.