Pass The Damn Mic: Mainstream Media Keeps Getting Sex Work Wrong. Let Us Tell It Right

Anora swept 2025's awards season.American filmmaker Sean Baker recently became the first person ever to be awarded four Oscars for one film. During his acceptance speech, Baker thanked Quentin Tarantino, explaining that if he hadn’t cast Mickey Maddison in ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’ in 2019 ‘There would be no ‘Anora’... If there was ever a perfect metaphor for what mainstream media keeps getting wrong about sex work, it would be two middle-aged rich men patting each other on the backs for creating a film about an industry neither of them have any experience in. And then being wildly celebrated for it. There would be no Anora without sex workers.Baker gushed about his ‘deep respect for the sex worker community’, and his gratitude to them for ‘sharing their stories’ with him… There have been whisperings about where the original inspiration for Anora came from, indicating that perhaps this part in Baker’s speech was far more literal than we thought… But even if this is not the case, the fact that Baker gave credit for Anora’s existence, in any part, to another man with no lived experience of sex work, rubbed me up the wrong way. We keep attributing the success of projects about sex workers to the Sean Bakers of the world, when in reality, what often makes stories about sex work so commercially viable is not the skill of the writer or the director (or the editor…) but simply the fact that they’re about sex work. Mainstream society is obsessed with sex work. We know sex sells, but we’re now in a digital era where provocation is king. It doesn’t matter if something’s accurate. As long as it incites engagement (enragement?), it’s pushed to wider audiences by endless algorithms. And there’s little that the mainstream gets more worked up about than sex work. Whether we’re fetishising it and claiming it’s all-empowering, or demonising it and victim blaming workers for the litany of violence they face (please let’s just stop doing either?). The depressing truth is that Anora didn’t have to be good to have commercial success, as most media portrayals of sex work have evidenced. A ‘good’ fictional character (sex worker or not) would inherently have to be a fleshed out, complicated, multifaceted being, who is more than their job. But sex workers are rarely portrayed like this. They’re usually poorly written, two-dimensional characters to whom things happen, not with whom the story unfolds. This lazy writing takes agency away from the characters and contributes to the mainstream’s idea that sex workers aren’t real people.What did we learn about ‘Ani’ in Anora, other than her job? We flew past a brief encounter with someone who might have been her sister (?) but nothing more. Then, during the final scene, Baker neatly clears everything up for us: Annie is simply another woman who, at her core, is just waiting for the right man to come and rescue her… *yawn*. The root cause of the violence sex workers face can, in no small part, be attributed to the mainstream media’s refusal to portray them as human beings. We can’t underestimate the power media has in determining public perception - just look at the discussions we’re finally having after the release of ‘Adolescence’.For how many years have we been experiencing an epidemic of violence against women, yet it took a television drama to get policymakers to consider implementing anti-misogyny education in schools. Sean Baker, like so many before him, had an opportunity to challenge harmful narratives about sex work. But instead, he chose to use sex worker stories to create something that benefited him and did little to support sex worker rights in the long run. Baker has publicly called for the decriminalisation of sex work, (which has been proven to reduce violence against sex workers). However, I really can’t help but feel like this was the absolute bare minimum he could have done. I’m yet to see any tangible activism around the decriminalisation of sex work from Baker, despite most of his films being centred around sex workers. Perhaps he’ll start doing this, and I’d be delighted to eat my words, but until I see any evidence of Sean Baker doing anything for the sex workers despite profiting off of poor representations of them, I stand by the fact that he is part of the problem. The problem with the mainstream’s representation of sex work is exactly the problem with political debates about sex work. They don’t include enough (or any) sex workers. Everyone is so busy trying to talk over sex workers, that we don’t listen when they speak. What we end up with is harmful laws being introduced, such as the Nordic Model (which criminalises the purchase but not the sale of sex, and which has been proven to increase violence against sex workers) and the same manic-pixie-dream-girl-sex-worker characters being pumped out in the media. I hope in the future, the mainstream will realise the enormous wealth of creative talent within the sex worker community, and pass the damn mic. There are enough sex workers out there with stories to tell, we don’t need knights in shining armour using them for personal gain while doing the absolute bare minimum to support the fight for sex worker rights in return. Let sex workers tell sex worker stories. And compensate them fairly for it. Megan Prescott’s brand new podcast ‘Really Good Exposure’delves into the complexities of women’s roles in the workplace, the persistent gender pay gap, workplace inequities, and how women assert autonomy and succeed against societal challenges.Through insightful and candid interviews with a diverse group of women - including former strippers, OnlyFans creators, and professionals from industries intersecting with sex work, as well as women from various other fields - Prescott aims to illuminate discussions often neglected or misrepresented by mainstream media.Related...If You Think Adolescence Is Just About Online Incel Groups, You Missed The PointMikey Madison Explains Why She Turned Down Offer To Work With An Intimacy Coordinator For AnoraSheryl Lee Ralph's 'Sex Sells' Comment Sparks Debate After Anora's Oscars Win

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