Sex work in SF

Sex work is frequently depicted in SF. Sex work as used here includes any kind of work in which sexual acts or displays are the primary conduct treated. For instance, prostitution; acting in or posing for pornography; stripping or sex club dancing; phone or Internet sex; etc. The key is that the act is treated as work: paid for or otherwise treated in the way the society treats work.

Some of the common depictions include:

Typical human female prostitution

A considerable amount of SF depicts prostitution in a very familiar form: human women in the same or similar types of prostitution and sex work as they are in historically and modernly. Often such sex work is depicted without any consideration of whether or not sex work would have changed in the SFnal setting. Sometimes sex work is portrayed in this fashion to illustrate presumed general tendencies of humans, or the similar sets of circumstances that create the sex work.

Alien typical female prostitution

Another considerable body of SF essentially substitutes or adds alien women in the same or similar types of prostitution and sex work as they are in historically and modernly earth. All of the above, plus the exoticization of alien women. For example, in David Brin's Uplift series, he portrays uplifted chimpanzee males as going to strip shows for "pink" -- the nickname for female chimpanzee's sex parts.

Male sex workers

Male sex workers are presented much, much less frequently than female sex workers, and usually in only the simplest and most obvious forms of sex work--prostitution.

Male sex workers crop up in role reversal societies, dedicated usually to either showing the absurdity and injustice of the institution as it is practiced, or the absurdity of going against the presumed natural (i.e., patriarchal) order.

Male sex workers also crop up in some works as part of an illustration of the degenerate nature of that society -- e.g., women who can hire male sex workers are even more degenerate.

Male sex workers also crop up in sex-positive SF, creating a sort of equal-opportunity sex shopping for male and female customers; or to signal a particular person or society's laissez-faire permissive attitude toward same-sex sexuality.

Male sex workers offer the opportunity to explore questions of the disparity in customers -- are male prostitutes hired by male or female customers? If there is a disparity, why?

Child sex workers

Almost always used to show the degenerate nature of the society, or to create a horrible abusive past for the child. May also be used for shock value and exploitation.

New and different types of sex work

Robot sex workers (e.g., as in A.I.); teledildonics; people cloned to be sex workers; mindless or semi-mindless creatures used for sex (e.g., Elizabeth Hand's "In the Month of Athyr"); different forms of regulation of sex work (e.g., Rainbow Cadenza by L. Neil Schulman, in which sex work was mandated for women by the State).

This category is probably the least explored but offers the most SFnal and critical potential.

Related

• List of non-female sex workers in SF
• List of female sex workers in SF
• Frank Miller test

See also

• Prostitution
• Pornography