413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Respondents worked in five of the eight cities examined in this study. Eight (22 percent) worked in
Atlanta, six (17 percent) worked in Dallas, eleven (31 percent) worked in Denver, three (8 percent) worked
in Seattle, and eight (22 percent) worked in Washington, DC (herein, the sex workers’ “main cities”).
Seventeen (47 percent) indicated that they worked in more than one city at some point—most of which
were located close to their main cities—although no sex workers reported working in more than one of the
cities included in this study. As was true in other studies (e.g., Potterat et al. 2004), sex workers in this
study tended to conduct most of their work locally, in their main cities.
The sex workers in our sample were between the ages of 18 and 56. Those interviewed in Atlanta were 18–
30 years of age; those from Washington, DC were 20–50 years of age; respondents from Denver were 20–
53 years of age; those from Seattle were 36–41 years of age; and participants from Dallas were 37–56
years of age. Two (6 percent) of the respondents were younger than 20 years old, nine (25 percent) were
20–29 years old, eight (22 percent) were 30–39 years old, thirteen (36 percent) were 40–49 years old,
and four (11 percent) were 50–56 years old.
Sex workers were as young as 11 years old and as old as thirty-nine when they first began trading sex. The
majority of participants (n = 28, 78 percent) started sex work between the ages of 15–27. Four (11 percent)
began trading sex before the age of 15, ten (28 percent) started between the ages of 15–17, eighteen (50
percent) began between the ages of 18–29, and four (11 percent) began in their 30s.
Many of the individuals in this study had been working in the sex industry for numerous years. The
duration of their work ranged from a few days to over thirty years. Five had traded sex for a year or less,
two for 2–3 years, seven for 5–9 years, ten for 10–20 years, eight for 21–29 years, and four for over 30
years. Two participants traded sex in the 1970s, eleven traded sex in the 1980s, twenty-two traded sex in
the 1990s, and thirty traded sex in the 2000s. Respondents were asked to draw upon their many years
working in the sex market when describing the street-based sex market and how it has changed over time.
Most of the sex workers had attained some high school or college education and/or received their GED. Of
the twenty-seven individuals (75 percent) providing information on their educational background,
obtainment ranged from some middle school education to some college education. Four had some college
education, nine had their GEDs, five had high school diplomas, and nine had some middle school or high
school education.
Entry into Sex Work and Other Forms of Employment
Sex workers first started trading sex on the street for a wide variety of reasons, including economic need;
homelessness; the encouragement of family members, friends, and acquaintances; a desire for social and
emotional acceptance; as a natural continuation of work of other forms of commercial sex work, such as
stripping and dancing and to support substance use. For many, a combination of these reasons served as
the impetus to begin trading sex. Sex work was used to pay for essential needs and family expenses and
ensure survival. Fifteen participants (42 percent) noted that they turned to sex work for these reasons.
This was true of a 25-year-old sex worker from Atlanta who began trading sex in 2010 in part to support
her family. She explained, “I was paying rent and the necessities. I had my first son at the time, so I
needed to make sure he had clothes. It was necessity and need—no type of wants. It was a need really”
(N7). Others cited homelessness as a driver for trading sex. One sex worker from Dallas started this work
in the 1980s as a teenager after finding herself homeless: “I started at age 13. My mom put me out at age
13, so I had to [sell sex] in order to survive. The only way to survive is to make money” (J5).This type of
“survival sex” helped individuals meet basic needs. 69
Sex work was viewed as a viable alternative to traditional employment opportunities that were either not
available or not sought out by sex workers. A 43-year-old sex worker from Dallas was drawn to the trade
in the 1990s because she had no job and needed to support her children. She noted:
Actually my main decision [to start sex work] was based on my children. At the time—I
didn’t have a job. I couldn’t find a job. And somebody had made the comment “You got a
69 For more on survival sex, which is typically understood as sex traded to meet essential personal and financial needs, see Ditmore
(2010), Flowers (2010), Lever and Dolnick (2000), Raphael and Shapiro (2004), and Thukral et al. (2005).
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