Bottoms up: a whorelistic literature review and commentary on sex workers’ romantic relationships

Abstract

In the field of sex work research, recent decades of scholarship have witnessed an increase in a holistic approach to examining the experiences of this marginalized population. While scholars have examined various aspects of sex workers’ lives, holistic research on their romantic relationships is scarce. However, at the same time, outside the realm of academia, sex workers themselves have been producing their own discourse to approach the various facets they uniquely face in these relationships. Thus, this literature review and commentary analyzes both academic and sex worker published materials.

Keywords:

• Sex work
• romantic relationship
• prostitution
• health
• stigma

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Lorne Campbell for his feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript, as well as Dr. Alessandra Mondin for her mentorship and enduring our whinges about the current state of research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Although unable to be found in the academic literature, an American sex worker rights organization has theoretically presented the link between minority stress and sex work (see, Bloomquist, 2017).