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Introduction

Sex work is the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation. Sex work only refers to voluntary sexual transactions; thus, the term does not refer to human trafficking and other coerced or nonconsensual sexual transactions such as child prostitution. The transaction must take place between consenting adults of the legal age (generally 18 and older) and mental capacity to consent and must take place without any methods of coercion, other than payment. The term emphasizes the labor and economic implications of this type of work. Furthermore, some prefer the use of the term because it grants more agency to the sellers of these services. (Full article…)

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The sex industry, also called the sex trade, consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related services, such as prostitution, strip clubs, host and hostess clubs, and sex-related pastimes, such as pornography, adult magazines, sex movies, sex toys, and fetish or BDSM paraphernalia. Sex channels for television and pre-paid sex movies for video on demand, are part of the sex industry, as are adult movie theaters, sex shops, peep shows, and strip clubs. The sex industry employs millions of people worldwide, mainly women. These range from the sex worker, also called adult service provider (ASP), who provides sexual services, to a multitude of support personnel. (Full article…)

List of selected articles

Selected images

Image 1An illustration depicting street prostitution (from Prostitution)
Image 2An Ancient Greek urn depicts a prostitute and her client. (from Sex work)
Image 3Prostitute c. 1890. (from Prostitution)
Image 4Master of the Banderoles, The Brothel, engraving, c. 1450–1475. (from Prostitution)
Image 5Nana Plaza entertainment complex and red-light district in Bangkok, Thailand (from Prostitution)
Image 6Fresco from the Pompeii brothel (from Prostitution)
Image 7The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen (1622) (from Prostitution)
Image 8Prostitution at the Palais-Royal in Paris, 1815 (from Prostitution)
Image 9Prostitutes on display in Yoshiwara during the Meiji Period, Japan (from Prostitution)
Image 10A prostitute and her customer illustrated on an ancient Greek wine cup; the act of prostitution is indicated by the coin purse above the figures. (from Prostitution)
Image 11Brothel scene; Brunswick Monogrammist, 1537; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Prostitution)
Image 12Prostitution Information Centre in Amsterdam (from Prostitution)
Image 13Boat based window prostitute in Utrecht (from Prostitution)
Image 14A political cartoon from 1787 jesting about the notion of taxation affecting prostitutes (from Prostitution)
Image 15Statue to honor the sex workers of the world. Installed March 2007 in Amsterdam, Oudekerksplein, in front of the Oude Kerk, in Amsterdam’s red-light district De Wallen. Titled Belle, the inscription to the piece says “Respect sex workers all over the world.” (from Prostitution)
Image 16A liberated Chinese girl who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military sits on a stretcher and speaks to a Royal Air Force officer. (from Prostitution)
Image 17
  Legalization – prostitution legal and regulated
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Abolitionism – prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism – illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – prostitution illegal
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Prostitution)
Image 18A detail from plate 1 of William Hogarth‘s (1697–1764) The Harlot’s Progress, showing brothel-keeper Elizabeth Needham, on the right, procuring a young woman who has just arrived in London (from Prostitution)
Image 19News report about three brothels operating in Albuquerque, New Mexico that were raided by police in 1922 (from Prostitution)
Image 20World map of prostitution laws
  Decriminalization – No criminal penalties for prostitution
  Legalization (regulation) – Prostitution legal and regulated
  Abolitionism – Prostitution is legal, but organized activities such as brothels and pimping are illegal; prostitution is not regulated
  Neo-abolitionism (Nordic model) – Illegal to buy sex and for 3rd party involvement, legal to sell sex
  Prohibitionism – Prostitution illegal in all aspects (selling and buying)
  Legality varies with local laws
(from Sex work)
Image 21Young prostitute in Naples, Italy, 1948 (from Prostitution)
Image 22Stickers affixed to a payphone in São Paulo, 2006 (from Prostitution)
Image 23Tart cards in a British phone box advertising call girls, 2005 (from Prostitution)
Image 24Sex workers demonstrating for better working conditions at the 2009 Marcha Gay in Mexico City (from Sex work)
Image 25Women in an early San Francisco bordello in 1870 (from Prostitution)
Image 26A prostitute playing cards with men, by Wouter Crabeth II, c. 1640 (from Prostitution)
Image 27An oiran preparing herself for a client, ukiyo-e print by Suzuki Haronubu (1765) (from Prostitution)
Image 28Street prostitution in São Paulo, Brazil (from Prostitution)
Image 29A sex worker in Berlin in 2001 (from Sex work)
Image 30The red light district in Amsterdam (from Sex work)
Image 31World War II-era poster urging soldiers to avoid “good time girls” and prostitutes to avoid syphilis and gonorrhea. (from Prostitution)
Image 32A prostitute in Amsterdam’s red-light district talks with a potential customer. (from Prostitution)
Image 33Kisaeng women from outcast or slave families. (from Prostitution)

Related portals

Selected general sex worker

Image 1

Brooke Magnanti in 2010

Brooke Magnanti (born 1974 or 1975)is an American-born naturalised British former research scientist, blogger, and writer, who, until her identity was revealed in November 2009, was known by the pen name Belle de Jour. While completing her doctoral studies, between 2003 and 2004, Magnanti supplemented her income by working as a London call girl known by the working name Taro.

Her diary, published as the anonymous blog Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, became increasingly popular as speculation surrounded the identity of Belle de Jour. Remaining anonymous, Magnanti went on to have her experiences published as The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2005 and The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2006. Her first two books were UK top 10 best-sellers in the nonfiction hardback and nonfiction paperback lists. (Full article…)
Image 2

Burana at AWP 2026

Lily Burana is an American writer whose books include Grace for Amateurs: Field Notes on a Journey Back to Faith (Thomas Nelson, 2017), I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Weinstein Books, 2009), the novel Try (St. Martin’s Press, 2006) and Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America (Miramax Books, 2001).

I Love a Man in Uniform won the Elle magazine Reader’s Prize in May 2009. A New York Times review of the book by J. Courtney Sullivan lauded it as “a notable historical document.” (Full article…)
Image 3

Film Quarterly (FQ), published by University of California Press, is a journal devoted to the study of film, television, and visual media. When FQ was launched in 1945 (then called Hollywood Quarterly), it was considered “the first serious film journal in the United States, with those most interested in the subject at the helm.”

In addition to providing scholarly analysis of international, Hollywood, and independent cinema, FQ (according to its website) “also revisits film classics; examines television, digital, and online media; covers film festivals; reviews recent books; and on occasion addresses installations, video games, and emergent technologies.” Over the decades, the journal’s contributors have included many distinguished film artists, critics, historians and theorists. (Full article…)
Image 4
Elizabeth Adams, known as Madam Alex and sometimes Alex Adams (1933 or 1934 – July 8, 1995) was an American madam. (Full article…)
Image 5

Generally accepted to be a picture of Earp in Prescott, Arizona Territory, in 1880.

Josephine Sarah “Sadie” Earp (née Marcus; 1861 – December 19, 1944) was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. She met Wyatt in 1881 in the frontier boom town of Tombstone in Arizona Territory, when she was living with Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona.

Josephine was born in New York to a Prussian Jewish family. Her father was a baker. They moved to San Francisco, where Josephine attended dance school as a girl. When her father had difficulty finding work, the family moved in with her older sister and brother-in-law in a working-class tenement. Josephine ran away, possibly as early as age 14, and traveled to Arizona, where she said she went “looking for adventure”. Much of her life from about 1874 to 1882 (when she lived in the Arizona Territory) is uncertain; she worked hard to keep this period of her life private, even threatening legal action against writers and movie producers. She may have arrived in Prescott, Arizona, as early as 1874. The book I Married Wyatt Earp (1967), based on a manuscript allegedly written in part by her, describes events she witnessed in Arizona that occurred before 1879, the year she claimed at other times to have first arrived in Tombstone. There is some evidence that she lived from 1874 to 1876 in Prescott and Tip Top, Arizona Territory under the assumed name of Sadie Mansfield, who was a prostitute, before becoming ill and returning to San Francisco. The name Sadie Mansfield was also recorded in Tombstone. Researchers^[who?] have found that the two names share extremely similar characteristics and circumstances. (Full article…)
Image 6

Despentes in March 2012

Virginie Despentes (French: [viʁ.ʒi.ni de.pɑ̃t]; born 13 June 1969) is a French writer, novelist, and filmmaker. She is known for her work exploring gender, sexuality, and people who live in poverty or other marginalised conditions. (Full article…)
Image 7

Lee in 1956

Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette, famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir, Gypsy: A Memoir, was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy. (Full article…)
Image 8

Tatum in 2026

Channing Matthew Tatum (born April 26, 1980) is an American actor and film producer. He made his film debut in the drama Coach Carter (2005), and had his breakthrough with the sports comedy film She’s the Man (2006) and the dance film Step Up (2006). He rose to prominence for playing Duke in the action films G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) and G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013), the title role in the comedy-drama films Magic Mike (2012), Magic Mike XXL (2015) and Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023), and an undercover cop in the action-comedy films 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014).

Tatum’s other films include The Vow (2012), White House Down (2013), Foxcatcher (2014), The Hateful Eight (2015), Hail, Caesar! (2016), Logan Lucky (2017), The Lost City (2022), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). He has produced several of his films, including the road movie Dog (2022), which he also starred in and co-directed. He was listed as one of Time‘s 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. (Full article…)
Image 9
Jennie Lee (born Virginia Lee Hicks, October 23, 1928 – March 24, 1990) was an American stripper, burlesque entertainer, pin-up model, union activist, and a minor role movie actress, who performed several striptease acts in nightclubs during the 1950s and 1960s. She was also known as “the Bazoom Girl”, “the Burlesque Version of Jayne Mansfield”, and “Miss 44 and Plenty More”. (Full article…)
Image 10
Marble portrait herm identified by an inscription as Aspasia, possibly copied from her grave.

Aspasia (c. 470 – after 428 BC) was a metic woman who lived in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan, though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for this claim, which derives from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life.

Aspasia’s relationship with Pericles began between 452 and 441 BC. Both ancient and modern scholars have variously described her as Pericles’s concubine and as his de jure or de facto wife. They had a son, Pericles the Younger; Pericles may also have defended her against a charge of asebeia (impiety) recorded in traditional accounts of Aspasia’s life. As with her status as a courtesan, this narrative may also stem from Athenian comedy, and several modern scholars have questioned its historicity. After Pericles’s death in 429 BC, she is believed to have married the politician Lysicles; nothing is known of Aspasia’s life after his death in 428 BCE. (Full article…)
Image 11

Morgan in poster for Deadly Weapons (1974)

Ilana Wajc (born October 15, 1937), better known by her stage name Chesty Morgan, and also known as Liliana Wilczkowska and Lillian Stello, is a Polish-born, retired exotic dancer of Jewish descent, who also starred in two films directed by Doris Wishman. Morgan was billed as having a 73 inch (1.9 m) bust measurement. (Full article…)
Image 12

Promotional photograph of Charmion, c. 1897

Laverie Vallee (née Cooper; July 18, 1875 – February 6, 1949), best known by her stage name Charmion, was an American vaudeville trapeze artist and strongwoman. One of her risqué trapeze acts was captured on film in 1901 by Thomas Edison. (Full article…)
Image 13
Pearl “Polly” Adler (April 16, 1900 – June 9, 1962) was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2021, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Debby Applegate published a comprehensive account of Adler’s life and times entitled Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Doubleday. (Full article…)
Image 14
Carol Leigh (January 11, 1951 – November 16, 2022), also known as The Scarlot Harlot, was an American artist, author, filmmaker, sex worker, and sex workers’ rights activist. She is credited with coining the term sex work and founded the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival and was the co-founder of BAYSWAN, the Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network. (Full article…)
Image 15

Portrait by Tintoretto, c. 1575

Veronica Franco (c. 1546–1591) was an Italian poet and courtesan in 16th-century Venice. She is known for her notable clientele, feminist advocacy, literary contributions, and philanthropy. Her humanist education and cultural contributions influenced the roles of courtesans in the late Venetian Renaissance.

In her notable works, Capitoli in Terze rime and Lettere familiari a diversi (“Familiar Letters to Various People”), Franco uses perceived virtue, reason, and fairness to advise male patricians and other associates. She exercised greater autonomy in her authorship than any other traditional Venetian woman due to her established reputation and influence. (Full article…)
Image 16
Isabella de Luna (died 1564) was an Italian (originally Spanish) courtesan of Renaissance-era Rome. She was known as amusing company, having a kind heart but also a foul tongue. She was an accomplished musician. Amongst her patrons were members of the nobility and cardinals. (Full article…)
Image 17

Photograph of St. James by filmmaker George Csicsery

Margaret Jean “Margo” St. James (September 12, 1937 – January 11, 2021) was an American sex worker and sex-positive feminist. In San Francisco, she founded COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an organization advocating decriminalization of prostitution, and co-founded the St. James Infirmary Clinic, a medical and social service organization serving sex workers in the Tenderloin. (Full article…)
Image 18

Mata Hari, c. 1910

Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod (née Zelle, Dutch: [mɑrɣaːˈreːtaː ɣeːrˈtrœydaː ˈzɛlə]; 7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917), better known by the stage name Mata Hari (/ˈmɑːtə ˈhɑːri/ MAH-tə HAR-ee, Dutch: [ˈmaːtaː ˈɦaːri]; Indonesian for 'sun', lit. ‘eye of the day‘), was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. She was executed by firing squad in France.

The idea of a beautiful exotic dancer using her powers of seduction as a spy made her name synonymous with the femme fatale. Mata Hari’s story has inspired books, films, and other works. Later biographers argue that she was convicted and condemned because the French Army needed a scapegoat, and that the files used to secure her conviction contained falsifications. Some have even stated that she could not have been a spy and was innocent. (Full article…)
Image 19

Smith in 2005

Vickie Lynn Marshall (née Hogan; November 28, 1967 – February 8, 2007), known professionally as Anna Nicole Smith, was an American model, actress and television personality. Smith started her modeling career as a Playboy magazine centerfold in May 1992 and won the title of 1993 Playmate of the Year. She later modeled for clothing companies, including Guess, H&M and Heatherette.

Smith gained further notoriety in 1994, after her highly publicized marriage to 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall resulted in speculation that she was a gold digger, which she denied. Following Marshall’s death in 1995, Smith began a lengthy legal battle over a share of his estate, which reached the Supreme Court of the United States. In the early 2000s, Smith was the spokeswoman for the dietary supplement brand TrimSpa, appeared in film, and starred in her own reality program on E!, The Anna Nicole Show (2002–2004). (Full article…)
Image 20
Evelyn West (January 30, 1921 – November 14, 2004), a.k.a. Evelyn “$50,000 Treasure Chest” West, and “The Hubba-Hubba Girl”, was a vedette and burlesque legend of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. (Full article…)
Image 21
Raphael‘s The Triumph of Galatea

Imperia Cognati (also called Imperia La Divina, meaning Imperia The Divine, or The Queen of Courtesans, 3 August 1486 – 15 August 1512), was a Roman courtesan. She has been considered the first celebrity of the class of courtesans, which was created in Rome in the late 15th century. (Full article…)
Image 22
Jean Mode (born 1922) is an American former burlesque star and erotic dancer. (Full article…)
Image 23
Charlotte Rose is an English sex worker, dominatrix, sexual trainer and political candidate from Nottingham, who lives in London. In 2013 she won the award of “Sex Worker of the Year” at the Sexual Freedom Awards where she is now a resident judge. In 2014 she took up politics, campaigning for sexual freedom as an independent candidate in the Clacton and Rochester and Strood by-elections. (Full article…)
Image 24

portrait of Laura Thistlethwayte by Richard Buckner

Laura Eliza Jane Seymour Bell (1829–1894, married name Thistlethwayte) was an Irish-born courtesan of Victorian England. She was most notorious for the Nepalese Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana reputedly spending £250,000 on her. She later experienced a religious conversion and became a revivalist preacher on morality. (Full article…)
Image 25

Cardi B in 2024

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar (formerly Cephus; born October 11, 1992), known professionally as Cardi B, is an American rapper. Born and raised in New York City, she is known for her energetic rap flow and outspoken lyrics. Since launching her music career in 2016 and releasing her two mixtapes, Cardi B has been cited for her part in helping elevate the relevance of female rappers in popular music.

Her first studio album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), debuted atop the Billboard 200 with the largest female rap album streaming week of all time and became the best-selling and the highest-certified female rap album of the 21st century. Ranked by Rolling Stone as the best debut album of all time by a female rapper, it made Cardi B the first solo female artist in history to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. Its singles “Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It” both topped the Billboard Hot 100 and were certified diamond by the RIAA; the former made Cardi B the first female rapper to top the Hot 100 with a solo song in the 21st century and the first to achieve a diamond-certified song, while the latter made her the first with multiple number-one songs. Her third US number-one, the collaboration “Girls Like You” in 2018, made her the first female rapper to earn multiple RIAA diamond-certified songs. (Full article…)

Did you know…

… that Lea Ackermann, a German nun of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, fought against forced prostitution and sex tourism in East Africa?
… that some Japanese sex workers after World War II organised their own self-defence groups?
… that despite its hardline Islamic beliefs, a Boko Haram faction led by Sadiku tolerated allied bandits’ use of alcohol, drugs, and prostitution?
… that the posthumously released documentary Clean centered on the life of Sandra Pankhurst, a former sex worker, drag queen, and crime scene cleaner?
… that, during production of the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite!, Julie Query told her mother on camera that she was a sex worker?
… that An Amorous History of the Silver Screen has been read as a biographic metafilm, paralleling its lead’s rise from prostitution into film stardom?