Sex Workers as Workers: A Critique of Abolitionist Approaches to Sex Work in Lebanon

Abstract

The abolitionist view on sex work in Lebanon paints it as solely the outcome of male buyer’s desire to purchase sex. This portrayal obfuscates serious and important contingencies that often precipitate sex work that is precarious: increased commodification of social relations and the failure of state and kin entities to provide for all its members in a just manner. Seeing sex work as a labour problem allows for a greater contextualisation, which once explored, points to the need to strengthen sex worker’s labour conditions rather than constraining them by punishing buyers. I carry this analysis into three domains relating to sex work. The first is the link between sex work and sex trafficking that abolitionists such as Kafa take for granted. While it might be beneficial to study the two as part of the same continuum, we must remain cognizant of what makes “work” into “slavery” instead of collapsing the two. The second and third part of the essay look at Kafa’s 2014 report from two sections: its diagnosis of the problem and its proposed solution. The diagnosis they layout portrays the problem as the problem of demand that creates the conditions of sex work and thus offers the solution of criminalising the buyer. This “Nordic model,” I show, has limited opportunities in Lebanon.