Walking, Talking, Imagining: Ethical Engagement with Sex Workers

Abstract

This article describes a walking interview with a sex worker who is an advocate for sex worker rights in Ireland. Walking interviews have been proposed as a biographical method which can be used to explore the relationship between personal concerns and public questions, and the method is characterised by mobile, relational and embodied practice (O’Neill and Roberts [2019. Walking Methods: Research on the Move. London: Routledge]). Walking with research participants addresses the power imbalances inherent in interviews, striving for ethical praxis, by allowing a shared perspective and a shared sensory experience. Together we investigate the ethics of sex work research, allyship and education, and we consider ways to strengthen alliances between sex working and non-sex working feminists. Opportunities for social justice for sex workers are considered, and a radical democratic imaginary is proposed, where sex workers are afforded full citizenship of an inclusive society. This imaginary follows work by O’Neill [2010. “Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation Through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research PAR.” Journal of Law and Society 37 (1): 210–232], O’Neill and Seal [2012. Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan] and FitzGerald, O’Neill, and Wylie [2020b. “Social Justice for Sex Workers as a ‘Politics of Doing’: Research, Policy and Practice.” Irish Journal of Sociology 28 (3): 257–279], who have imagined full participation for sex workers in civic, political and social spheres. Starting with a radical openness to and acceptance of each other, as well as a firm dedication to bodily autonomy and social justice for all, we propose a path towards this imagined society.