Sex Work is Queer

This project explores sex worker activism and the discourse of sex work in Britain during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The emergence of HIV/AIDS, which was heavily associated with both gay men and sex workers, affected the way in which sexuality was constructed within state discourses, as well as changed how sex work was considered and regulated. Simultaneously, sex workers formed their own activist groups and unions from 1975 onwards, arguing for their own rights in relation to public health policy and discourses of disease. This project centres sex workers within intersecting histories of gender, labour, public health and activism. I will draw on sources, such as manifestos, newsletters, official reports from sex workers'-rights groups, public health and policing authorities, alongside pre-existing and self-conducted oral histories. I argue that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was a turning point in both the understanding and regulation of sexual labour, and the experiences of sex workers.