Attitudes Toward Cisgender Women's Participation in Sex Work: Opportunity for Agency or Harmful Exchange?

Arch Sex Behav. 2024 Jan 29. doi: 10.1007/s10508-023-02797-y. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTDespite the stigmatization of sex work in society, little empirical research has examined attitudes toward sex work, especially its modern incarnations (e.g., sugar relationships, webcamming). Here, a sample of 298 US residents (Mage = 40.06 years; 59.1% male, 40.9% female) was recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Various theoretical predictors (e.g., right-wing authoritarianism [RWA]), sociosexuality) were set to predict the degree to which four sex work domains (prostitution, pornography, sugar relationships, webcamming) provide cisgender women agency (beneficial) or harm them (detrimental). We found that the domains of sex work were organized hierarchically, as theorized by the so-called "whorearchy," whereby the more "unfavorable" domains (e.g., prostitution) fall at the bottom, and the more "favorable" ones (e.g., webcamming) sit at the top. Additionally, multiple regression analyses revealed that RWA (negatively) and sociosexuality (positively) were the strongest predictors of sex work agency across various domains. In predicting harm, RWA, feminism, religiosity, and age were unique positive predictors, whereas sociosexuality and male (vs. female) self-identified sex were unique negative predictors, across the four domains of sex work. Moreover, individual differences (e.g., RWA) were often significantly stronger predictors of agency or harm among female than male participan...

Source: Archives of Sexual Behavior - January 29, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Hanna Puffer Gordon Hodson Elvira Prusaczyk Source Type: research