The Illegitimacy of Sexual Preferences as a Hiring Criteria
By Cherry Blue
Visual by Texas
Almost everyone – except some “happy hookers” – agrees that there is to a certain extent discrimination in the sex work industry. It comes in many forms, grouped under two broad categories: discrimination against SWers in general society, and discrimination from the managers in the industry. There is much to say about the risks and the stigmatization SWers experience in a system where this line of work is not recognized. For instance, there is the risk of being fired from another job, the possibility of losing custody of your child, the lack of recourse if a client refuses to pay, and especially the fact that there is neither legal right nor protection for sex work.1 This stigma also stems from a long history of structural oppression which discriminates against SWers by degrading them and confining them in the fictitious role of culprit or victim.
However, I want to focus more specifically on the question of abuse from employers. The frequency of these abuses remains linked to the broader stigmatization of sex work. Because of this vulnerability, SWers are subjected to discriminatory criteria during the hiring processes in strip clubs, massage parlors, or escort agencies.2 SWers may then be outright refused a job or subsequently fired based on lookist, racist, fatphobic, ageist, and transphobic standards of attractiveness.
According to Deborah Hellman, discrimination is bad when it is degrading towards those who are subject to it, as it shows a lack of respect for the moral standing of others who are then considered as lesser. Moreover, the discriminating person must occupy a position that grants them a certain power over those they’re degrading. Discrimination rises from structural conditions intrinsically linked to systems of oppression, which generates a series of social significations. The meaning of those systems is often outlined to the advantage of their beneficiaries: hierarchies are presented as “rational” by the oppressors in order to justify their position at the top.
Employer Abuses during the Hiring Process: Nicholson’s Case
The story of Chanel Nicholson is paradigmatic of what occurs in the industry. In 2021, she sued the owners of a strip club in Houston on the grounds of racial discrimination during the hiring process: “the clubs enforced a ‘quota’ system that limited the number of Black women allowed to work. Once the quota was filled, additional Black women were denied the opportunity to perform solely based on their race”.3 The dancer argued this was a recurring systemic problem in the industry. The lack of regulation in a context of criminalization leads to the normalization of these situations like the one denounced by Nicholson.
Nicholson’s story checks both of Hellman’s boxes: Black SWers are viewed as having a lesser moral status. This degradation is itself tied to the employers’ power status in a society where the rights of those SWers are not recognized. Employers can then decide they need to meet specific “quotas”, which puts many communities at a disadvantage based on degrading grounds, without any possibility of recourse. Of note, the justice system has not held Nicholson’s employers accountable following her lawsuit. Access to these establishments is limited for non-white women, who are reduced to an “exoticism” that must remain almost invisible. This morally reprehensible direct discrimination infringes on the rights of people who wish to work in these places. Unfortunately, it is a common practice, even if it is not always explicit. Along the same lines, many employers only want to hire one or two less-slim people per establishment, or want few or no older workers, thereby reducing them to mere, seldom-requested kinks.
Work Discrimination and Qualifications Based on Reactions
Sarah C. Goff conceptualized a prevailing form of discrimination in the workplace, which she calls “taste discrimination”. Taste discrimination is defined as the act of hiring persons based on prejudicial preferences or ignorance on a group of people in regards to how profitable they are.Work Discrimination and Qualifications Based on Reactions In recognized professional settings, this type of discrimination appears indirectly in the form of implicit biases, since it is illegal to directly discriminate against specific groups of people. However in sex work settings, taste discrimination is more overt because employers directly discriminate and show explicit biases towards certain groups, like in Nicholson’s case.
Some employers justify their hiring process on meritocratic grounds – they argue that the most competent people should have access to the positions they’re most qualified for. Yet Hellman criticizes this meritocratic ideal, stating it stems from the employers’ personal interest, which is ethically unjustifiable. Degrading discrimination can still be perpetrated, with employers taking advantage of their position of power to draw distinctions that are historically charged with meaning.
Another justification employers bring up is qualification based on the clients’ reactions, implying that customer preferences play a decisive factor in evaluating a candidate’s qualification. The merit of potential employees is thus measured according to this assessment. This reaction-based logic is crucial to understand the decision-making process of employers in the sex work industry. Employers make discriminatory hiring decisions based on their pseudo-rational analyses of client preferences in the hopes that this will bring in more clients and increase profits.
But do the clients’ problematic preferences really need to be satisfied? If these preferences discriminate against historically oppressed members of certain groups, this type of discrimination generates cumulative harm against them. One of the particularities of the sex work industry is that it bases almost all skill criteria on the appearance of workers in regards to the sexual preferences of clients, as if these preferences were uncontrollable or even innate. The sex work industry is systematically lookist, racist, fatphobic, ageist and transphobic, but we believe it is possible to transform these biased preferences to make them more inclusive.
The Structural Aspect of Sexual Preferences
In all work environments, beauty privilege is associated with greater economic success. People who do not conform to beauty standards, on the other hand, are often at a disadvantage in hiring situations. The refusal to submit to certain beauty standards comes at a significant price, hence why SWers have to comply with these standards. However this is a double-edged sword, since outside the industry SWers are frequently hypersexualized and subjected to slut shaming. As such, the misogyny behind lookism implies a double cost, whether women conform to beauty standards or not. This duality is comparable to the problem of fetishization, which can be as dehumanizing as exclusion.5
Amnia Srinivasan argues that personal preferences are, in fact, rarely personal.6 Given the repeated preference of clients for ‘beautiful’ slim white women under the age of 25, it is hard to deny the existence of dominant trends in these sexual preferences, which are not innate but socially constructed. The social dimensions that shape those desires are not trivial and must be analyzed. The sex work industry is a reflection of larger structural problems, which are the product of long histories of oppression. While lookism, fatphobia, racism, or transphobia are not equivalent, they each shape clients’ sexual preferences in distinct ways and unjustly restrict access to sex work.
A frequent counter-critique of the malleability of preferences asserts that they are uncontrollable, arising from an irrational and mysterious force. A similar critique draws from an essentialized form of Darwinism, maintaining that lookist preferences naturally assure better reproduction. Employers may invoke these presuppositions to defend their discriminatory employment choices. Yet, our preferences can evolve over time as we gain experience and change our values system. So, it is not true that desires are set in stone, and if the “offer” is more diversified in the sex work industry, it could incite clients to broaden their scope of preferences. Through this exposure, Sherri Irvin encourages “aesthetic exploration”, enabling the expansion of tastes and the fight against oppression.7 Notably, post-pornography and movies that adopted the female gaze have this subversive purpose.
The dominating sexual preferences are often based on problematic stereotypes, which imply that the members of certain groups are universally attractive or unattractive. Discrimination by employers and clients often replicates these preferences. The decision-making power they share arises from a structural layering of historical injustices. This implicit collaboration among individuals with shared interests is not merely a remnant of a violent past but is continually reproduced within the industry.
Are anti-discrimination laws a solution?
As such this hiring process can seem justified due to its “rational” economic calculations responding to the market demands of client preferences. But it is still a morally reprehensible, degrading form of discrimination that results in unfair actions, which tend to be even more degrading when carried out by people in positions of power. According to Hellman, it is governments and institutions that wield a greater responsibility to address discrimination rather than individuals, especially when the latter don’t have access to the dominating structures. However, this does not mean that we should not individually engage in a form of critical self-reflection on our own biases.
Still, applying anti-discrimination laws in the private sphere remains difficult and likely intrusive, since nobody wants to be compelled in their private sexual life. Those in positions of public authority, i.e. establishments where sex work occurs, should however be regulated through anti-discrimination laws prohibiting businesses from discriminating against workers from specific groups. It would function as a regulatory coercive force over employers’ decisions, should decriminalization legally recognize these establishments.
That being said, anti-discrimination laws are limited by the interconnection of the private and public spheres. Why rely exclusively on anti-discrimination legislation, when such laws cannot penetrate the private sphere and may be regarded with contempt as an imposition restricting freedom? Like in other fields, discrimination may take more nefarious forms when legislation attempts to prevent it. For instance, indirect and structural discrimination are harder to prove than “quotas” directly restricting the amount of employees from a specific group, like in Nicholson’s case. A greater pluralism in terms of sexual preferences, promoted by popular education, could have an impact on the private sphere and the public sphere alike, institutionally or structurally, whereas the scope of anti-discrimination legislation is more limited. Both approaches could, of course, be implemented in tandem, with anti-discrimination laws helping to legitimize the notion that SWers are entitled to rights. Decriminalization plays an essential role in that regard: “As long as sex work is not recognized as legitimate work, it will remain difficult for sex workers to gain the same recognition and legitimacy granted to other workers”.8
Beyond legislation, we can also rely on the efficacy of unionization and the collective agreements it allows. Unions have significantly enhanced employment opportunities for marginalized groups in Canada overall, especially in sectors where labor is formally recognized9. However, SWers have not yet had access to a union allowing them to fight back against employment discrimination, with the exception of two strip clubs in the United States. After a long legal battle, the Lusty Ladies union succeeded in repelling a discriminatory policy at their club, which only allowed for one black woman to work per shift. This goes to show how effective collective agreements can be against discriminatory hiring processes.
Anti-discrimination laws and unionization alone cannot guarantee a systemic reconfiguration of clients’ sexual preferences, but in addition to promoting greater fairness among different workers in relation to employers, they would expose clients to greater diversity in strip clubs, escort agencies, and massage parlors. For instance, collective agreements require that legitimate criteria be used for scheduling, eliminating the possibility of implicit or explicit bias against certain groups. This pluralistic exposure could, over time, influence social preferences toward greater malleability. While not addressing all injustices within the industry, these measures appear promising in at least countering the pervasive and odious discrimination entrenched in the status quo.
As Srinivasan suggests, “feminists need not be saints. They must only […] be realists”.10 This realistic outlook must include the acknowledgement of intersectional complexity. In a misogynistic society, womxn are all oppressed, but they’re not all equally oppressed. The same goes for SWers – they are all oppressed in a whorephobic society, yet not all are oppressed to the same degree. Solidarity must go further than the destigmatization of sex work by acknowledging the prejudicial nature of lookist, racist, fatphobic, transphobic and ageist structures shaping sexual preferences. It is these preferences that influence the employers as to what kind of SWers they want to hire. Whether institutions produce these preferences, or preferences give rise to institutional inequalities, the chicken-or-egg question is largely irrelevant – as long as the cycle is broken.
1. Joseph Courtney, Morna Ballantyne. (2011). «Le travail du sexe: raisons pour lesquelles c’est une question syndicale» dans Luttes XXX: Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, p. 132.↩
2. While not technically a hiring process, since this type of work is not recognized, the reasoning remains the same, hence why I decided to use that term.↩
3. ReShonda Tate. (2025). Former exotic dancer takes fight for justice to the Supreme Court.↩
4. Sarah C. Goff. (2016). Discrimination and the Job Market, p. 302.↩
5. Tom O’Shea. (2021). Sexual desire and structural injustice, p. 588.↩
6. Amnia Srinivasan. (2021). The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, p. 88.↩
7. Sherri Irvin. (2017). Resisting Body Oppression: An Aesthetic Approach, p. 12.↩
8. Maria Nengeh Mensah et Cynthia, M.-N. et Lee, C. (2010). «Petites et Grandes Discriminations des Travailleuses du Sexe Au Québec Plaidoyer».↩
9. Joseph Courtney, Morna Ballantyne. (2011). «Le travail du sexe: raisons pour lesquelles c’est une question syndicale» dans Luttes XXX: Inspirations du mouvement des travailleuses du sexe, p. 131.↩
10. Amnia Srinivasan. (2021). The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, p. 171.↩