It’s Time for Universities and Colleges to Acknowledge and Support Student Sex Workers
Angela Jones, Associate Professor, is a sociologist studying sexual commerce and the author of Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry (New York University Press) Twitter: @drjonessoc
In 2012, I was teaching a course on gender and sexuality, and in our unit on sex work, we read one of my favorite books about the stripping industry. Some of my students know very little about sex work, and much of what they do relates to labor trafficking only. One day in class, at the end of a lively discussion, a student, Kim[i], told the class she was working as a stripper. Positioned in the front of the room, I could see the range of corporeal responses to her disclosure, including eye-rolls, uncomfortable shifting, and other judgmental gestures. I remember how brave I thought she was, and at the same time, I was concerned.
In 2013, another student, Alyssa, came to see me during office hours and shared with me that she was leaving college because she had started camming, and in the previous month, she had made $10,000. In addition to these high earnings, Alyssa explained that camming was fun, easy, and pleasurable. Once again, I was concerned.
Neither Kim nor Alyssa were the only students who, in my 16-year teaching career, have told me they do sex work, and for each and every one of these students, I have had serious concerns, but probably not for the reasons you think.
In 2013, Miriam Weeks, also known as Belle Knox, was a student at Duke University. Overwhelmed by the costs of tuition, she began acting in porn. In 2014, another student recognized her from a film and publicly outed her. Despite the social and psychological harm, this outing caused Weeks, Duke imposed no sanctions on the student because Week’s film work occurred off-campus. Ostensibly, the university had no responsibility to intervene. Weeks wrote a story describing how she was doxed, harassed, and terrorized, receiving rape and death threats. With no help from Duke, she went to law enforcement, who told her this harassment was just “childish threats.” Law enforcement also did nothing to support Weeks.
In 2015, 19-year-old Kendra Jane Sunderland, known on the Internet as “The Oregon State Library Girl,” had worked as a cam model. In the fall semester of 2014, she broadcasted a show from her college library. Later, in January 2015, people posted recordings of her show, without her consent on porn sites and social media. When her college learned of her performance, they did not seem concerned about all the nonconsensual postings and the onslaught of online harassment it caused. Instead, she was charged with public indecency. In September 2015, she was convicted of a public indecency misdemeanor. She paid a $1,000 fine, received no jail time, but was banned from the site where she was working.
Subsequently, thinking about Weeks and Sunderland, I wondered reflexively, as Kim’s professor, could I have done more to protect her in the classroom? What if students then bullied or harassed her after class; what would the college do? Would we have treated her as terribly as Duke did Weeks? Why did Alyssa feel she had to choose between school and her new job? Are our campuses so hostile that the idea of being open about sex work requires our students (and faculty/staff) to choose between them? And why on Earth did these other colleges not support these other women (even if in, Sunderland’s case, she, too, violated conduct policies)?
Universities and colleges are hostile to sex workers and probably do not realize how many of their students (and faculty/staff) have done or are considering sexual labor. In an era of increased sexual commerce and the growing appeal of camming and content-hosting platforms such as Onlyfans, especially living through a pandemic when people face economic precarity, colleges should take note — you have always had student sex workers, and now, they are coming out.
Researchers at Swansea University conducted a robust study, the Student Sex Work Project, a three-year study involving 6,773 students in the U.K. Students were interviewed regarding their experiences with sex work. The study reported that almost 5% of students had worked in sex industries. These students worked across direct and indirect sex work industries such as camming, porn, strip clubs, and full-service sex work. Regardless of their final decision, one in five students, almost 22%, had considered sex work.
The Internet has diversified forms of sex work. Labor opportunities have emerged online that provide young people livable wages, which can help with the exorbitant costs of education and living. Further, online sex work, in particular, has grown in popularity because of its physical safety, legality, and because much of the other work available to these young people requires longer hours (affecting their ability to study) and is poorly renumerated. Take Onlyfans, for example. The site was founded in 2016, and while in 2019 there were only 120,000 content creators by 2020, it was over one million. Much of Onlyfans’ growth is correlated with the pandemic, but I’d argue that the number of students engaged in sex work will only continue to grow — and again, this is not at all why I am concerned.
The Student Sex Work Project pointed to how universities do not include student sex workers in their policies, and this is what concerns me. There are no policies, protocols, and little knowledge about supporting sex worker students at universities. If your campus has a health and wellness center and a mental health center, do they employ people who are knowledgeable about sex working students? In the study, the researchers found that when they interviewed staff, they were concerned about how sex working students affect the university reputation, suggesting stigma looms large on campuses. More positively, though, most staff, said they wanted policies and guidance and training regarding the law and how to support students.
Generally, colleges have no policies that support student sex workers, whether they are working in these markets by choice, circumstance, or coercion. If you are a professor or an administrator, imagine for one second that a student came to you and described the following. Imagine this scenario: John and Kwame are consensually shooting a sex scene on a cam site from John’s dorm room — their job satisfaction is heard down the hall. Other residents report them to residence life, and while the administration cluelessly burns the midnight oil, students doxx, harass, and bully John and Kwame. Does your college have any policies and support services that would allow you to handle this case in ways that cause no harm and genuinely support all the parties involved?
I have been working on my campus’s task force to review and redesign our student code of conduct, well before we began feverously working around new title IX policies and Covid. As we convened this year, I thought, “well, this is progress,” when we added an example of revenge porn as an intolerable list of offensives to our code of conduct. However, I feel colleges are also out of their depth — with old codes — often so out of date — and no idea how to catch up.
While there is no U.S. corollary to the Student Sex Work Project (yet), there is so much the U.S. can learn from our colleagues across the pond. Scholars and professors at the University of Leicester developed the Student Sex Work Tool. In the toolkit, they write, “The University is firmly committed to sustaining an inclusive learning, working and research environment characterised by respect and dignity, and free from harassment, bullying, abuse and discrimination…This includes students earning money through sex work. We recognise the social stigma associated with sex work and are supportive of students who earn a living through sex work.” Given such commitments, they have developed this toolkit to provide education about sex work and law and provide concrete information on using internal and external resources to support student sex workers.
To develop up-to-date student codes of conduct and inclusive support services that acknowledge sex worker students, universities should consider assembling a task force including local sex worker advocacy groups and social scientists studying sex work, which can help college administrators and staff create their own toolkits, policies, and student support services that recognize the diverse lives and needs of students in an ever-changing world.
[i] All student names are aliases.
