Reconfiguring stigma in sex work studies and beyond: Putting relationality to work

In the literature on prostitution/sex work, authors often acknowledge the ‘whore stigma’ as a key factor for sex workers’ position globally. Any genealogy of stigma theory, whether in the public health sciences or social sciences, begins with Goffman’s classic book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. That stigma has come to be a central concept in how sex work is analysed has simultaneously opened up for harm-reductive strategies and claims for rights while also reinforcing the idea that sex workers constitute a health risk to society and that sex work is pervasive in its negative effect on sex workers’ lives. This way of stereotyping sex sellers and downplaying diversity is characteristic of the use of stigma in sex work studies. While most of the authors emphasize one dimension of stigma more than others, none discusses a particular aspect regarding stigma in isolation; they all essentially address stigma as relational.