Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation

“Dirty Work,” Stigmatized Occupations

Occupations, like people, can be stigmatized for a variety of reasons. Proximity to dirt, death, or the body (physical stigma); the immorality of activities (moral stigma); and associations with stigmatized individuals and/or perceptions of servility (social stigma) can all lead to perceptions of diminished value (Hughes, 1958; Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). Occupations stigmatized on these dimensions have been called “dirty work” because what is stigmatized “derive[s] primarily from the work done by individuals and groups, not from characteristics of individuals and groups themselves” (Kreiner, Ashforth, and Sluss, 2006: 621). Work may be “dirty” in different ways and to varying degrees. Morticians, dentists, social workers, taxi drivers, and sex workers may all be associated with some degree of taint, but the differences between the stigma experienced by a dentist or a social worker and that experienced by a sex worker are significant. Scholars have argued that sex workers are a highly stigmatized group because their occupation is characterized by physical, social, and moral stigma (Kreiner, Ashforth, and Sluss, 2006; Ashforth and Kreiner, 2014) that is also pervasive, or “core” to what they do (Hudson, 2008).

Research has extensively documented the stigmatization faced by those in “dirty” occupations (e.g., Mavin and Grandy, 2013; Rivera, 2015; Hughes et al., 2016; Blithe and Wolfe, 2017). But researchers have also found that stigmatized workers generate positive views of themselves by employing coping strategies such as reframing and refocusing (Dick, 2005; Tracy and Scott, 2006; Grandy and Mavin, 2012), passing or hiding (Kong, 2006; Koken, 2012; Brewis and Godfrey, 2018), and condemning condemners (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Grandy, 2008).

Scholars have documented that “social weighting” is a core strategy for coping with stigma (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Ashforth et al., 2007; Mavin and Grandy, 2013; Brewis and Godfrey, 2018). This response involves making downward social comparisons to other referent groups that are perceived as worse off (Slutskaya et al., 2016)—groups that are “sufficiently similar that the comparison is informative, yet sufficiently ‘inferior’ to gratify the desire for self-esteem” (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999: 425). Individuals use social weighting as a means of projecting or “transferring disgust to others” (Mavin and Grandy, 2013: 247).

In addition to documenting these normalizing and identity-based tactics for coping with stigma (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Ashforth et al., 2007), the literature has suggested that dirty work occupations, especially those facing the most pervasive types of stigma, would develop strong entitativity, “a perception among individuals that they are grouplike” (Kreiner, Ashforth, and Sluss, 2006: 626). The group should then be able to foster a collective language of normalization, an “occupational ideology” that outlines common justifications for their work (Goffman, 1963; Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). For example, butchers have a sense of being part of a group due to the physical stigma facing their work, and they have developed a common ideology that depicts fellow butchers as braver than men performing less-stigmatized work (Meara, 1974; Mavin and Grandy, 2013). Entitativity thus enables a sense of validation and support:

The most reliable validation tends to come from members of the occupation itself, as insiders turn to one another for the affirmation they are often denied externally. This is again likely to be particularly true of the members of morally stigmatized occupations, all else being equal, as the “evil” of moral stigma not only makes external validation less likely but the resulting entitativity of the occupations provides a more potent social resource for validation. (Ashforth and Kreiner, 2014: 92)

As this quote indicates, the literature has assumed that stigmatizers are those exclusively outside of the occupation and that the stigmatized are those within the occupation who turn to each other for support. Building on the stigma literature (Pescosolido and Martin, 2015), the stigmatizers are “normals”: those without the stigmatizing mark (Goffman, 1963; Stone, Stone, and Dipboye, 1992) who have the power to label, devalue, and discriminate against those who are marked (Link and Phelan, 2001). This distinction between stigmatized and stigmatizer is, however, oversimplified and potentially incorrect as it seems to be based on an assumption that occupations and their members are homogeneous. The literature does not yet fully acknowledge the ways in which workers may stigmatize each other based on intra-occupational differences. Our current theory is thus missing important dynamics of stigmatization that may be invisible to outsiders, making our understanding of stigmatization within occupations potentially inaccurate. To better understand the dynamics of stigmatization and how they affect workers and their organizing within stigmatized occupations, we need to look inside these occupations and at workers’ own roles in stigmatization processes.

Occupational Communities

To study and understand occupations, we need to attend to their boundaries (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984; Abbott, 1988, 1993, 1995; Kellogg, Orlikowski, and Yates, 2006; Anteby, Chan, and DiBenigno, 2016). Accordingly, an extensive body of work has examined how occupational members differentiate themselves from members of other occupations and establish divisions between members and non-members to form these boundaries (Gold, 1952; Goode, 1957; Hall, 1983; Bechky, 2003b; Truelove and Kellogg, 2016). In these studies, scholars have examined how occupations establish jurisdictions and construct mandates to claim legitimacy within a specific domain (Nelsen and Barley, 1997; Bechky, 2003a; Kellogg, Orlikowski, and Yates, 2006; Nelson and Irwin, 2014; Huising, 2015; Truelove and Kellogg, 2016; Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky, 2017). The boundaries of occupations are formed through ongoing negotiations between those within the occupation, as well as with those outside the occupation who have a vested interest in it, such as regulatory bodies and stakeholders.

Because the boundaries of an occupation can be negotiated between occupational members, an important insight from this literature is that more than one occupational community can exist within an occupation. An occupational community is a “group of people who consider themselves to be engaged in the same sort of work; whose identity is drawn from the work; who share with one another a set of values, norms and perspectives that apply to but extend beyond work” (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984: 294). Recognizing that more than one such community can exist within an occupation, scholars have begun to examine the boundaries within occupations. Anteby, Chan, and DiBenigno (2016: 204) pointed out that “while many existing studies have generally regarded an occupation as a mostly coherent, relatively homogeneous set of tasks and practices, an emerging set of studies consider within-occupation heterogeneity.”

Occupational communities can be formed within occupations based on similarities in work tasks, the way such work is done, who does the work, or the values underlying such work (e.g., Fine, 1996; Anteby, 2010; Chan and Anteby, 2016; Wright, Zammuto, and Liesch, 2017; Pratt, Lepisto, and Dane, 2019). For example, “green chemists” differentiate themselves from traditional chemists (Howard-Grenville et al., 2017), and “doctors of pain”—physicians specializing in pain management—form a community distinct from other medical specialties (Baszanger, 1990). Because these communities are socially constructed, distinct specialists within occupations can deny or be denied membership in the community, just as gynecological pelvic surgeons have been denied membership in the OB/GYN community (Zetka, 2011). Distinct communities are not necessarily equal within an occupation; certain groups may have more status, such as surgeons compared with primary care physicians or police sergeants compared with constables (Dick, 2005; Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann, 2006). These distinctions may complicate the organization of and relationship between occupational communities within heterogeneous occupations.

This body of work has thus revealed that occupations can be heterogeneous and that their boundaries are socially constructed, composed of multiple occupational communities of unequal status. These features of occupations mean that it is unlikely all stigmatized occupations are homogeneous and as naturally grouplike as the dirty work literature has suggested. “Finding the like-minded others” (Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky, 2017: 271) within an occupation who can act as social supports and buffer members from stigma is thus likely to be fraught with challenges and influenced by dynamics that are potentially invisible to those outside the occupation.

Research Setting

We conducted a six-year qualitative study of sex work in Canada (2013–2019) to explore how the dynamics of stigmatization unfold within a stigmatized occupation and to identify the implications of such dynamics. Our initial purpose in studying sex work was to study social change processes in this contested arena during a period when laws were being redesigned in Canada. However, we realized during our initial fieldwork that this context was an ideal setting for studying stigmatization within occupations, as we were surprised to see that occupational members did not always buffer each other from stigma and in fact often stigmatized each other.

Sex work is “a form of sexual or erotic labor that entails a variety of activities” (Mavin and Grandy, 2013: 237). Heterogeneity exists within the occupation based on various specialties (Sanders, 2005; Scambler, 2007; Hubbard and Prior, 2013; Wolfe and Blithe, 2015), similar to other heterogeneous occupations (Dick, 2005; Gonzalez and Pérez-Floriano, 2015; Howard-Grenville et al., 2017). These specialties include but are not limited to prostitution (or escorting), erotic domination, webcam performance, pornography, stripping, and burlesque (Sanders, 2005; Weitzer, 2009; Grandy and Mavin, 2012). Importantly, sex work is also viewed as an occupation by those conducting the work; our participants categorized themselves as “sex workers.”

In addition to being heterogeneous, sex work has been identified as one of the most highly stigmatized or “dirty” occupations (Ashforth and Kreiner, 2014; Blithe and Wolfe, 2017). In a recent study of sex work in Canada, Benoit and colleagues (2014: 10) concluded that the “prostitute or ‘whore’ stigma is one of the strongest societal stigmas an individual may ever face.” Although sex work advertisements are often highly visible, workers themselves are generally hidden because of the intense stigma, as they carefully consider who to tell about their work (Scambler, 2007; Weitzer, 2010; Hubbard and Prior, 2013). Sex work thus provides an ideal setting in which to examine the internal dynamics of stigmatization.

Data

Our data sources include interviews, social media posts, media articles, and observations. We conducted 86 interviews with 71 people involved in the sex work occupation: 61 women and transgender sex workers (4 of whom were past sex workers) and 10 community allies (activists, support workers, and clients). When we began our investigation, we used purposeful sampling (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) of sex workers involved in activism, as the initial study was focused on social change. As the study progressed, however, we began to engage in more theoretical sampling (Strauss and Corbin, 1998), focusing on sex workers across a range of specialties to ensure we captured the heterogeneous nature of the occupation. In addition to the 4 past sex workers, we spoke with 13 escorts, 9 pornography performers, 3 erotic webcam performers, 9 strippers, 10 burlesque performers, 7 dominatrices (i.e., those who engage in erotic domination), and 6 sex workers who engaged in multiple specialties, which we label as hybrids. The hybrid sex workers had a unique perspective, as they could compare their own personal experiences in multiple specialties. Our interviews ranged from 30 minutes to 3 hours, with an average interview length of 71 minutes. Interviews took place at locations each interviewee chose: some interviews were conducted in cafes, dungeons, or apartments; some occurred at events; and others were conducted by phone or through Skype, Zoom, or Google Meets. Almost all interviews were recorded and transcribed, and when this was not possible, we took detailed notes during and immediately following an interview.

Initially in our fieldwork, we focused on sex workers’ social change efforts and management of stigma. Therefore, in our first set of 39 interviews, we asked participants questions about their work, their involvement in efforts to fight the law and societal perceptions about sex work, and how they personally dealt with the stigma of their work. ¹ We noticed during our interviews that participants repeatedly brought up the dynamics of stigmatization within the occupation as a whole, as well as the importance of having a community to support them. Therefore, as is common in qualitative research (e.g., Pratt, Lepisto, and Dane, 2019), we pivoted our focus to reflect their concerns; in the second set of 32 interviews, we followed up on questions related to the internal dynamics of stigmatization and support communities. We probed why interviewees felt community membership was important, who was in their support community, who was not, and why. We also asked about intra-occupational perceptions of stigma, how interviewees found supportive community members within the occupation, and any difficulties they faced. This line of questioning triggered extensive commentary on the nature of stigmatization within the occupation. We conducted a final set of 15 interviews, including second interviews with a few participants (Escort1, Escort6, Escort11, Hybrid3, Webcam1, Webcam3), to test our emerging themes and further develop theory about the internal dynamics of stigmatization.

Throughout the interviews, many sex workers mentioned online elements of the occupation, so we collected online data to supplement our interviews and potentially observe the stigmatizing dynamics they were describing. To do so, we began to follow the online activities of each sex worker we interviewed who had an active online presence. We collected data from Twitter and Facebook posts, sex work community blogs (such as Tits and Sass, and Fetlife), industry forums (such as Canadian Escort Review Forum), and any other forms of media produced by or written about the sex workers. This resulted in 972 pages of archival data from blogs and media, 1,107 pages of Facebook data, and 63,679 tweets. These supplemental data were helpful for us to observe stigmatization in action and how workers interact with others within the occupation, present themselves, and speak about their work.

In working with stigmatized or marginalized populations, developing trust is crucial (Rogers, Toubiana, and DeCelles, 2016), and so ensuring our participants’ confidentiality was of the utmost importance. While the media and social media data were essential for us to understand the dynamics of stigmatization in practice, to protect the confidentiality of our participants we do not present these data verbatim. Our interviewees’ online presence is technically public, but their participation in our research was based on anonymity. Direct quotations from social media or other media sources would jeopardize this anonymity, as search engines can link the quotations to our participants, who could then be connected to quotations from their anonymous interviews. Thus we have treated the online data as we would treat observations, and when necessary, we have paraphrased tweets or media articles to ensure they cannot be linked back to the participants. We believe this allows us to demonstrate the trustworthiness of our data without compromising our participants’ anonymity.

Throughout the research process, we also engaged in 98 hours of observation at 32 events, including public protests, fundraisers, sexuality conferences, porn shoots, movie festivals, and award ceremonies. Because of the stigmatized nature of the work, observation was a helpful way to connect with potential interview participants early in the research process, as workers were often skeptical of less personal forms of contact such as email. Later in the process, observation enabled us to witness occupational interactions and confirm the emerging themes. The data-gathering process ended when we reached theoretical saturation across the combined data sources (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Table 1 provides an overview of the data sources we used and how they informed our study.

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Table 1.

Description of Data

Data Type	Amount	Use in Analysis
Primary data
Interviews:
69 semi-structured interviews with 61 sex workers (4 of whom were past sex workers) lasting between 30 minutes and 3 hours	1,305 single-spaced pages of transcripts	Provided insights into individuals’ experiences with stigma in their work, the internal dynamics of stigmatization, and any challenges they faced because of these stigma dynamics
17 semi-structured interviews with 10 community allies (activists, support workers, and clients) lasting between 50 minutes and 2 hours	194 single-spaced pages of transcripts	Provided insights into the community dynamics and into the fight for legitimacy
Secondary data
Social media and media:
Twitter data Facebook data Blogs, forums, media articles written by the sex workers	63,679 tweets 1,107 pages 972 pages	Provided insights into the nature of interactions in the community, confirmation of activities described during the interviews, and insights into the unfolding of stigmatization and legitimacy efforts
Observations:
20 community events (movie festivals, award ceremonies, semi-public porn shoots) lasting between 1.5 and 6 hours	58 hours of observation 68 single-spaced pages of notes	Provided access to participants and allowed observation of dynamics occurring in occupational communities
12 social change events (protests, fundraisers, workshops, planning meetings) lasting between 1.5 and 9 hours	40 hours of observation 92 single-spaced pages of notes	Confirmed insights about challenges for the occupation as a whole

Data Analysis

Reflecting the inductive and qualitative nature of our research, our analysis process involved engaging our data, our hunches, and existing theory in iterative cycles (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000; Golden-Biddle and Locke, 2007; Pratt, 2009). After conducting the first set of interviews, each of us independently reviewed the transcripts, noting emerging themes. As we discussed these themes, we realized that the internal dynamics of stigmatization were central to the workers’ lived experiences and the support they received (or did not receive) from other occupational members. We thus identified these stigmatization dynamics as a crucial part of the story that cut across other issues of interest, such as stigma management and social change.

After we had compiled data from a larger set of participants, we began a more systematic analysis. We performed the analysis and all other coding in the qualitative software program QDA Miner. The first phase of analysis involved an open-coding process whereby the first author coded the interviews for all issues of interest, using codes about stigma and stigma management, such as “shaming,” “isolation,” and “comparing to others”; codes related to community, such as “community support,” “belonging,” “those who do not belong,” and “contestation”; and codes about social change, such as “challenges of making change” and “fighting for legitimacy.” We met after every few interviews had been coded to discuss and refine the emerging codes; if we were not in agreement, we discussed and refined the coding until we were.

After this initial round of coding, we returned to the literature to identify what was most interesting, unusual, or exciting in the data in relation to existing theory. At this point, we recognized that our data were challenging existing assumptions in the literature regarding dirty work occupations and were able to shed light on the internal dynamics of stigmatization. We then identified our codes on stigma and iterated with the literature to make sense of the distinct ways in which stigma was manifesting within the occupation. We discovered that perceptions of stigma within the occupation were based on three dimensions: physical (corporeality of the work), demographic (socioeconomic status and race), and moral (purpose in conducting the work). These perceptions were largely consistent across sex workers, forming the basis of what participants called the “whorearchy.”

We began our second phase of analysis with an orienting focus around understanding the particulars of these internal dynamics of stigmatization and their impacts on the occupation and workers. We probed the idea of a “whorearchy” by jointly interrogating existing codes and determining how they fit together into a bigger picture by identifying themes and aggregate categories (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). In doing so, we identified two internal mechanisms of stigmatization that generate a stigma hierarchy (our label for the whorearchy) within the occupation: ordering and detaching. Ordering is the ranking of workers based on intra-occupational perceptions of stigma, and detaching comprises efforts to categorically exclude certain forms of work from the occupation based on these perceptions of stigma. Importantly, the internal perceptions of stigma were not the same as those cast on sex workers from the broader society—they were elaborated, borrowed, and adapted.

Next, we looked for implications of these activities and returned to a hunch that had emerged early in data collection through our engagement with the social media data and observations. We discovered that the stigma hierarchy means workers risk experiencing stigmatization during interactions with other occupational members. To avoid these risks, occupational members engage in stealth organizing: activities that help them find supportive others while avoiding stigmatization. The stigma hierarchy is also associated with fragmenting around the perceptions of stigma, which generates broader occupational dissension. Thus we characterize the occupation as having bounded entitativity: social support and a sense of being grouplike that is confined to small community groups within a broader occupational context of dissension.

During the final stage of analysis, we looked for comparisons that could challenge our theorizing and add greater nuance to our findings. We considered the emerging theory in relation to our observations from events and social media data. We pored over the media and social media data to see if we could observe these activities in workers’ online interactions and verify whether the codes held up across this supplementary data source. These data supported our theorizing, providing assurance that our findings were robust across data sources.

Internal Mechanisms of Stigmatization and the Construction of a Stigma Hierarchy

We realize there’s people that are in adult film, you know, nude modeling, escorting, dominatrix—dominatrices, I should say. Or people that work in the BDSM world. ² People who work in webcam, phone sex. Sex workers is a big, broad umbrella. (Dom3)

Our participants explained that sex work is a heterogeneous occupation and that all parts of the occupation are highly stigmatized. “Unfortunately, . . . feeling that . . . stigma, like, the shame that people have put on the work, . . . put on me, it permeates” (Hybrid2, escort, burlesque). Our findings show that all of our participants personally feel stigma from outsiders as a result of their work, regardless of their particular specialty within the occupation:

I have people that are telling me I’m some sort of whore . . . there definitely have been times where it really, really got to me. There have been times when I’ve come out of cam [off camera] and just started crying. . . . I don’t usually talk [about] it in my personal life a lot. Actually, I think one of the biggest struggles is all the hate we get. (Webcam2)

Stigma’s definitely first and foremost. It’s very hard to have relationships. . . . You constantly have to defend it. People always have a million questions and even a lot of customers come in here, they pay the cover, they buy the dances and during the whole dance they’re saying, “You’re so much better than this. Why do you do this?” Yeah, it’s pretty constant. (Strip7)

I find my favorite and most common question is like, “Do you consider yourself a feminist? And if so, how? Because you go up there and you essentially take your clothes off for people.”. . . So there’s an assumption made. And then we fight that battle, possibly, and the stigma behind it: “You like to be naked in front of people.” And it’s like, “Well, no. I go up there because it’s my body, and that’s what makes me feel good about myself.” Yeah, I’d say that’s what the biggest challenge is. (Burles4)

The stigma—I mean, as I said, it’s terrible. . . . I try to be open to try and normalize about sex work because I don’t really have family. So, I don’t really see much liability to me other than being murdered, as usual. (Porn9)

We expected this finding: that sex workers consistently experience stigmatization by people outside of the occupation. However, we discovered that stigmatization is also prevalent within the occupation, and we identified two internal mechanisms of stigmatization that construct a stigma hierarchy within the sex work occupation: ordering and detaching.

Detaching

The second mechanism of internal stigmatization we observed is detaching. Detaching involves efforts to categorically remove certain forms of work from the occupation based on the intra-occupational perceptions of physical and moral stigma. We found that our participants sought to detach from two groups: (1) coerced sex workers, who cannot be ordered in the stigma hierarchy based on moral dimensions because they do not have a choice in what they do, and (2) burlesque performers, who other sex workers perceive as not facing enough physical stigma to be included in the occupation.

The sex workers in all specialties sought to make a clear distinction between those in the sex work occupation and those who are coerced:

I think that people are starting to understand who we are as sex workers. I think they’re starting to understand that not all sex work is forced, that not all sex workers are on drugs, that not all sex workers are little under-aged girls that are beholden to pimps, things like that. I think we’re starting to get that message out. I think we have a long ways to go. When . . . I was [in another city], I was talking to frontline workers, and I made a comment about being in sex work for more than five years and I’d never seen a pimp, and they were shocked. (Dom2)

Our interviewees consistently described coerced workers as separate, as outside the occupation. They explained that coercion is trafficking or slavery—a categorically different activity that is not sex work: “I think in the actual industry of sex work, for the most part, we’re not talking about people who are in sex slavery situations or have a pimp or something” (Dom7). Many of the workers expressed frustration that people conflate sex work with trafficking:

Yeah, it baffles me that people can’t separate things. They separate, you know, someone going to a mine and having fair labor versus being a slave in a mine, but they can’t do the same when it comes to sex work. (Hybrid1, escort, burlesque)

I really find it offensive that they would say all sex work is trafficking. . . . It just shows a complete misunderstanding of it, and it requires such an ostrich-like ability to bury your head in the sand and pretend that women like me simply do not exist. I don’t pretend that traumatized survivors do not exist. (Escort1)

Thus our participants categorically detach themselves from those who are coerced. This distinction is built off the moral dimension of the stigma hierarchy, as individuals who do not have a choice clearly cannot be evaluated based on the purpose and motivation for their work.

We also found that, for quite different reasons, our participants sought to detach burlesque performers from the sex work occupation. This detachment came from the burlesque performers: “I guess I never considered myself as a sex worker, because what I do as an art isn’t selling sex” (Burles6). ³ But it also came from some other sex workers, all of whom are more stigmatized (lower on the hierarchy) than burlesque performers:

This is actually gonna be really crass, and I do apologize. . . . When burlesque dancers flip it around and say, “Oh, I’m a stripper, because I’m a burlesque dancer,” it’s like, “Until someone is trying to sneak a finger into your fuckhole, you’re not a stripper. And you’re not a sex worker.” . . . Even though you break that fourth wall, and you have that connection with your audience, . . . the point of burlesque is to make eye contact with people and be like, “Yeah, I know you’re watching me doing the show,” and engaging the audience. There’s still a physical safety barrier, for the most part. . . . Whereas, in the strip club, no. You’re just a stripper. What’s wrong with someone reaching out to slap you or grab you like this? It’s par for the course, kind of thing. So, yeah, burlesque is not sex work. It’s sexy work, but not sex work. (Strip1)

The reason I don’t consider [burlesque to be] a part of the sex industry is because I am in the sex industry, and I can tell you, being a burlesque dancer, I never felt the same feelings as being a stripper. (Hybrid4, stripping, burlesque)

The other sex workers in our study recognize their own higher level of stigmatization based on the degree of corporeality relative to burlesque performers, and many claim that burlesque is categorically distinct and not part of the occupation. Nudity, touch, and physical interaction with clients or other sex workers are not part of burlesque performance, and many sex workers do not consider burlesque to be corporeal enough to face the same level of stigmatization that all others in the occupation face.

Importantly, we found that detaching is based only on physical and moral perceptions of stigma, indicating that these dimensions are core to the boundaries of the occupation and one’s place within it. Ordering based on demographic perceptions of stigma, in contrast, seems to be relevant to placing one on the hierarchy but not positioning anyone outside of it.

Stealth Organizing around Dimensions of Stigma

We found that sex workers use stealth organizing to find safe others to interact with. Safe others are those who are similarly stigmatized based on physical, demographic, and moral perceptions of stigma. Stealth organizing allows the sex workers to find supportive community.

Stealth organizing involves first scoping and then screening workers within the occupation to find similarly stigmatized others to interact with. Scoping involves discreetly assessing and investigating other sex workers to determine the risk of reaching out. For those who work in organizations (e.g., strippers), scoping involves watching and observing other sex workers’ activities, language, and purpose. For example, a stripper who also has sex with clients does not just turn to all other strippers in the organization; they instead watch for signs that others in their organization also offer “full service” to clients—signs such as leaving the club with a client or giving a client a business card so they can meet later. In contrast, independent sex workers who are dispersed tend to engage in scoping in online spaces, often by observing other sex workers’ interactions with clients via online platforms. That is, they go onto others’ professional pages where they sell, advertise, or provide services, as this interview interaction shows:

Scoping can also involve observing other sex workers on discussion boards or social media platforms to determine the risk of reaching out:

The internet was very much a game changer for the industry . . . because it created . . . physical distance, such that you don’t have to put yourself in a vulnerable position to determine risk. The majority of community building is done in online circles. And a lot of that happens in internet spaces known as discussion boards and review boards. (Escort1)

Scoping is a strategy used by sex workers to get a sense of other people before they connect. To determine the risk of interacting with others, sex workers use scoping to discover whether they are similarly stigmatized, and they investigate others based on the dimensions of the stigma hierarchy. For example, workers watch for the corporeality of others’ activities: “I would watch different rooms, mostly, see what other models were doing” (Webcam2). Workers also look for other dimensions of the hierarchy, such as socioeconomic markers: “I look at every other website that I can see, [to] see what I like, see what I don’t like . . . obviously, the girls that market themselves as more high end” (Hybrid3, escort, massage). Our participants were, of course, attracted to those similar to them on multiple dimensions, but what we observed them speaking about most frequently when they discussed scoping was assessing the dimensions of the stigma hierarchy.

After scoping reveals visible similarities in stigma, workers may employ screening: careful interactions that help them subtly evaluate unidentified dimensions of stigma. For example, they may express support, such as by liking or sharing a social media post or even by offering assistance:

You reach out, you compliment people, you volunteer to help. So all you have to do is you throw your name in a hat, right? You’re just like, “I would love to help you.” [It’s about] making those connections . . . making sure that you build relationships. (Burles8)

Screening is a gradual process wherein test interactions help determine whether sex workers align on the more difficult-to-assess dimensions of the hierarchy, such as the purpose for doing the work. After reaching out, workers may have prolonged virtual conversations and then eventually meet in person, or they may be invited to a more exclusive email group:

I’ve met so many people off of Twitter. It’s normally where, if I’m going to meet somebody for coffee or lunch, I can . . . connect to your Twitter, like through your DMs [direct messages]. . . . My friend organized a dinner . . . so we all did that over the group conversation. (Escort6)

There’s a group of us that sort of really stick together. I think there’s about like 15 of us, maybe, and we’re all independent [escort] workers. . . . So how I got involved with this particular group was, I got invited to an email listserv by one of the workers, and you had to be vouched [for] by two of the workers who were already on the list. (Escort10)

During test interactions, sex workers screen one another “to spot the women that don’t fit in right and properly, you know what I mean?” (Dom6). Since the purpose of the work is the dimension of stigma that is the most difficult to see, screening often involves attempting to discover the sex workers’ reasons for engaging in sex work:

I can usually tell in the same amount of time that I can with a client. A lot of it’s gut. . . . I meet for coffee first. So, I decide usually by talking to them . . . asking them what their goals are, getting an idea as to what they’re all about. Once in a while . . . [I had] this nagging feeling that the person wasn’t going to be a good fit. . . . There’s some people that I refer to as mercs . . . mercenaries that are basically just there to make as much money as they can. (Escort1)

What I do is consult with them, ask why they want to do it . . . what their reasons that they want to do it are. ’Cause sometimes you get folks who are more in it for themselves. . . . You can be in it for yourself in a certain way, but there needs to be a certain amount of the person that is doing it to make change as well. So I’d be, like . . . so usually sit down, have lunch with the person or something like that, and see how our values line up. (Porn4)

Stealth organizing enables sex workers to find safe others who can provide them with invaluable social support.

Fragmenting around Dimensions of Stigma

While most workers do ultimately find social support, the formation of the stigma hierarchy means that perceptions of stigma permeate the occupation and that there is fragmentation around physical, demographic, and moral stigma. Corporeality in the stigma hierarchy, for example, creates a barrier between groups based on physical stigma:

[The dungeon owner] didn’t want the dungeon, and me by extension—like, by representing the dungeon—to be associated with those hookers . . . because, you know, dominatrices, traditional dominatrices, don’t have sex with their clients. And so, to associate with such a lower form of worker . . . (Dom2) ⁴

There are porn models who will discriminate against cam models, who would discriminate against full service, who will discriminate against strippers, who will discriminate against . . . (Hybrid6, porn, webcam)

Fragmentation also occurs based on demographic and moral perceptions of stigma. For example, one participant was asked to leave her supportive community group when she admitted that she does not enjoy or find sex work empowering and does not engage in the work for “higher” purposes:

I really hated sex work. Even when I was still saying that yes, I chose to be a sex worker, I could never say I love it. I would put forward . . . what I thought . . . I was supposed to say—that I could choose my own hours and make a lot of money. And that much is true. But it’s really unpleasant work. Or it can be really unpleasant work. . . . And so [a woman within the group] said, “The group doesn’t want you.” (Escort2)

Workers who might otherwise see themselves as part of the same group are fragmented around the dimensions of stigma outlined in the stigma hierarchy. While stealth organizing allows the sex workers to find supportive community groups, the larger occupation is fragmented.

As a result, we found that the occupation as a whole is characterized by dissension. One participant explained that “There’s so many different factions” (Burles2), and the different groups do not get along:

[T]here was a lot of exclusion of certain people. There was a lot of infighting, and it wasn’t the sort of perfect world that I thought that it was. . . . Sometimes it can feel like high school where popular people get to tell you what to do. I think that, yeah, I think that it’s . . . it’s far from perfect, and . . . there’s a lot of exclusion, which may be even be like unknowing exclusion, [but also] like I think that there’s blatant exclusion. (Escort3)

I would say it’s more like there’s cliques of girls who . . . hang out together. . . . I don’t think there’s much of a sisterhood anymore. I’ve definitely seen some girls throw other girls [from other cliques] under the bus. (Hybrid4, stripper, burlesque)

I definitely had that [high-class, empowerment] narrative, too. And part of it . . . for me was the stigma. It was about proving that I was more than just a prostitute, a lot of the time. But in the process of doing that, I often threw other sex workers who were exactly like that under the bus. (Escort10)

The fragmentation around perceptions of stigma appeared to generate dissension across the occupation, as this interviewee reflected:

Yeah, it’s disgusting, and it’s not okay. And we need to figure out why that is. I think a lot of times we just don’t . . . we don’t love each other. In our own community, there’s a lot of hate. (Porn1)

Occupational Dissension and Challenges for Social Change Efforts

During the time of our study, the occupation was in the midst of a legitimacy battle that vividly illustrated its fragmentation and dissension. In December 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the laws against prostitution and gave the government a year to enact new legislation. During this time, the government held senate hearings and conducted public opinion surveys to determine the best course of action. As a result, sex workers and abolitionists were trying to sway government and public opinion in different directions: abolitionists sought to delegitimize and recriminalize sex work, and sex workers sought to legitimize and decriminalize the occupation. As several participants in our study expressed on their Twitter feeds [quotes paraphrased for anonymity]:

Sex work is real work. . . . Together, we want to fully decriminalize all types of sex work; the goal is to fight the stigma and discrimination that sex workers face and to challenge the laws and policies that harm sex workers; instead sex work should be valued as legitimate and fulfilling work, making an important contribution to society.

However, fragmentation in the occupation complicated the efforts to sway public opinion. One participant told us that she did not want to get involved in social change efforts because doing so would put her in contact with the types of sex workers she did not want to interact with: “I didn’t really want to get involved in sex work activism ’cause it seemed to be a lot of those kind of women, and they drove me out of my fucking mind” (Hybrid1, escort, burlesque). When workers overcame their hesitation and engaged in activist work, they were often confronted with dissension because of their differences, which hindered their efforts. As Escort1 explained, she attempted to get involved but in the end “couldn’t take the in-fighting.”

This dissension revolved around the perceptions of stigma outlined in the hierarchy. For example, escorts from a higher socioeconomic group were criticized for pushing a change agenda that excluded those lower in the hierarchy, as the focus on “overpriced whores” denied the experiences and needs of the “blue-collar” sex workers (Escort2). Similarly, at a protest, sex workers distributed buttons that showed a picture of a whip with a caption that read “This is not a sex ad”—an imitation of the famous painting of a pipe by René Magritte. On the surface, the workers distributing the buttons were criticizing the lack of clarity around what is legal and illegal when advertising sexual services. But their argument also emphasized that dominatrices do not have sex with clients, thereby differentiating that group of sex workers as less stigmatized than other groups of sex workers.

Participants clearly identified these dynamics as inhibiting the occupation’s ability to establish a shared voice and agenda for collective action. Activists observed that the sex work occupation lacked “common messaging,” while “the anti–sex workers’ rights movement . . . or whatever you want to call them, have a very clear message” (Escort5). A former sex worker and activist lamented:

Why we cannot work together? In the perfect world, I would sit at the table with . . . women from two positions, and we will talk. . . . I think that’s the better world we can have, being together. . . . We all been in the same place. We all been sex worker[s]. . . . If we all come from the same place, I think we don’t need to fight. . . . I think that that’s a really big problem, ’cause nobody’s . . . going to take us seriously if we do that. . . . I saw that a lot on social media. That really pissed me off. (PastSexWorker1)

Developing a common message or agenda requires establishing agreement on why sex work should be viewed as a legitimate occupation. Yet due to the internal dynamics of stigmatization, sex workers found reasons why their particular occupational community should be legitimate but not the occupation as a whole. The arguments for one group often undermined another group’s claim for legitimacy: arguing that sex work should be legitimate because sex workers are empowered implies that performing sex work just for the money is illegitimate (moral stigma); arguing that some sex work does not involve intercourse illegitimates sex work involving intercourse (physical stigma). Core to these debates were issues related to corporeality and purpose, perceptions of physical and moral stigma. Demographics influenced the particulars of the support groups but seemed to play a fairly minor role in the dissension associated with challenges in undertaking social change efforts. Overall, sex workers struggled to find arguments for legitimacy that did not worsen the position of other groups within the occupation, failing to identify a coherent occupational ideology that legitimated all of their work.

In December 2015, the Canadian government passed Bill C-36 into law, which criminalizes the advertising, purchase of, and third-party support for sexual services. The efforts by sex workers were not successful in legitimating sex work or preventing the new laws. While we cannot suggest that the new laws are a direct result of the dynamics we observed, our data clearly show that the stigma hierarchy was associated with dissension that shaped the ways in which sex workers engaged in social change efforts.

The implication of the stigma hierarchy is thus an occupation characterized by bounded entitativity: social support and a sense of being grouplike that is confined to small community groups within a broader occupational context of dissension.

Contributions to the Dirty Work and Stigma Literature

In developing theory and outlining a model of the internal dynamics of stigmatization, we make important contributions to the dirty work and stigma literature.

Contributions to the Occupational Literature

Our findings also contribute to the literature on occupations, which has shown that occupational members differentiate themselves from outsiders (Abbott, 1988; Bechky, 2003b; DiBenigno and Kellogg, 2014; Anteby, Chan, and DiBenigno, 2016; Truelove and Kellogg, 2016) and, although less frequently studied, from other occupational members (e.g., Van Maanen, Miller, and Johnson, 1982; Chan and Anteby, 2016; Howard-Grenville et al., 2017; Pratt, Lepisto, and Dane, 2019). Our work extends the recent focus on intra-occupational differentiation and highlights the importance of considering occupational communities within occupations.

Limitations and Future Research

As we conducted an in-depth qualitative study of the sex work occupation, “the strength of our investigation lies in capturing realism rather than allowing for statistical generalizability” (Pratt, Lepisto, and Dane, 2019: 427). Yet, although we have explored a context with an extreme and pervasive type of stigma, we believe that our case sheds light on dynamics that occur in other stigmatized occupations, indicating transferability beyond our extreme context (Bamberger and Pratt, 2010).

Our model may have relevance for a wide range of stigmatized occupations, such as truck driving, defense contracting, cadaver brokering, hacking, or drug dealing (Goodwin, 2006; Anteby, 2010; Bennett, 2013; Scott, 2013; Brewis and Godfrey, 2018; Gray and Lindsay, 2019; Lashley and Pollock, 2020). Even if the degree of stigma involved in such work may be less than that facing sex workers, workers in these occupations may face similar challenges, as the stigmatization may come not only from outsiders but also from other occupational members. Internal mechanisms of stigmatization may create stigma hierarchies that lead to interaction risks within the occupation. Since the heterogeneity in the stigma hierarchy is not just based on different activities, we believe our model has broad relevance and implications for many stigmatized occupations.

To examine the internal dynamics of stigmatization within a “dirty work” occupation, we interviewed a cross-section of female and transgender sex workers involved in a wide range of specialties. This enabled us to reveal the internal mechanisms of stigmatization deployed by these workers and the implications of the resulting stigma hierarchy. However, we were not able to follow each supportive community group in depth and over time. Doing so may reveal important shifts in dynamics, including the strengthening and weakening of the occupational community based on internal changes and changes in the broader institutional landscape. We also did not explore how the internal dynamics of stigmatization are impacted by gender for male sex workers. We encourage researchers to delve deeper into these dynamics by exploring additional sources of heterogeneity over time.

Additionally, our sample largely comprised dispersed workers operating outside the bounds of organizations. Not all stigmatized occupations are dispersed, and many operate within the boundaries of an organization. Exploring how the stigma hierarchy plays out within organizations is important, as bounded entitativity likely creates unique challenges for organizations. For example, bounded entitativity may generate difficulties for organizational change efforts, just as it does for social change efforts. How might an organization manage bounded entitativity? Organizations may be better positioned than dispersed and independent workers to deal with occupational dissension; they may be able to help create occupational ideologies that transcend the lines of difference emerging from the stigma hierarchy and/or to create safe spaces for interactions between all workers. Future research could examine how stigma hierarchies might be productively managed within organizations to harness the benefits of social support while minimizing the dangers of dissension.

Conclusion

Stigmatized occupations can undermine workers’ abilities to derive meaning and a positive sense of self from work (Hughes, 1958). One way these workers can overcome the negative consequences of stigma is by establishing occupational communities that provide social support and a safe haven for interactions. Our work has important practical implications, as it reveals not only how difficult it may be to find this much-needed support but also a potential way to organize so that workers can overcome these difficulties. Stealth organizing provides two concrete strategies (scoping and screening) stigmatized workers can use to find social support while minimizing their risk of stigmatization in interactions. In addition, we reveal the crucial role that social media technology plays in enabling stealth organizing for workers who are dispersed and vulnerable to stigma. Over time, as physical interaction and contact between workers become more restricted and less necessary, platforms that support stealth organizing are crucial to ensure they can find occupational support. As governments increasingly look to regulate such online spaces, it is important that stigmatized workers maintain access to them in order to facilitate the organizing efforts that enable finding supportive communities.