The Sex Worker Movement in Japan and the Walls that Surround Us

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  • セックスワーカー運動といくつもの壁
  • セックスワーカー運動といくつもの壁 : 私たちの経験を示す言葉を探求する
  • セックスワーカー ウンドウ ト イクツ モノ カベ : ワタクシ タチ ノ ケイケン オ シメス コトバ オ タンキュウ スル
  • Searching for Words that Portray Our Own Experiences
  • ――私たちの経験を示す言葉を探求する――

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Abstract

<p>In this essay I discuss my experiences during 23 years in the sex worker movement in Japan. I share the difficulties I faced and explain today's needs in this direction. The sex worker movement, which spread globally in the 1980s because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, reached Japan in the 1990s, and the Sex Worker and Sexual Health（SWASH）group was established in 1999 to reform the social environment for sex workers. The trajectory of SWASH activities until today reveals four massive walls obstructing this movement and its every activity: First, the wall that hinders our efforts to promote social and scientific research on sex work; second, the wall that forces us to play fixed roles with rigid perspectives, typically as victims of a patriarchal system posited by academics and/or politicians; third, the wall that blinds people to the facts about sex work; and fourth, the wall created by the lack of a vocabulary suited to expressing personal experiences. Braving such difficulties, the sex worker movement in Japan has been organized under the slogan “sex work is work,” in consideration of the fact that sex workers may include a wide variety of people including several types of minorities. This slogan serves as a clarion call in our struggle against oppression in Japanese society. The need of the hour is not to have spokespeople who more often than not appropriate our experiences but honest translators of our bare words.</p>

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