Coronation Street Blog: Making Ends Meet: Corrie & Sex Workers

Sex workers have been getting a bad rap on Coronation Street of late. Monday’s Corrie saw Adam leap into action when he discovered Nicky was an escort. Clearly disapproving of her line of work, Adam wanted to warn Daniel off. And in a brief exchange outside the police station we heard one of the detectives use the word “prozzie”. Not exactly PC in 2020.

Pillow Talk

A few weeks ago Sally and Tim probed Geoff over his use of escorts. In the scene an uncomfortable Geoff says “I didn’t really want to be having this conversation”. Sally responds by saying “ugh it’s disgusting” as Geoff admits to not being proud of himself.

But is it disgusting though?

Granted escorts and sex workers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but there are lots of reasons people go into this work and lots of reasons why people use their services. Isn’t it time we gave them a break? Or is this one stigma we should hold on to?

As far as UK law stands, the act of engaging in sex as part of an exchange of sexual services for money is legal, but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes.

Jane Danson back in the mid 2000s

To be fair to Corrie, the storylines so far are not painting sex workers themselves in a negative light. And the soap has covered sex work in the past. Leanne Battersby was Corrie’s first outed prostitute. These things were much more scandalous back in the mid 2000s and her sex work past often pops up in conversation…usually when going at it with Tracy Barlow.

In today’s Corrie people’s responses to it are pretty accurate. There IS still a stigma around prostitution, so perhaps these storylines are actually doing this line of work a favour. Afterall, we could all know someone who’s a sex worker. Nicky helping Daniel through his grief, whilst charging him for the time, has actually been a surprising and interesting angle on escorting. It also proves it's not all about sex. Sometimes people just need a bit of companionship.

During the last decade of austerity and government penny-pinching, many Brits turned to sex work and escorting to help pay the bills. This was depicted in the heart-rending film I, Daniel Blake. And many other people were doing it proudly before. It can pay very well and it’s legal. So why not?

During the pandemic however, sex workers who rely on this work solely as their source of income, have really struggled. In May, Wired spoke to the English Collective of Prostitutes: "Nobody wants to break the lockdown regulation. But, fundamentally, these women have had no support from the government whatsoever," Nikki Adams told them. And some estimates say there are almost 100,000 sex workers in the UK. That’s a lot of people struggling to make ends meet.

So perhaps now is the perfect time to tell sex workers’ stories. A little less judgement and a bit more education and understanding might go a long way.

Information and education on safe sex work and activism can be found HERE.

@StevieDawson

WASH THOSE HANDS.