'Unfortunate choices:' Risk in the lives of street-level sex workers and non-sex working streetwise women

Lupton (1999) suggests the concept of risk is used to control anxiety in making decisions involving possibilities of danger or harm. Criminologist, public health, and activist researchers have documented the many dangers and harms associated with street sex work. However, this research neglects the lens of street sex workers. This study utilized ethnographic methods and life history interviews to investigate risk, danger, and harm from the perspectives of fifty street sex workers and twenty-five non-sex working women. Sex working women indicated higher levels of homelessness and intimate partner violence than non-sex working women. Both groups share stories indicating they often must choose between dangers and harms of homelessness or continued abuse in their homes, where they are financially dependent upon their abusers. Street drugs are presented as necessary for survival as they enable functioning by helping the women manage crippling feelings associated with traumatic experiences. Systemic safety nets are described either as unresponsive or are totally absent from the women's accounts. Both groups indicate popular notions of risk involve weighing potential gains and losses, but their lives involve choices ending only in loss, never or rarely gain. The principle investigator argues these contribute to development of a loss related orientation, characterized by six propositions. First, loss related orientation emerges from prolonged exposure to dangerous, harmful conditions with minimal or no relief. Second, women experiencing these conditions develop a sense that their needs are unimportant and inconsiderable. Third, women in these groups experience unfortunate events, conditions, and threatening environments as normal. Fourth, women in these groups are unaware their life conditions can be different, with two exceptions. For those who are aware, most lack the skills to effect change. Also, for those who are aware most lack the resources to effect change. Fifth, women in these groups blame themselves for the conditions of their lives. Finally, these women utilize a myriad of coping mechanisms which assist them in the short term but harm them in the long term.