Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 21 No.3 1999 ISSN 0141–9889, pp.

290–309

Difficult relations: sex work, love and intimacy

Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

Abstract Female sex workers in Western societies report high rates of

condom use with clients. However, their continuing low rates of
condom use with private partners place some sex workers at
increased risk of STDs and HIV. While researchers have focused
on the health risks for female sex workers in their private rela-
tionships, from the point of view of the women involved, these
relationships are a site of more complex struggles. This paper
reports findings from a qualitative study of female sex workers
and examines the difficulties associated with sustaining a private
relationship while engaging in sex work. Sex work practices, in so
far as they parody the features of love-making, can profoundly
disrupt the special characteristics of intimate sexual relationships.
Any intervention designed to promote condom use in the private
relationships of female sex workers must engage with the com-
plexity of meanings that are attached to sex work, love and
intimacy by these women.

Keywords: sex work, prostitution, risk, HIV, sexually transmissible diseases,

romance

Introduction

Dear Crystal,
I am writing to you about a problem which I am having with my boyfriend
of five years. I have been a worker for approximately ten years, and I met
my boyfriend on the job. The problem is that he cannot accept that I do not
enjoy my work – I do it only as a way of supporting myself. As this has been
my only way of making money for the last ten years, I don’t know of any
other way. I think he believes that I am cumming with all my clients; this is
not so. I am desperate for help, as I think my relationships could be on its
way out the door. Please Crystal I need your help.
From a confused sex worker.1
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road,
Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.
 Work, love and intimacy 291

Female sex workers in Western societies report high rates of condom use
with clients together with continuing low rates of condom use with private
partners (Campbell 1991, Day and Ward 1990, Dorfman et al. 1992,
Estebanez et al. 1993, McKeganey and Barnard 1992, Pyett et al. 1996a,
1996b, Vanwesenbeeck et al. 1993). Non-use of condoms with private part-
ners can pose significant risks of sexually transmissible diseases (STDs),
including HIV, for some female sex workers (Campbell 1995, Scambler and
Scambler 1995), particularly if their partner is engaging in unprotected sex
with other women (Day and Ward 1990) or when either partner is involved
in injecting drug use (Harcourt and Philpot 1990, Matthews 1990).
Negotiating safe sex is problematic for many women (Holland et al. 1991,
Kippax et al. 1990, Wilton and Aggleton 1991), but when a woman is a sex
worker the problems are exacerbated. While researchers have focused on the
health risks for sex workers in their private relationships (Campbell 1991,
1995, Rosenberg and Weiner 1988), from the point of view of women
involved in sex work, these relationships are a site of more complex strug-
gles. For example, many sex workers report that their partners feel uneasy
about the requirements of sex work and are often jealous of clients
(McKeganey and Barnard 1996, Pyett and Warr 1997). Sexual exclusivity
and trust are highly valued in intimate relationships in Western societies
(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995, Giddens 1992, Luhmann 1986), yet these
can be difficult to reconcile with the demands of being sexually available to
many partners through sex work (McKeganey and Barnard 1996). Before
the health needs of sex workers in their private sexual relationships can be
addressed, it is necessary to examine the tension between risk, which is
supposedly perceived and negotiated through rational processes, and
love, which is experienced as irrational, passionate, overwhelming and com-
pulsive.
That risk has become a concept of increasing interest to sociologists
should come as no surprise if we accept Beck’s (1992) analysis of the late
20th century as ‘risk society’. Central to this analysis is a process of ‘individ-
ualisation’. Beck (1992) argues that an increasing number of risks are pro-
duced and mediated by advanced industrial capitalism and that these must
be negotiated by individuals in every phase of their daily lives. With rising
costs of health care, health risks are increasingly linked to individual behav-
iour and health promotion programmes emphasise self-management and
self-care (Petersen 1996). As a consequence, failure to take appropriate
action to protect oneself from risk is condemned as morally inferior, as lack-
ing self-control or failing to fulfil one’s duties of citizenship (Petersen 1996).
In this paper we suggest that the ways in which individuals ‘cope’ with risk
are not the product of personality factors or character deficits but of the
ways in which they interpret their world, and that these interpretations are
framed by social circumstances.
In contrast to the considerable body of research on sex and sexual behav-
iour, love is a relatively neglected area of sociological study (see Bertilsson
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292 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

1986, Jackson 1993). Luhmann (1986) has argued that romantic love is an
important mode of symbolic exchange, constituting a means of communica-
tion in an increasingly anonymous world where intimate relationships pro-
vide a validation of the self. Beck has also argued that one of the
consequences of living in an increasingly individualised society is that men
and women are ‘driven into bonding in the search for happiness in a partner-
ship. The need for a shared inner life . . . grows with the losses that individu-
alisation brings’ (1992: 105). Feminists have debated the role that love plays
in women’s oppression, recognising both its capacity to deceive and the way
in which love offers women a positive identity, a sense of being valued, and
a promise of power through being loved (Jackson 1993). In a study of young
women’s sexuality, Singh argues that women ‘move between two modes of
consciousness: one that enables them through an illusion of self autonomy,
and another that imposes constraints on them’ (1996: 35).
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of female sex workers
who were identified as particularly vulnerable to risk. Clearly, this was not a
representative sample of sex workers. The findings nevertheless contribute
to our understanding of the well-established reluctance of female sex work-
ers to use condoms with their private partners, a practice which has serious
implications for the transmission of HIV infection and other STDs.
Findings relating to HIV risk and the various strategies employed by the
women to manage risks to their health and physical safety have been
reported elsewhere (Pyett and Warr 1996, 1997). In this paper we examine
the women’s attitudes towards private sexual relationships and the difficul-
ties associated with sustaining such relationships while engaging in sex
work.

Study design

This study was conducted during 1995–6 in Melbourne, the capital city of
the state of Victoria, Australia. Victorian law provides for licensing of some
brothels and escort agencies and for women to register as private sex work-
ers, but all forms of street prostitution and sex work in illegal brothels
remain subject to criminal sanctions (Prostitution Control Act, 1995). In-
depth interviews were conducted with 24 women aged between 14 and 47
years, recruited from the main ‘red light’ area in Melbourne. The women
were purposively selected on the basis of being perceived as vulnerable to
sexual health risk whilst engaged in sex work. The sampling strategy aimed
to recruit at least one woman from each of a number of key categories of
vulnerability, which included homelessness, drug or alcohol dependence,
being very young or new to the sex industry, or being involved in the illegal
sector of the sex industry. Half the women were involved in street work
while the other half worked in either legal or illegal brothels or for escort
agencies. The women who are the focus of this study were not only the most
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
 Work, love and intimacy 293

vulnerable members of the sex worker community in Victoria, but also

amongst the most difficult to reach for the purpose of research. The
researchers were assisted by the Prostitutes’ Collective of Victoria (PCV),
who nominated eight women to form a critical reference group (CRG).
Each of these women had some association with the sex industry, either as
current or past sex workers or as health educators or outreach workers in
the field. In addition to recruiting and interviewing participants, members of
the CRG provided invaluable advice during the planning phase and assisted
in defining criteria for vulnerability, developing the interview schedule and
interpreting the findings. The diversity of experience which these eight
women brought to the research process was important in guarding against
interviewer bias and against the privileging of any one type of information
or any one analytical perspective.
Members of the CRG were trained by the researchers in qualitative inter-
viewing techniques, research protocol and ethics. A substantial amount of
training time was devoted to the importance of developing trust and rapport
between interviewer and participant (see Booth and Booth 1994).
Confidentiality and the comfort of both interviewers and participants were
prime considerations at all times. Participation was voluntary and inter-
views were conducted in a familiar environment chosen by the participant,
usually in a cafe or a local welfare agency. Standard procedures for
informed consent were followed, and participants were assured that they
could turn off the tape recorder at any time during the interview.
Interviewers were also encouraged to interrupt or stop the interview at any
time, should the participant become anxious, distressed or require reassur-
ance on any matter. Participants were paid AU$50 and provided with coffee
and cigarettes during the interview. Provision was made for participants to
be offered access to relevant support services where required, and debriefing
for interviewers included access to free professional counselling.
Each member of the CRG interviewed between one and three partici-
pants, while eight interviews were conducted by one of the authors. Some
participants were known to their interviewer while others were not.
Members of the CRG decided whether or not to interview participants
whom they had recruited, depending on the relationship they had with the
participant and whether they felt the participant would be more comfort-
able talking to them or to an unknown interviewer. Immediately following
each interview, the interviewer recorded her own observations and impres-
sions in order to contextualise the circumstances of each interview and the
particular characteristics of individual women’s lives.
Interviews were conducted in conversational style, using open-ended
questions to address three broad areas: work, health and private life. This
paper focuses on the last section, which referred to issues such as disclosing
sex work to family and friends, difficulties with personal relationships, con-
dom use with private partners, levels of personal and emotional support, liv-
ing situation and problems with child care. Interviews lasted between 20
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294 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

minutes and one hour. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed ver-
batim, and data were analysed using content and thematic analysis (Patton
1990, Silverman 1993). Themes were initially drawn from the literature in
accordance with the aims of the study: work experience, condom use with
clients, condom use and relationships with private partners, drug use, STDs
and other health issues. Additional themes emerged from the interviews them-
selves: experience of violence and threats to physical safety, risk management
strategies, social isolation and attitudes to private sexual relationships.
Members of the CRG contributed to the interpretation of findings. A fur-
ther validity check involved testing the acceptability to participants of the
findings (see Daly et al. 1997). Feedback to individual participants was not
possible because of the difficulty of relocating women given the promise of
confidentiality. However, comments on a preliminary report to the commu-
nity were invited from the PCV and a number of welfare agencies that
provide services to sex workers. Suggestions made by community represen-
tatives and service providers were incorporated into the final report (Pyett
and Warr 1996). Any details that might identify the women have been
altered and pseudonyms have been used for all participants.

Private relationships, unprotected sex and STDs

All the women in this study reported tensions associated with having a pri-
vate sexual relationship while engaging in sex work. Fewer than half the
women reported being in a current relationship and only five were living
with their partners.2 Several women saw their partners very infrequently.
Half the brothel workers and all but the two youngest street workers
reported current or recent injecting drug use, and several women admitted
to sharing needles with their private partner, their drug dealer or, in one
case, with the dealer’s girlfriend. Several women also reported having
unprotected sex with drug dealers knowing that the dealer was sleeping with
other women. Some women had spent time in prison and others had part-
ners who had been in prison. These episodes inevitably presented additional
difficulties for the women’s private relationships. Only two of the women
with private partners said they used condoms in these relationships. One
relied on condoms for contraception as a deliberate strategy to protect her-
self from STDs because she was unsure of her partner’s commitment to the
relationship. Most of the other women felt, however, that not using con-
doms enabled them to experience their private relationships as qualitatively
different from the sex they engaged in through work. Indeed, many women
refused to use condoms with their private partners lest they experience their
private sexual relations as ‘just like a job’.
Half the women had contracted an STD at some time but only one
believed she had become infected through sex work. Three women were
unclear as to how they contracted an STD while eight said they had
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 Work, love and intimacy 295

contracted an STD from a private partner. Although few of their private

relationships were described as regular and monogamous, women expressed
high levels of trust which they frequently regarded as justified because both
partners had undergone sexual health tests and witnessed each other’s
results, often in the presence of a doctor. Such test results are at best retro-
spective and provide no guarantee of monogamy or fidelity as evidenced by
one woman who had acquired HIV from a partner, believing that his test
results demonstrated that she need not use condoms. Other women had
acquired gonorrhoea, genital herpes, genital warts, hepatitis B, chlamydia
and non-specific urethritis. Individual women expressed surprise that they
had contracted STDs from a private partner but collectively their experi-
ences reflected considerable risks, not only to their sexual and reproductive
health, but also to the potential of the life-threatening diseases that result
from HIV infection.

Attitudes to private relationships

Amongst the sex workers in this study, different attitudes to private rela-
tionships were associated with different strategies for managing the tensions
and difficulties inherent in such relationships.

‘I couldn’t work and have a relationship’

For some women, sex work created a milieu in which private sexual rela-
tionships were unviable, and they had made a deliberate decision to refrain
from seeking love or intimacy until their circumstances changed:

I don’t believe a guy can love you and expect that you can work. I don’t
think you can love a guy and do this. No, I don’t think you can have a
relationship in this job (Teresa).
If you had a really close relationship, I don’t think you’d be able to do
this work. I wouldn’t have been anyway (Greta).

These women felt that sex work was unlike any other work in the way in
which it simulated the special features of romantic love that are expressed
through a private sexual relationship. Because of the nature of their work,
love and commitment could not be expressed through sexual exclusivity. At
the same time, private sexual relationships placed demands upon them
which, as sex workers, they could not fulfil:

Well, I’m not going to see eight clients for the night and have to go home
and bonk. I need my rest. I like my own bed. Yeah, I don’t need the
pressure of having to perform in my own bed – it’s my haven (Teresa).
It’s best to be single if you work. That’s just my view. I think you’ve got
more respect. I wouldn’t like my woman coming home getting into bed
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296 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

every night after fucking about ten blokes, even if you are using condoms
(Jennifer).

A loss of respect from private partners was accepted as a condition of these

women’s involvement in sex work. Greta’s view was typical: ‘Any man that
cared about you wouldn’t approve of you working.’ As Lorraine explained,
when a sex worker is in a relationship, ‘the guy is – whether consciously or
unconsciously – he brings you down . . . and makes you feel like shit for
working’. Some women had developed an ability to ‘switch on and off’
from ‘work mode’ to ‘home mode’, but few were comfortable about telling
friends or family about their work. Despite the loneliness these women
experienced as a result of their situation, they felt that they were left with
little choice until such time as they were no longer involved in sex work.
Jennifer, for example, regretted that she had not had sex outside of work for
two years but felt she was unable to give up sex work while she had children
to support.
Two of the women had found that sex work fulfilled their desire for sex in
a way that gave them more autonomy than they had experienced in private
relationships. Both women had been married and had no experience of
being treated well by their previous partners. One said she did not ‘need a
man around to be happy’ and the other found clients far easier to manage
than her violent ex-husband. Both had chosen to work in legal brothels,
were very clear about the services they would and would not provide for
clients, insisted on condoms for all services and maintained strict limits on
expressions of affection. At the same time, both enjoyed sexual aspects of
their work and wished they had begun sex work sooner:

I enjoy the showing-off part . . . I think I was born to please men . . . I’ve
always been sexy like . . . I’m always treated a bit like a sex symbol
anyway so you might as well be one . . . At least there’s a dollar there
(Greta).
I do like sex very much. I’m not a nymphomaniac or anything, I just like
it. I was without [it] for months and months and months and it was fine
but I need sex and I thought well I’ll give it [sex work] a try and I have
and I like it (Naomi).

These women expressed relief that they no longer felt obliged to seek a phys-
ical and emotional relationship with a private partner. It was perhaps no
coincidence that both women had children who provided them with some
companionship and a sense of being valued. Although relatively satisfied
with their work and relationship status, these women remained uncomfort-
able with the circumstances of their work becoming widely known among
their family and friends, despite one having been in the sex industry for
many years.
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 Work, love and intimacy 297

‘He doesn’t really like me doing sex work’

Most of the women who had become involved in private relationships felt
that the circumstances of sex work contributed to a number of serious diffi-
culties. They struggled in relationships with partners who did not like them
working or did not like them talking about their work. As Pamela
explained:

It’s just getting to a point where it’s ridiculous. If I worked as a computer

operator [from] nine to five I’d be able to go home and say ‘This hap-
pened today or that happened today’.

Like the women in the first group, these women accepted a loss of respect
from their partners and resented having to lie or feel guilty about their
work. Some had not told current partners that they were sex workers and
others said they would not tell a partner in future. However, women in this
group were more likely to have friends, albeit other sex workers, who knew
about their work.
Some women felt that they had no alternative but to end the relationship,
often because they were supporting children and feared the economic conse-
quences of seeking other employment. Others postponed retiring from sex
work while they were supporting a drug habit. Relationships had also ended
because, as Robyn explained, ‘Sex sort of went down the drain’. For women
with partners the demands of sex work were increasingly discordant with
both partners’ expectations of intimate relationships:

Over the last few months or so, he’s gone a little bit cold and he said to
me about two weeks ago – and I admire him for coming straight with me
– he goes, ‘I thought I could handle you working’, he goes to me, and I
said ‘Why haven’t you ever told me?’ and he said he thought he could
handle it, and I said ‘It’s hard isn’t it?’ (Suzanne).
If you’re not in the mood for sex that night [he’ll say] ‘Oh, did you get
enough at work?’ [or] ‘Did you have a good run at work?’ I’ve been
woken up in the middle of the night with a hand between my legs and you
just feel like ‘Please, just give me a break!’ (Pamela).

These women were clearly experiencing difficulties reconciling their work

with their desire to share emotional and physical intimacy with a private
partner. Only two women provided examples of resolving some of the ten-
sions that arose in regular relationships as a result of sex work. Carly, a
young woman who had been in a relationship with another woman,
explained:

We didn’t have much sex but we – it was mostly emotional and more
supportive of each other . . . There’s a lot of people that work [as sex
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298 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

workers] – they really want an emotional relationship because they get

enough sex, and a lot of guys can’t handle that, and basically they just
still want sex when they get home, but like we would still have sex, but . . .
just because I wanted sex I would never, ever do it. It would have to be a
mutual thing, or if we both really felt like it.

Pamela also described how her previous partner had understood her needs:

My last partner was just excellent in that area. I’d get home from work,
he’d have a bath ready for me, he’d never try to push sex on me. It would
always be a cuddle and watch a bit of TV and then go to sleep and make
love next morning. He knew it was the last thing I felt like when I got
home. [With] my last partner I could talk about what happened at work
that night. My partner now just doesn’t want to know about it, just stops
me straight away. My old partner, he’d never be as happy as when I was
doing B and D work [bondage and discipline] because it meant less sexual
contact [with the clients].

By contrast, Geena’s partner, who was a qualified masseur, was insensitive

to her need for a relaxing massage after work. As she explained, ‘[H]e
always wants a little bit of a look . . . so it’s like work while I’m doing it. I
can’t just totally relax’.
Women raised a number of difficulties associated with making distinc-
tions between sex with clients and sex with private partners. Jayne had
found that being in a relationship made it harder for her to perform her
usual service at work. Because she now hated the ‘physical attention’ and
‘groping’ of clients, she was using more drugs at work in order to meet the
clients’ sexual demands. For all these women, condom use carried very
strong associations with work, whilst non-use of condoms signified private
sex. Although Pamela was using condoms with her boyfriend she said this
made it hard not to feel that she was ‘just going through the motions’ of sex,
as she did at work.

‘I just fell in love’

Contrasting with the attitudes of the women described above, were those of
a small number of women who expressed considerable optimism and confi-
dence in love and romance. These women perceived their partners as sup-
portive and caring and were enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by
their relationships. From their own accounts of these relationships, the
women’s positive perceptions were somewhat romanticised and idealised.
Two women had met their current partners as clients and both described
their first meeting in stereotypically romantic terms:

I was working one night . . . and he happened to drive past. He was on his
way home . . . and he said he noticed me and he came around, back
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 Work, love and intimacy 299

around and went around the block, and there was [sic] about eight cars
. . . and something just made me take notice of him and his eyes. I just fell
in love with [him] and I got in the car and said to him ‘You’ve got
beautiful eyes, you know’ and I did a job with him and took him down a
lane (Linda).
He was sitting out in the reception room . . . and I walked past [him] and
thought ‘Oh wow!’ He was just . . . beautiful in his singlet, muscles and he
was just beautiful, my type of guy . . . I went back . . . and looked into
[his] eyes and he looked into mine and I said ‘Oh, it’s a pleasure to meet
you’ . . . and we got into the room – I was only supposed to be there for
45 minutes and we were there for an hour and a half (Amy).

Linda described her boyfriend as ‘fantastic’ and ‘strong’. However, she

acknowledged that their relationship had deteriorated when ‘he moved back
in with his wife’ and that she had been hurt when:

[H]e picked up a working girl. He did it quite a bit and I was getting
angry because the girls that were getting picked up and saying yes to him
were supposed to be my friends and knew us as a couple.

Linda nevertheless demonstrated her commitment to this relationship by

not using condoms in spite of the likelihood that he was still having sex with
his wife and with other sex workers. Perhaps more important to her was
that condoms represented a ‘big barrier’ between herself and her clients and
only sex without condoms felt like ‘real’ sex.
Amy had never used a condom with her boyfriend either, even though she
had intended to when they first met in the brothel:

I had everything out [condoms, lube etc.] and [he] said ‘Do you think it’s
really necessary?’ and I said ‘Yeah, it is’ and he just grabbed me and
kissed me – and I don’t even kiss [clients]. It was just something that
happened. I mean, it was a big risk for me, but it was just Romeo and
Juliet you know.

Since then she had said to him:

‘The day that we do [use a condom] is the day I know that you’ve been
fucking around’ because . . . I think the day we have to use a condom
with each other – we never have – and it will be just like a job and I
couldn’t do it.

In a manner that reflects dominant ways of expressing true love through

sexual fulfilment, Amy attributed the depth of her feeling for her boyfriend
to his prowess as a lover and this was, for her, the key to their relationship:
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300 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

Yeah, something just clicked. You know, it was just so perfect and why I
like him so much is he’s the first guy that’s ever, ever, ever done anything
for me . . . sexually, like the first guy that ever made me have an orgasm
to this very day. As many people as I’ve had, this is the first one that’s
ever done it to me. I love him, I suppose, because of that. I don’t know.

Amy’s boyfriend wanted her to give up sex work and drugs, and because she
‘loved him so much’ she had lied to him about both. Indeed, ‘lying and
cheating’ had become ‘a major problem’ for her and they spent long periods
of time apart:

I’ve lied to him so long that – he loves me too, he says, but it’s all through
lies you know . . . I worry that one day he’s going to find out.

Unlike the views of other women in this study, working in the sex industry
and being in an intimate relationship were not perceived as deeply incom-
patible by these women, yet the ideals of trust and exclusivity to which they
aspired were beyond the circumstances of their lives. Despite their commit-
ment to their partners, these women experienced considerable uncertainty as
they struggled to hold on to the sentiments that they attached to their pri-
vate relationships. Whilst Amy lied to keep her boyfriend, Linda related
with pride how she gave up sex work for a short time in deference to both
her own and her partner’s feelings:

I didn’t want other men touching me, I just wanted to be with him and
there was no way on this Earth that he would allow it anyway.

It was apparent that the strength of their feelings for their partners was not
reciprocated for either of these women, whose daily lives were characterised
by isolation and a lack of material or emotional support. Asked to whom
they could turn for support, one could name only a doctor and a welfare
worker, the other a youth worker.

Sex work, love and intimacy

Sex work consists of the selling of services which are modelled on practices
that are central to ideas of heterosexual intimacy. For female sex workers
and their private partners, this represents a substantial challenge to hetero-
sexual expectations of love, commitment and sexual exclusivity in intimate
relationships. Indeed, it is clear that sex work practices, in so far as they
simulate or even parody the features of love-making, can profoundly dis-
rupt the special characteristics of intimate sexual relationships. For the
women in this study, their involvement in sex work provoked resentment,
jealousy, disapproval and disrespect, which impacted on their own and their
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 Work, love and intimacy 301

partner’s capacity to enjoy intimacy. When the woman was tired after work
and did not feel motivated to have sex, her partner’s resentment was likely
to be aggravated. Women longed for affection but a lack of desire for sexual
intercourse could be misunderstood by their partners as resulting from sex-
ual satisfaction at work. Because they associated condoms with a commer-
cial sexual transaction, using condoms in a private relationship substantially
reduced the women’s capacity to experience love or intimacy through sex.
For their partners too, condom use could be interpreted as a lack of trust.
These findings lend support to Pateman’s argument that: ‘Women’s selves
are involved in prostitution in a different manner from the involvement of
the self in other occupations’ (1988: 207). The integral connection between
sexuality and sense of the self necessitates the adoption of strategies by the
sex worker to distance herself from the sexual uses that are made of the
body in prostitution (Pateman 1988, Scambler 1997). The use of condoms
with clients is a central strategy, providing a real barrier between the bodies
engaged in the sexual act. The demarcation of commercial sex from inti-
macy and love may be an essential survival strategy for sex workers
(Edwards 1993). Certain sexual acts and practices, such as kissing, fondling
or other shows of affection, become privatised and are excluded from the
range of commodified sexual services offered to clients (Edwards 1993,
McKeganey and Barnard 1996, Waddell 1996). At the same time, non-use
of condoms with private partners comes to symbolise love, trust and inti-
macy (Day and Ward 1990, Perkins 1991, Vanwesenbeeck et al. 1993,
Waddell 1996).
Love not only represents ‘an extraordinary means of salvation from the
drudgery of routine’ (Bertilsson 1986: 32), but can also provide moral, aes-
thetic and emotional validation for sexual activity (Jackson 1993). For some
sex workers in this study, the extraordinary characteristics of falling in love
may have provided legitimisation for experiencing sexual activity with a
client as intimacy. Luhmann argues that the more surprising a love affair
appears, the more distanced from normal behaviour, the more certain the
lovers can be in ascribing to each other the same motives. Romantic love
thus has the capacity to provide certainty in a context of uncertainty (1986:
147).

Risk of HIV and STDs

Women in this study who had chosen to abstain from private sexual rela-
tionships faced little risk of acquiring HIV or other STDs from private
partners, but for those women who were currently maintaining private rela-
tionships, negotiation around sexual safety was clearly compromised.
Although they often knew that their boyfriends were having sex with
multiple partners, the women’s desire to demonstrate their love and com-
mitment to a relationship necessitated the non-use of condoms in private.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
302 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

Unprotected sex in these often irregular and unstable relationships, coupled

with the women’s or their partners’ association with injecting drug use, sug-
gested that many of these women placed themselves at risk of HIV or other
STD infection in their private lives.
The women who were probably the most at risk of STDs were those who
were the most positive about their private relationships. The inability of
these women to maintain a clear boundary between private and commercial
sex led to their taking unwarranted risks by engaging in unprotected sex
with clients with whom they had fallen in love. Their customary inclination
to protect themselves from risks of STD or HIV infection was overruled by
desire for a sexually and romantically rewarding relationship, which ren-
dered them powerless to negotiate safe sex or other issues with their part-
ners. McKeganey and Barnard (1996) have observed that the ability to
maintain a clear distinction between commercial and private sexual encoun-
ters is an ideal which is probably achieved only to varying degrees and at
various times by female sex workers. Waddell (1996) also found that sex
workers would engage in unprotected sex with a client whom they regarded
as a ‘hot guy’ and that women whose drug use, youth or inexperience ren-
dered them more vulnerable or more desperate were the least likely to
demarcate between work-sex and nonwork-sex.

Explaining sex workers’ reluctance to use condoms in private relationships

Negotiation of safe sex cannot be understood without reference to the gen-

dered power relations inherent in all heterosexual interaction (Browne and
Minichiello 1996, Holland et al. 1991, Lear 1995, Wight 1992, Worth 1989).
Fundamental to heterosexual relations is the privileging of men’s sexual
experiences and desires over those of women. Women have been found to
prioritise male sexual pleasure and defer to their partner’s dislike of con-
doms (Browne and Minichiello 1996, Holland et al. 1991, Wight 1992).
Non-use of condoms in heterosexual relationships has also been found to
result from women’s desire for ‘meaningful’ sexual relations and from their
perception of condoms as a barrier to closeness and intimacy (Browne and
Minichiello 1996) which leads them to forgo condom use in relationships
which they perceive to be characterised by love, trust or commitment
(Holland et al. 1991, Lear 1995).
Because of their work, sex workers are more likely than other women to
experience condoms as a barrier to intimacy and as implying a lack of trust.
At the same time, a number of factors which have been identified as obsta-
cles to safer sexual practices in heterosexual relationships are less likely to
explain non-use of condoms by female sex workers. For example, it seems
unlikely that sex workers would be inhibited in talking about sex, which
prevents some women from negotiating condom use (Crawford et al. 1994).
Nor are sex workers likely to be uncomfortable procuring or carrying con-
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
 Work, love and intimacy 303

doms, as are women who think this indicates sexual availability or promis-
cuity (Wight 1992). Whereas other women fear being labelled ‘slag’ or ‘slut’
if they carry and plan to use condoms with casual partners (Holland et al.
1991, Stewart 1994), sex workers already experience a loss of respect
because of their occupation. Their non-use of condoms in private relation-
ships may indicate an attempt to regain respectability.
One of the effects of being involved in sex work is the difficulty of main-
taining parallel modes of sexual relations in which the cultural meanings
attached to paid and private sexual relations are contradictory if not mutu-
ally exclusive. It has been pointed out that sex work is one of the few social
contexts in which women are able to negotiate the terms of a sexual
encounter from a position of (albeit limited) power (Worth 1989). This
power is derived partially from the explicit exchange of sex for money but
also from the breadth of sexual experience to which the sex worker can lay
claim and which endows her with the authority to manage actively and
establish boundaries around the paid sexual encounter (Waddell 1996).
However, as Waddell has argued, the same experience reduces the sex
worker’s capacity to negotiate sexual safety in private relationships.
Waddell found that, in their private relationships, sex workers tended to de-
emphasise their sexual experience to the point of minimising or denying the
number of clients seen. Conventional gender role expectations are chal-
lenged by sex work wherein women are likely to be more experienced than
their male clients and to take the initiative and even control of the sexual
encounter (Waddell 1996). For female sex workers, passivity in private sex-
ual encounters may be part of ‘normalising’ their experience of femininity.
As already noted, research has also shown that women are less likely to
use condoms with their regular or ‘serious’ partners than with their casual
partners (Lear 1995, Rosenthal and Moore 1991). This is not necessarily an
unwise or risky distinction to make. Women are more likely to be able to
ascertain the sexual history, current and recent sexual and drug using prac-
tices of their regular partners than of casual partners. However, as Lear
(1995) has pointed out, partners do not always hold mutual understandings
of their relationship and some circumstances can contribute to a reluctance
to recognise the ‘casual’ status of a relationship. Concerns to do with repu-
tation, the need for reassurance or the importance attached to a romantic
ideology of sexual attraction may lead partners to label casual relationships
as ‘regular’. Sexual encounters may also be constituted as ‘different’ and
‘special’ by women who want to explain their reluctance or inability to insist
on condoms in situations which they perceive as romantic or spontaneous
(Browne and Minichiello 1996). Our findings suggest that female sex work-
ers may attribute valued characteristics of love and commitment to a sexual
encounter in an effort to establish it as qualitatively distinct from paid sex.
In the standard progression of a ‘romantic’ relationship between young
heterosexual adults, condom use has been found to decline as trust is estab-
lished (Lear 1995). It has also been reported that young heterosexual adults
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
304 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

will re-evaluate the trust they have invested in a relationship when they
learn that a partner has been non-monogamous or engaged in unsafe sex
with someone else (Lear 1995). By contrast, for sex workers in this study
trust was not ‘established’ but was demonstrated by the non-use of condoms
in sexual encounters which were thus signified as non-commercial or, more
particularly, as ‘romantic’. Furthermore, knowing of their partner’s infideli-
ties or unsafe sex or drug using practices had no impact on condom use for
the women in our study. Sobo (1995) found that amongst poor urban
women unprotected sex signalled emotional closeness or a ‘perfect union’.
Sobo suggests that the women with less social support depended more on
their partners to meet their emotional and social needs. Our findings sup-
port Sobo’s hypothesis that such women might experience a more intense
need to idealise and justify their relationships and to deny problems in these
relationships.
It was apparent that non-use of condoms with private partners was
almost obligatory for sex workers in our study, just as it has been found to
be for other women who want to demonstrate trust and to believe in their
partner’s love. However, sex workers place themselves at increased risk of
HIV and other STDs because they are likely to define both casual and
longer-term private relationships as ‘serious’, ‘special’ or ‘romantic’ and to
engage in unprotected sex with men about whom they have very little know-
ledge, or even with men whose infidelity and unsafe drug use is well known
to them.

Sociological understanding of risk

Underpinning Beck’s (1992) and Giddens’s (1991) accounts of risk, is a

rational autonomous subject who uses expert and lay knowledge to assess
competing risks and opportunities in order to regulate their everyday life
(Petersen 1996: 46–7). But the question must be asked, is risk behaviour
rational? Douglas (1986) was one of the first to examine the social and cul-
tural influences on individuals’ perception of risk. She pointed out that indi-
viduals take a range of factors into consideration when assessing risk. These
factors include their own understanding of the probability of an event
occurring, the severity of potential harm, the immediacy of the perceived
danger, and their perception of their own ability to cope with specific risks
(Douglas 1986). Researchers have found that in familiar situations individu-
als ignore, deny or underestimate risks, particularly those ‘which are sup-
posed to be under their control’ and those ‘which are rarely expected to
happen’ (Douglas 1986: 29). People also ‘cut off’ their perceptions of highly
probable risks in order to experience their immediate world as safer than it
is (Douglas 1986: 30). Following Lopes’ distinction between long-run and
short-run decisions, Douglas hypothesised that ‘an established habit of find-
ing that life is made of short-run decisions’ would be part of the cognitive
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
 Work, love and intimacy 305

equipment that an individual takes with them into any situation involving
the negotiation of competing risks (1986: 100). Our analysis of sex workers’
attitudes towards private relationships suggest that the choices made by
these women were determined more by competing needs than by competing
risks.

Conclusion and implications

As in a number of previous studies, we found that female sex workers were

unwilling or unable to use condoms when engaging in sex with private part-
ners. However, their varied styles of managing personal sexual relationships
whilst remaining in sex work revealed more complex processes of risk than
have hitherto appeared in the literature. Working in an occupation that
restricts or challenges their opportunities to experience intimacy means that
private relationships are a contested site for sex workers. Women who
recognised the incompatibility of sex work and intimate relationships
avoided risk but deprived themselves of meaningful relationships. On the
other hand, risks were overlooked in private relationships where non-use of
condoms propped up a fragile intimacy. The most isolated women in this
study were also those whose need for romance and intimacy was most
intense. Denying or ‘interpreting away’ risks is one strategy for coping when
elimination of risk is impossible (Beck 1992: 75). Alternatively, taking a cal-
culated risk in the face of impossible threats may give one a sense of regain-
ing control over one’s life – at least for the moment. It was clearly the case
that street sex workers, who faced the most frequent and most serious risks
of violence in their working lives, were those who engaged in the highest
risks of STDs and HIV in their private lives. According to Beck, in a ‘cata-
strophic society . . . the state of emergency threatens to become the normal
state’ (1992: 79). Perhaps living with high levels of danger has the effect of
normalising risk for these sex workers.
Understanding the varied circumstances surrounding the negotiation of
safe sex is essential for the design of appropriate interventions (Aggleton et
al. 1994). A range of strategies is required to address the difficulties experi-
enced by female sex workers in their private relationships and to increase
the likelihood of their using condoms with their private partners.
Decriminalisation of all forms of prostitution would increase sex workers’
control over their working lives and might go some way towards reducing
the stigma attached to prostitution in the general community. The loneliness
and isolation experienced by many of the women in this study could be
partially alleviated if the women felt they could talk about their work at
least in the privacy of their intimate relationships. Furthermore, increasing
their autonomy and self-esteem would assist female sex workers to make
choices which would better protect them from STDs as well as unwanted
pregnancies. However, responsibility for condom use does not rest only with
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
306 Deborah J. Warr and Priscilla M. Pyett

women, either in commercial sex transactions or in their private relation-

ships.
Research indicates that most men are inclined to leave the responsibility
for safe sex practices to their private as well as to their paid sex partners
(Faugier and Cranfield 1995, Kruhse-Mountburton 1992, Leonard 1990).
The proliferation of safe sex messages in the decades since the advent of
HIV/AIDS is notable for the lack of educative strategies that have been
aimed specifically at heterosexual men (Patton 1994). Education and
information targeted at the clients of sex workers is long overdue and
should be framed within the context of the broader male heterosexual popu-
lation.
There are, however, no easy solutions to the more intractable problems
that were revealed by this study. For both men and women, possibilities of
love and intimacy in private relationships were impeded by women’s
involvement in sex work. Some of the women’s partners struggled with their
conflicting feelings about the woman’s work whilst many of the women
insisted on not using condoms in an attempt to experience love and inti-
macy or to demonstrate trust or commitment. Sex work may provide
women with higher financial rewards than they can otherwise attract, but
for many female sex workers there are substantial costs in terms of emo-
tional isolation and the absence of intimate relationships. It is difficult to
determine the extent to which these costs are socially constructed, are inher-
ent in the way sex work is practised, or are consequences of the particular
vulnerabilities of the women in this study. There can be no doubt that the
social stigma attached to sex work contributes to the difficulties faced by
female sex workers in their private lives (see Scambler and Scambler 1997).
At the same time, romantic notions of love and intimate relationships may
disempower female sex workers, just as they disempower other women, with
sometimes severe consequences for their health and personal wellbeing. A
creative approach to education is needed to promote condom use in the pri-
vate relationships of female sex workers. Any such intervention must engage
with the complexity of meanings that are attached to sex work, love and
intimacy by these women.
Address for correspondence: Priscilla Pyett, Australian Research Centre in
Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Locked Bag 12, Carlton
South, Victoria 3053, Australia
e-mail: P.Pyett@latrobe.edu.au

Acknowledgements

This study would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Prostitutes’
Collective of Victoria (PCV), Melbourne Youth Support Services, Hanover
Women’s Services and the Young People’s Health Service (a Functional Unit of the
Centre for Adolescent Health). We thank the women who formed a Critical
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 1999
 Work, love and intimacy 307

Reference Group for their interest, enthusiasm and commitment: Alison Arnot-
Bradshaw, Sarah Fair, Dona Macik, Deb Mayson, Jocelyn Snow, Leonie Tehan and
Jane Treleaven. We particularly thank the 24 women who agreed to participate in
this study, for giving their time and for sharing the often distressing details of their
personal lives. The Centre for the Study of Sexually Transmissible Diseases is funded
by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation and this study was supported by a
grant from the Public Health Research and Development Committee of the
National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. We also thank
Professor Gary Dowsett, Dr Jeanne Daly and the anonymous reviewers from
Sociology of Health and Illness for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1 Letter to the Correspondence segment of Working Girl, #21, magazine published

by Prostitutes Collective Victoria Inc.
2 In reporting results of this study, numbers are provided only where specific
information was elicited from all participants.

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