The history of sex work has so far been written, if at all, mainly by its regulators and oppressors. Academic knowledge is also largely biassed or even completely inaccurate. In public discourse about sex work, there are many opinions but little information and the voices of sex workers themselves scarcely ever appear. So-called protection laws have been developed without involving sex workers.
The communities of sex workers and queer people are closely intertwined. Sex work marks a sexuality and work practice outside of the heteronormative family and reproductive labour, so both sex workers and queer people in being outside of that have a special awareness of the social constructs of gender and sexuality.
What has been compiled in these departments is not a chronological overview of the cultural history of sex work, but a queer, playful, sometimes magical linking of documents and associations β about alternative body knowledge, working conditions, non-normative sexuality, celebration of ancestors, German bureaucracy fetishism, colonialist and National Socialist alienation and mourning. The Museum of Sex Work at the Schwules Museum creates β with legs wide open β a special and unprecedented place where sex work presents itself as an art of survival and creates a political vision for all.
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