Visual Terrorism: The Image, Violence, and Sex Work

This chapter investigates how sex workers experience violence in the context of the visual culture of sex work. The object of the chapter is the sex worker image, meaning photographs, gifs, memes, videos, and other forms of the visual image of a global population of women in full-service sex work (FSSW). The chapter considers representations of women sex workers in online spaces during the twenty-first century. It attempts to merge writings on representational discourses, sex work, and violence against women, relocating questions about the visual culture of present-day sex workers to feminist discourses on the weaponisation of the image. The chapter aims to critically reflect on how women sex workers experience the previously undefined phenomena of visual terrorism through the lens of image-based abuses.