LOS ANGELES — HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” aired a segment Sunday night highlighting sex worker rights and the fight for decriminalization.
The 25-minute segment, titled “Sex Work,” is currently available on YouTube through the show’s official channel.
“Everything about the way we regulate sex work in this country is confusing and counterproductive," Oliver told his viewers at the beginning of the segment.
“And when we talk about it,” he added, “it’s either demonizing, patronizing or just plain wrong — and in some cases, all three at once.”
Oliver then showed footage from a mainstream news segment that used derogatory terminology while depicting all sex workers as “victims” in need of saviors.
“As long as sex work has existed, so have efforts to stop it,” Oliver explained. “And it comes in many forms: from people who object to it on moral grounds, to those who associate it with crime, to those who want the practice permanently ended, as they believe all sex work is exploitation and absolutely cannot be done consensually.”
“But a human history’s worth of shitty laws hasn’t changed the fact that sex work has always been part of society, appealing to every interest and any kind of clientele and sex workers are not a monolith — people from a variety of backgrounds do it for a variety of reasons,” Oliver concluded.
“Our current system of criminalizing the trade, and driving everyone underground is actually only making life harder for the most vulnerable involved,” Oliver added.
To watch the entire “Sex Work” segment of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” visit the show’s YouTube channel.
