Social distancing and sex work

摘要

THE EVENING sun is beating down on a small crowd gathered In Schoeneberg, a district of Berlin, to mark the 45th International Whores' Day. But Isabelle, a Macedonian transgender prostitute, is gloomy. "I remember how it was before," she says. Cis women walked the streets north of the railway bridge, trans women to the south. Not these days. "I feel depressed," says Isabelle. "It's our job, you know?" Colleagues describe overbearing police, price-gouging hotels and clients seeking outrageous "corona-discounts". Few industries have been as pummelled by covid-19 as sex work, which in Germany is legal and regulated. Like many workplaces, brothels had to close in March. Yet although massage parlours and nail salons have reopened, prostitutes have been left in limbo. Some, such as Undine de Riviere in Hamburg, are innovating with hands-off services like fetish videos or erotic-hypnosis recordings. But it is hard to make a living that way, and few have the skills to try. Many migrants from eastern Europe, who are thought to make up more than half of Germany's 400,000-1m sex workers, went home before the borders closed.