Lawyer and Escort RJ Thompson Wants to End the Stigma Around Sex Work
RJ Thompson, a.k.a. Carlos Alexander, is a lawyer and sex worker. He became an escort to pay off his college debt, and says his salaries as a public interest nonprofit lawyer were never sufficient to get a handle on his debt.
“I’ve had many clients sort of wanna rescue me, tell me they can help me get out of the work before they know that I’m an attorney. That I’m multilingual. That I’ve lived in 10 cities.” he explained. “Their sort of assumption about who does sex work is very narrow sometimes.”
He also helps provide legal and social services to sex workers and survivors of sex trafficking.
“The Sex Workers Project has been a leader in the national sex workers rights movement,” he stated. “You know, many of our clients are transgender women, many are undocumented, many are queer, many are people of color.”
Thompson wants to dispel the myth that all sex workers are victims and said sex work is like any other job.
“We often, in society and in the media, hear so much the victim narrative, around sex work. And terrible exploitative human rights abuses happen to some sex workers,” he explained. “But it’s important to note that terrible exploitative things happen in all labor sectors, and there’s nothing different about sex work other than the sexual stigma and social stigma that’s attached to it.”
Thompson hopes that he can change people’s minds about what it means to be a sex workers and educate them on the complex profession.
