Media stories that outed sex workers and these contributors are available online in perpetuity and, since their real names were also published, loved ones and aging parents will likely suffer long-term effects. Outing sex workers poses a risk to their livelihoods and future employability. It is ironic that even those who advocate against violence do not come to the aid of sex workers, whom they deem to be victims, when they experience harms such as public shaming. Sex workers are not treated entirely as victims, otherwise stigmatising them would be viewed as distasteful.

A well-known theorist on stigma and identity, Goffman, posits that our social identities have two parts: a virtual social identity that is based on assumptions and demands we make of a person without realising it; and an actual social identity that comprises attributes that can be proven to be true through interaction (Goffman, 1963). Discrepancies between virtual and actual identities cause people to ‘reclassify’ individuals based on attributes that are undesirable or acceptable. In this way, ‘normal’ people assign an ‘ideology of difference’ and inferiority to stigmatised people and treat them as if they are not quite human. Goffman distinguishes ‘discrediting’ and ‘discreditable’ stigma. When a person is known to have an attribute that is undesirable they are discredited, and when the attribute is not known, a person is discreditable but not yet discredited and can decide whether or not to disclose the discrediting information, backstage, to ‘the own’ and ‘the wise’. Discreditable individuals, like contributors here, have a concealable stigma, sex work. They are off-street, educated, working class and middle class, (mostly) white individuals who are situated at the upper end of the stratification with respect to the UK whorearchy, yet they are not protected from whore stigma. Stigma avoidance is a top priority because anyone who has information about their sex working poses a threat to them. The sources of stigma are vast and include landlords, coworkers, friends, ex-lovers, government agents, community services, health practitioners, neighbours and the general public and so on. An anonymous contributor was stigmatised by a despicable group of men: