Knowing sex: Sexual knowledge, sex work and HIV/AIDS in late twentieth-century Britain

This article examines how knowledge around the sale of sex came to be produced in late twentieth-century Britain. Within the context of emerging neoliberalism, evidence-based public health and HIV/AIDS, the sexual practices of those who sold sex became the centre of inquiry. This article examines surveys, reports and questionnaires to see the process through which sex workers’ understandings of sex became publicly legible. In doing so, I argue that sexual knowledge was not simply recorded but actively translated into medicalised and sanitised language that constructed ‘sex’ through frameworks of risk, responsibility, and governance. By tracing how ‘sex’ was made knowable, I highlight the ethical tensions of writing the ‘sex’ of sex work history and the need for reflexive, feminist methodologies.