WaPost: Excluding persons in the sex industry from COVID-19 relief is a mistake

An Op/Ed by Leah LaGrone, a PhD candidate the Texas Christian University, argues that making moral judgments about women’s jobs just reduces their choices further

Big companies like Ruth Chris, Potbelly and Shake Shack that are receiving large coronavirus-related Small Business Administration loans have caused an uproar. But far less attention has been paid to whom the SBA excluded from relief: people who work in the sex industry.

While those who are self-employed or independent contractors have the option to apply for SBA small business loans, legal businesses that provide “live or recorded performances” or “receive more than 5 percent of [their] gross revenue” from the sale of products with any depictions of a “prurient nature” are ineligible for help. Owners of clubs and other small businesses may file lawsuits over their exclusion, but it is the women carrying the industry who will suffer. Though strippers, porn actors, sex therapists and erotic novelists can still file for aid through unemployment and possibly receive the $1,200 stimulus checks given to millions of Americans, they are ineligible for these far larger loans and are therefore much more economically vulnerable.