I was listening to an episode of the podcast Today, Explained recently, about the politics of gen Z. Gen Z is only one generation below mine—and technically my partner belongs to it—but I still find gen Z attitudes cryptic and opaque. On the podcast, one guest spoke about how North Americans have “traditionally found fulfillment… and purpose through work” and with the arrival of AI there is a “generation who is on the brink of adulthood, who doesn’t really know what their place in the world or country is going to be, because they don’t know if their work is going to matter”. I thought this was interesting, and that it didn’t only apply to Americans. It made me think about who we are beyond our work, and how precarious our sense of self can become when we don’t work or are shifting between transient work.
I’ve done sex work for more than 13 years now, and even when I retire this profession will remain a part of me. But when I leave active service, my claim to the identity will fade and I will lose access to the community. I have felt this loss even in my move from in-house to independent work; I no longer feel like one of the brothel and parlour girls, toiling together in shift work, and I miss the girls’ room and the solidarity it brought. So I can really imagine how my idea of myself would change if I left sex work altogether and how, unless I had something productive to replace it with, I would feel somehow obsolete or outside of society without a job.
One of the first questions people tend to ask each other when meeting is, “What do you do?” This question is asked in order to place someone or, sometimes, to judge and decide whether to value or dismiss them. I often mix in a circle of queers and artists and instead of asking them what they do, I usually ask them how they make their money. This question often yields a different answer—one that exposes supplementary side jobs or familial financial support. I speak to a lot of people now who are turning towards crafts, or retraining for a trade, and I’ve never been more grateful that my work (and therefore income) is AI resistant. I’m also heartened to see some young people reviving skills that have long been disappearing, such as cobbling, bookbinding and lacemaking—and am doing my best to buy directly from craftspeople.
I think of all the jobs that have vanished over the years, and all the identities and communities along with them: knocker-uppers, who knocked on or shot peas at people’s windows to wake them up for work during the Industrial Revolution; paper boys, who delivered the news every morning to people’s doorsteps, a job still recent enough in living memory for us to feel nostalgic for them—the comic series Paper Girls is all about four girls brought together by their paper run who wouldn’t have met otherwise. I think of the turnspit dog, which was used for hundreds of years to run in a wheel to turn meat as it cooked. Turnspit dogs usually worked as part of a pair. Once technology advanced and they were no longer needed, they weren’t seen as valuable enough to preserve in their own right, and so the only reminder we have of these working animals is one sad stuffed individual in Abergavenny Museum in Wales. I wonder if this is indicative of how we treat those without perceived “usefulness”. Perhaps this is partly why young people are so unsure of who they are when they are unsure of their work—they are scared of expendability.
