Owning Risk: Sex worker subjectivities and the reimagining of vulnerability and victimhood

The 2013 Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford decision saw a fundamental shift in the discursive constructions of sex worker identities. Moving away from sex work as a societal nuisance, the landmark case highlights the complexities of sex work regulation through a language of risk. Exploring the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision and the testimony presented in the Bedford trials, I argue that sex workers articulate their legal position by downloading risk onto their own subjectivities, navigating the sex trade through technologies of risk management, simultaneously reproducing and challenging notions of ideal victimhood. This paper maps these attachments towards and away from vulnerability and victimhood and explores the ways sex workers subvert their at-risk identities for a subject position that is risk-aware.