Sex worker

Women working in the sex work industry--be it pornography, stripping or prostitution--sit in the cross-hairs of an enduring controversy, surfacing questions surrounding everything from sexuality and health to economics and morality.

To shed light on this multifaceted debate, we reached out to those who know the industry best--including a clinical sexologist, a community advocate for workers' rights, an attorney in the commercial sex trade, and both current and former sex workers--to answer this question:

Is female sex work empowering, enslaving...or a lot more complicated than either?

Here's what they had to say.