“Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world.” With that line from Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 story “On the City Wall,” an enduring euphemism for sex work entered popular language. The phrase skirted explicit naming at a time when indirect words made the topic easier to acknowledge—and easier to keep at arm’s length.
A new show at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, “Sex Work: A Cultural History,” examines how sex work has been represented, regulated and experienced across periods and places. The curators describe the subject as “terrain permeated by moralizing and highly political discourses.” Combining art, archives, legal records and contemporary testimony, the exhibition traces how public debate has framed—and sometimes distorted—sexual labor.
Words matter
One thread in the exhibition is a glossary of terms that maps changing vocabulary and the assumptions those words carry. Ernestine Pastorello, co‑curator and sex worker activist, notes that “sex work history is challenging to research because what we’re called is different in each era, and historical documents often rely on vague euphemisms.” In the 19th century, for instance, “prostitute” could label any woman deemed “too visible” in public life, whether or not she sold sex. That broad usage tied the term to poverty, addiction or perceived deviance, making it unreliable as a neutral historical category and loading it with stigma that endures.
Other historical labels reveal political aims. In the Soviet Union and other Communist Bloc states, authorities prosecuted sex workers under laws against “social parasites”—a catch‑all for people not engaged in officially sanctioned “socially useful work.” The language served to police conforming labor identities and to exclude those operating outside state frameworks.
Place and era shape slang too. The German derogatory “Stricher,” associated with male street‑based sex work, became linked in the 1990s and 2000s to marginalization around Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo. In the digital age new roles such as “porn performer” have emerged as creators produce and distribute content directly via platforms like OnlyFans—some workers embrace those labels, others reject them.
Reclaiming and contesting names
Sex workers themselves have shaped terminology. The term “sex work” was coined in the late 1970s by US activist Carol Leigh to describe an activity rather than apply a moral judgment, creating room for organizing and advocacy. Pastorello says the phrase implies “nothing more and nothing less than what is actually being discussed”—the exchange of sexual services for money or goods—and offers a clearer basis for discussing rights and protections than vocabulary steeped in moralizing assumptions.
Movements have reclaimed slurs, adopted occupational labels such as “escort” or “stripper,” and resisted externally imposed language as ways to assert control over how their lives and labor are understood. But the shift has its critics: groups and scholars focused on trafficking and exploitation—including the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and Swedish policy expert Gunilla Ekberg—argue that “sex work” can obscure situations where people sell sex under duress, poverty or limited alternatives. The debate underscores that terminology can illuminate certain experiences while rendering others less visible.
Language, labor and rights
For Pastorello, recognizing sex work as work is essential to any conversation about rights. Naming it labor creates space to discuss safety, legal protections and collective bargaining. “Characterizing it as work allows us to attack it from a trade‑union perspective,” she says. “It’s just a matter of common respect to acknowledge that we are workers and therefore deserve the same protection and the same rights.” She adds that recognition should not hinge on whether the work is experienced as empowering: “Our right to do sex work should depend on our labor rights and not on whether it’s empowering or not.”
By approaching sex work through culture, language and lived experience, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how their own views have been shaped—by media, social norms and the words they grew up with—and to consider who those words have often excluded.
The exhibition “Sex Work – A Cultural History” runs at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn through October 25, 2026.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier