即便女性主義者並不想污名化從事性交易的女性，但「女人為何賣淫？」這個深具誤導性的提問，卻始終在女性主義社群間佔據核心的論述位置。過去歐美和台灣女性主義者在這個議題上的激烈辯論，某種程度將投入性工作的女性簡化為「自由選擇」與「被迫從娼」兩種極端二分的形象。前者強調性工作是從業者個人的自主選擇，甚至認為從事性交易係個人性自由的表現；後者則認為賣淫是女性壓迫的表徵，「選擇從娼」是「錯誤意識」底下的矛盾產物。然而，這兩種論點都有普遍化、同質化性工作者的現象。為適當的呈現性工者所面對的複雜社會情境，以及她們進入性交易網絡的多元生命圖像，本文將援引1 位台灣性工作者的深度訪談，藉由回溯她們的工作史以及生命故事來闡明性交易如何成為底層成年女性在有限的物質條件下，合理的謀生方式。同時，本文將進一步指出性別化的勞動市場、男權統治的家庭結構和性產業之間的複雜關係。其次，面對年輕女孩都是因為「拜金」、「貪玩」而從事性交易的常識性偏見，本文也將引用涉足性交易青少女的訪談資料來呈現從事性交易對社會、經濟資源極其有限的青少女而言，具有追求獨立、掌握權力的豐富生命意涵。

Although fem n sts do not ntend to problemat ze and/or patholog ze
(female) prost tutes, the quest on of ‘why women and g rls prost tute’
s always at the centre of prost tut on debates. Theor z ng prost tut on
as a patr archal system, some rad cal fem n sts have struggled to seek
a theoret cal solut on to deal w th the d sturb ng vo ces that cla m that
women and g rls nvolve themselves n commerc al sex through cho ce.
At the other extreme, some pro-sexwork analyses of ‘consent’ only look
at the surface, and fa l to exam ne the soc al and econom c contexts that
make nvolvement n prost tut on a poss ble ‘cho ce’. Both s des tend
to use homogenous narrat ves to represent all prost tutes, and produce a
general account of commerc al sex. Recently, there has been a grow ng
vo ce cla m ng the necess ty to contextual ze women’s and g rls’ cho ces
n prost tut on. Follow ng these wr ters, th s paper w ll contextual ze
workers’ ‘consent’ or ‘cho ce’ n order to reveal the soc al contexts that
make prost tut on poss ble, and exam ne the ways n wh ch nterv ewees
make sense of the r nvolvement n prost tut on. Draw ng on nterv ew
data w th Ta wanese women and g rls who are nvolved n commerc al
sex, I argue that there s no s ngle reason lead ng women and g rls nto
prost tut on. In many cases, the gendered pract ces n the fam ly (of or g n)and gendered labour market push work ng-class women nto prost tut on for surv val. Instead of see ng young g rls who are nvolved n commerc al
sex as ‘hav ng fun’ and/or ‘mak ng easy money’, I argue that there are
more compl cated soc al mean ngs beh nd th s soc al pract ce. In many
cases, nvolvement n commerc al sex turns out to be one of the ava lable
strateg es for d sempowered young g rls to re-ga n power, ndependence
and control of the r own bod es and sexual t es.