Confessions of a Church Girl: Will the Real Whore Please Stand Up?
This article originally appeared on the Tryst.link blog on March 6th, 2025. Read it in the original form here.
I am a sex worker who knows her Bible.
From the ages of 0–12, I went willingly – not that I had a choice – to church every Sunday; sang on the children’s choir, served as a junior usher, tried (and failed) to participate in the Dance Ministry, went to Vacation Bible School and church conferences, attended a quite fun Lutheran sleepaway camp for two weeks in the mountains, spent one memorable Halloween night – AKA “The Devil’s Birthday” – with other church youth in the sanctuary, and had anointed oil put on my forehead by my mother in the shape of a cross before being prayed over every morning before going to school. I was, and still am in some ways, a certified Church Girl.
As I started to read and understand the words of the Bible for myself, and simultaneously began developing my own understanding about sex, feminism, and the history of Christianity being used as a tool for the enslavement of my ancestors, I quickly concluded that this life was not for me. Ages 12–17 then became a weekly battleground between my mother and I where I protested, with increasing frequency and volume, against being forced to go to church. It was quite hard for my mother to convince me otherwise, given that I – an avid reader from an early age – began pointing out with direct chapter and verse quotes to her what I felt were deep flaws and, in my view, ‘weird shit’ having to do with women in this book she read faithfully every morning.
At seventeen, I became a sex worker, and the women in the Bible who were either called ‘bad’ or outright ignored for their association with sex work took on new relevance for me. The awful sermons I tried to drown out by dissociating for two hours would rail against these women for being prostitutes (along with non-Christians, ‘homosexuals’, and other apparent members of ‘The Devil’s Army’).
Yet, when I take a closer look at the thin parchment pages of that New International Version (NIV) Bible mentioning the most famous ladies of the night, it seems they have little to do with sex work after all.
Why this may be interesting on a purely literary level, it should be taken to heart that the rampant whorephobia in Christian society has stemmed from the portrayals of a few Biblical women as whores – sex workers and non-sex workers alike raised in this tradition have internalized these negative archetypes, despite these characters being regular women who probably just tried to do their best to make it in a man’s world over two thousand years ago.
If you are familiar with the Biblical whores, you probably remember two main stories: that of Jezebel, who is the archetypal whore for reasons that were never clearly explained to you; and of course, the iconic Mary Madgalene.
Enter Mary Madgalene, and Jezebel – our main whores.
Mary Magdalene
Let’s start with Mary Magdalene, probably the first person you think of when you hear the phrase ‘whores in the Bible,’ or even ‘famous prostitutes.’ Even we sex workers hold her up as an icon in the oft drawn-out argument: “See, even Jesus hung out with prostitutes!” Yet it wasn’t until the year 591, during an Easter sermon given in medieval Europe by Pope Gregory I [1] that she began being referred to as a prostitute (for reasons to do with another woman washing Jesus’s feet with their hair – is there a name for this kink? Inquiring minds would like to know! – and the apparent medieval fact that single women can’t be hanging out alone without being prostitutes).
In fact, nowhere in the Bible does it ever say she was a prostitute. As a New Testament character (appearing in the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), she mostly spends her time having demons cast out of her by Jesus, hanging out with the other Marys (paraphrasing heavily), and significantly being the first to witness the resurrection of Jesus [2] in verses 9–20 of Mark, Chapter 16 – verses which are conveniently edited out of many versions of the Bible and other Biblical texts.
If you were raised in a shame-based Christian denomination as I was, then you likely knew Mary Madgalene as the repentant sinner archetype for women. Without preachers ever quoting any text actually mentioning her, for many years I heard sermons and interpretations of her story as being evidence that a ‘fallen woman,’ even one who fell so low as to become a prostitute, could repent and still follow Jesus.
Today, you may see this in Christian and non-Christian organizations alike aimed at exiting sex workers from the industry; in the kind of language they use, there is a frequent narrative that a (female) sex worker can repent, abandon her profession, and live as a former sinner now walking in the light – and so on. She was deliberately portrayed as this archetype in the Catholic Church until 1969, when Pope Paul VI publicly withdrew Pope Gregory’s conflation of Mary Madgalene with lust, sins of the body, and repentance as a fallen woman. In 2016, Pope Francis changed Mary Magdalene’s annual memorial day on July 22nd to an official Catholic Feast Day [3], which elevated her to the status of an apostle.
In 2018, a movie starring Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene was released with an apparent aim of continuing to debunk the erroneous characterization of Mary Madgalene as a prostitute; however, like most Rooney Mara movies, I found the film dull and was unable to get through it (it has a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Yet, it did try to stick to the actual narrative of the Bible – Mary Magdalene appears as one of Jesus’ devoted followers, has conflict with Peter (who is jealous of her), stays by Jesus’ side when he is about to be arrested, and then witnesses the crucifixion and resurrection. The ending credits of the film state that Mary Magdalene was mistakenly labeled as a prostitute by the church, and affirm that she belongs in history as one of the apostles of Jesus.
But the damage has been done. The archetype of Mary Magdalene as the fallen woman who must do penance was used in the founding of the infamous ‘Magdalene Laundries’ in Ireland; these profit-making institutions, run by the Catholic Church, enslaved everyday Irish women who had questioned authority or been thought of as promiscuous in any way. Many of them were survivors of sexual abuse who had tried to speak about what was happening to them, while many others were simply orphans, daughters unwanted by one or both of their parents, unwed mothers, or women who’d had sex before marriage – including some sex workers. Based on the logic of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, their imprisonment, the abuses they suffered while incarcerated, and the forced labor they endured were rationalized by the Catholic Church as the necessary ‘repentance’ for their perceived sins. The last of these Magdalene Laundries only closed in Ireland in 1996.
Even today, we still think of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, even though according to the actual text of the Bible, she never was. One influential person’s words about a woman can create a whole archetype about sex workers that has lasted, at the time of this writing, for over one thousand, four-hundred and thirty-three years and which is based on, essentially, a lie. And so, arguably the most famous prostitute character in literature – who was never actually a sex worker – has been held up as a figure of the way in which sex workers should repent for their actions, leave their work, and live in a shame-filled sort of redemption for the rest of their days.
Jezebel
In doing research for this essay, I found myself giggling at some of the search results which come up on Christian websites about Jezebel. “Mysterious.” “Vindictive.” “The Evillest Woman In the Bible??” (Love the spelling errors). “Heathen.” “Killer.” “Prostitute.” “Power-Hungry.” The name of Jezebel is usually one spit by certain kinds of church folk with venom and disgust, and if you have ever heard the name Jezebel before it was likely within one of those aforementioned contexts. In my own life, I experienced the name Jezebel being used as a synonym for slut, temptress, evil woman, etc. For some reason, wearing a lot of makeup was characterized as ‘looking like a Jezebel,’ as was wearing a short skirt. As a teenager, I thought she sounded pretty cool.
Here’s what we do know about Jezebel from the Bible: She was the wife of King Ahab. She was queen in a time of severe famine (1 Kings, Chapter 18, Verse 2). She was from what is now Lebanon (her father is described in 1 Kings, Chapter 16, Verse 31 in the NIV as being “king of the Sidonians,” and Sidon is an ancient title for today’s Lebanon). Most importantly, she was not Hebrew, Jewish, or Christian but instead worshiped what were considered by the editors of the Bible to be evil, unrighteous gods. This is generally considered, in terms of her story, to be her greatest crime, seconded only to an apparent habit of having anyone who didn’t follow her beliefs put to death (sound familiar?).
Who were the gods Jezebel worshipped? In the church I was raised in, we heard about Baal, Jezebel’s pagan idol whom the religious authorities in the church said was evil and idolatrous. We were taught that Baal was somehow synonymous with the Devil. However, by the time I was seventeen, I was interested in pre-Christian religions and old enough to be able to Google extensively for myself who exactly this Baal character was. Baal was a god of rain and fertility [4], prayed to in the form of statues (AKA ‘idols’) and believed to be responsible for the production of crops – obviously, this is a deity someone would be desperate to please during a famine.
What I didn’t learn (because the church elders conveniently skipped over it) until much later in my life while studying Goddess religions was that Jezebel was also a devotee of a goddess called Asherah [5]: “And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table,” (1 Kings, Chapter 18, Verse 19). Asherah is an ancient female deity whom we now know, due to the scholarship of theologian Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou, may have been considered as the feminine counterpart of the supreme deity Yahweh. Why this is relevant is that within the context of a religious system evolving to be male-dominated, male religious authorities would likely have taken umbrage at the idea of a woman in a high position of power worshipping any deity which was not their God, and a female deity at that. Asherah is mentioned in the NIV Bible many times, mostly about how a righteous man of the Lord cuts down, burns, or otherwise destroys one of the poles (I cannot help but picture stripper poles, sorry) her followers have dedicated to her. This is also likely why Jezebel, a worshipper of Asherah, is referred to as a practitioner of witchcraft in 2 Kings, Chapter 9, Verse 22 in the Bible by a man who has come to kill her.
Jezebel is never mentioned as a prostitute in the Bible, but she does, according to the text, seem to exert a lot of control over her husband Ahab and seems to believe that the best way to get what she wants is by making sacrifices or killing people. So if she isn’t a whore, why is she so commonly held up as a representation of why whores are evil, or as a whore at all? It seems to be in particular because of the following lines: the first occurs in the Bible as Jezebel realizes that another character, named Jehu, is coming to execute her in her new vineyard home of Naboth in Jezreel – a vineyard which she got, admittedly, by having the previous owner killed by his own people – “Then Jehu went to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard about it, she put on eye makeup, arranged her hair and looked out of a window,” (2 Kings, Chapter 9, Verse 30).
I don’t have to explain to anyone raised in a shame-based misogynistic religion why a woman wearing makeup and focusing on her appearance would be considered sinful; this interpretation makes sense as to why I was told I ‘looked like a Jezebel’ in high school when I wore my signature cat-eye winged liner. In Revelation (which is at the very end of the Bible, therefore confusing the timeline) Chapter 2, Verse 20, Jezebel is referred to as leading people into “sexual immorality,” the exact nature of which is never explained. It may be that already at that time, the name ‘Jezebel’ was being used as a stand-in for any woman considered sexually immoral. Other than being referred to as a “cursed woman,” by Jehu in 2 Kings, Chapter 9, Verse 34, that’s it for descriptions of Jezebel.
This is not an uplift of Jezebel, a character in a text written by multiple authors, re-edited and translated countless times centuries ago. Rather, I wish to examine how Jezebel being mistakenly referred to as a prostitute is harmful to the image people have of sex workers. If a character who, it seems, actually did a lot of murdering according to the book she is in, is portrayed incorrectly as a sex worker then the associated perception of sex workers is as dangerous, criminal, and evil.
Those same words which come up in a search about Jezebel are conflated with workers in the sex industry, to our detriment, even though in the Bible she was just a non-Christian, goddess-worshipping, somewhat murderous, eyeliner-wearing queen – not a sex worker. Yet those ideas of sex workers as criminal, immoral, and ‘in line with Satan’ as I heard growing up remain stuck with us today. Jezebel seems to also be a character held up in misogynistic interpretations of her story as a cautionary tale of why women should be prevented from accessing power, or why men should dominate their wives and never listen to them.
Where Do We Go From Here?
According to the online version of the NIV, the word ‘prostitute’ is mentioned about seventy-four times, both as a noun and a verb, and in my reading of the text, always with a negative connotation. There are certainly other stories about sex workers in the Bible, the telling or misinterpretations of which have shaped the cultural figure of the sex worker. Negative portrayals of minor characters associated with prostitution in the Bible include, the story-within-a story of sisters Oholah and Oholibah in Ezekiel 23, an unnamed woman apparently responsible for the fall of the city of Nineveh in Nahum, Chapter 3, Verse 4 who “enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft” (WERK!), or the prostitute who is punished in Revelations for “corrupting the earth with her adulteries,” (Revelations, Chapter 19, Verse 2).
In Biblical times, the sex worker was made synonymous with the unforgivable sins of lust and lewdness. Spending money on prostitutes was seen as squandering one’s wealth (Luke, Chapter, 15, Verse 30), and sex workers were considered to be the human manifestation of the sin of adultery. These characterizations still ring true today in how we are portrayed by certain politicians, media outlets, and individuals. Whorephobia is so strong that even when a sex worker character in the Bible is portrayed in a positive light, like Rahab in the book of Joshua, their story is sidelined for narratives which incorrectly portray images of sex workers as deviant, in need of repentance, and untrustworthy. All those interested can refer on their own time to Chapters 2 through 6 of the book of Joshua to learn the story of Rahab, perhaps the Bible’s only ‘good’ prostitute, who clearly abided by one of the laws of the streets: No snitching.
I address now those whorephobic Christians who, like the ones I grew up sitting in a pew with, believed that being a prostitute was the lowest someone could be and that they, for all their claims of being faithful servants to the Lord, were going assuredly to heaven, with this verse about Rahab from the book of James: “You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?” (James Chapter 2, Verses 24–25).
Understand that my sex work is my voluntary profession, and not a statement on my character; That all the good I bring into the world refuses to be cancelled out by your judgement of how I provide for myself and my loved ones; and that if you are going to cast pseudo-Biblical judgement on someone for being a sex worker, make sure you’ve read your Bible and are talking about a real one first. For my fellow sex workers who grew up with internalized Christian whorephobia, I wish that you breathe a sigh of relief at the end of this essay to know that those negative stories you were fed about yourself from the pulpit were grossly inaccurate, and for the most part, not even about sex workers. Free thyself!
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/marymagdalene.shtml
[2]
[3] https://stm.yale.edu/blog/the-feast-of-st.-mary-magdalene-a-celebration-of-women-leaders