When Taiwanese adult actress Joanna Wei announced her admittance to National Taiwan University (NTU) in a social media post, the news quickly sparked online discussions and media coverage. However, Wei states that people only find her story inspirational because she is “an adult actress turned NTU student.” If she were an “NTU student turned adult actress,” then people would have thought of her as someone who “made a serious mistake.”
This social reaction clearly demonstrates how the public in Taiwan holds a relatively negative attitude towards the presence of “sex” and related work in the “innocent” university campus or society in general.
In a society that stigmatizes sex work, Wei’s admittance to NTU as an adult actress made her an “inspirational” figure. “Universities think too highly of themselves.”
According to Chen, studies have pointed out that many women work part-time in the sex industry until they’ve made enough money to go back to school. Wei is no exception — after dropping out of senior high school, she worked at a department store during the day, worked as a hostess at a Japanese bar at night, and tutored on weekends to save up enough money for cram school which prepared her for the university entrance exam. In her many years of researching sex work, Chen told us that when she was once lecturing at a private university, a student told her she was currently working as a hostess. “None of this is new,” said Chen.
“Society’s image of university students is oftentimes too perfect.” Chen says, university students are just young men and women who just entered adulthood. They are a microcosm of our diverse society, therefore, just like the real-life society, universities should accommodate people of different classes, cultural backgrounds, life experiences, and work histories. “More diversity leads to more perspectives and ultimately a more well rounded society.”