Resistance to sex work stigma

The journal “Sexualities” published a discussion around Ronald Weitzer’s piece “Resistance to sex work stigma” in its September 2018 issue.

From the Editor’s Note:
“Professor Ronald Weitzer has written a short piece to Sexualities. It is a commentary in which Weitzer examines the notion of stigma in the context of sex work. He points out that stigma is not determined but has the possibility of change and suggests ‘a set of preconditions for the reduction and, ultimately, elimination of stigma from sex work’, which includes neutralization of language, a more balanced representation of sex work in the mass media, decriminalization, industry mobilization, sex worker activism, and intervention from the academia. We thought this piece would generate discussion and thus open up theoretical debate as well as practical concern about policy and legislation regarding sex work and stigma. We then invited scholars to comment and the following have agreed to write a commentary: Professor Teela Sanders, Professor Wendy Chapkis, Professor Jo Phoenix, and Professor Minichiello (together with Professor John Scott and Mr Cameron Cox).”

Read full note here (freely available).

The contributions to the discussion can be found here (paywall).

• Chapkis, Wendy. 2018. „Commentary: Response to Weitzer ‘Resistance to Sex Work Stigma’“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 743–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716684511.
• Kong, Travis SK. 2018. „Editor’s Note: Ronald Weitzer“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 715–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460717690714.
• Lee, Na-Young. 2018. „Un/Forgettable Histories of US Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Women’s Experiences of Sexual Labor and Government Policies“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 751–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716688683.
• Minichiello, Victor, John Scott, und Cameron Cox. 2018. „Commentary: Reversing the Agenda of Sex Work Stigmatization and Criminalization: Signs of a Progressive Society“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 730–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716684510.
• Phoenix, Jo. 2018. „A Commentary: Response to Weitzer ‘Resistance to Sex Work Stigma’“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 740–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716684512.
• Sanders, Teela. 2018. „Unpacking the Process of Destigmatization of Sex Work/Ers: Response to Weitzer ‘Resistance to Sex Work Stigma’“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 736–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716677731.
• Weitzer, Ronald. 2018a. „Additional Reflections on Sex Work Stigma“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 747–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716684513.
• ———. 2018b. „Resistance to Sex Work Stigma“. Sexualities 21 (5–6): 717–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716684509.

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“I Get Paid to Have Orgasms”: Adult Webcam Models’ Negotiation of Pleasure and Danger

Jones, Angela. 2016. „“I Get Paid to Have Orgasms”: Adult Webcam Models’ Negotiation of Pleasure and Danger“. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42 (1): 227–56. https://doi.org/10.1086/686758.

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Abstract

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This article makes several important contributions to the burgeoning literature on sex work in a digital era. The scholarly literature that has documented the use of the Internet by sex workers has focused almost entirely on prostitution and has yet to make adult webcam modeling a focal point of analysis. This article critically examines the ways in which entry into adult webcam modeling is facilitated by an expectation that sex work in cyberspace maximizes pleasure, primarily because it minimizes the risk of dangers associated with street-based sex work. I conduct content analyses of discussions on a popular online forum for webcam models to explore the themes of pleasure (erotic and affectual) and danger (capping, doxxing, and harassment) in adult webcam modeling. I argue that adult webcam models experience sexual and affectual pleasures in the course of their work and that they are able to experience these pleasures because the computer-mediated sexual exchange acts as a psychological barrier, and that the computer in turn becomes the primary tool that performers use for emotional management. My analysis focuses on how sex workers reconcile the pleasure in their work with the exploitation that is also found there. Here, these camgirls use neoliberal ideas to minimize the perception of danger of their work so that they can experience high levels of pleasure. I further open up a new dialogue about neoliberalism and sex workers by focusing on the neoliberal subject in this new form of sex work.

Full text available here.

Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Cohen, Bernard. 2018. „Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany“. Deviant Behavior 0 (0): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1431096.

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Abstract

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The present paper compares how police in Hunts Point, South Bronx, New York City and Frankfurt am Main Germany manage street prostitution as a quality-of-life offense. Methods utilized for this research include observation and “conversation” in public spaces with prostitutes, police, and community members. This paper deals with characteristics of street prostitutes, police enforcement, actual interaction between police and street actors, and impact of these methods on prostitutes. For decades, broken windows policing has been utilized to counter quality-of-life offenses in urban neighborhoods such as NYC, and evidence regarding its effectiveness has often been questioned. In attempts to address prostitution, two variant policing models were identified and examined through the framework of broken windows theory: Punitive/Criminalization Policing and Containment/Laissez-Faire Policing. Broken windows policing probably lowered the incidence of quality-of-life offenses including street prostitution. However, broken windows theory does not take into account socially constructed myths that persist about prostitution, nor the realities that counter them. This paper addresses these myths and how they may inform policing practices, resulting in negative corollary effects which must be eliminated.

The History of Prostitution Now

Norberg, Kathryn. 2017. „The History of Prostitution Now“. Journal of Women’s History 29 (1): 188–96. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2017.0014.

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Fifteen years ago, Timothy Gilfoyle published a lengthy essay devoted to the history of prostitution in the American Historical Review. He observed that in the last quarter of the twentieth century, historians complicated the history of prostitution “in ways unanticipated a generation ago.”¹ As the six books reviewed here demonstrate, innovation in the history of sex work continues. Historians are now studying “up” rather than “down,” concentrating on brothel madams and luxury establishments rather than streetwalkers and street solicitation. Scholars today point to changing patterns of consumption and leisure (including tourism), rather than altered labor relations (like industrialization) to explain changes in the sex trade. Historians now importantly address previously neglected issues like colonialism, state building, and race to produce a more complex picture of the sex worker of the past and her business. 

Continue reading here.

Enhancing the study of sex work

Sanders, Teela. 2018. „Enhancing the study of sex work“. Sexualities, June 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718771346.

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I write this as an academic who has focused on understanding the sex industry and advocating for the rights of sex workers in much of the time that Sexualities has been a space for the social sciences to enhance the study of sexuality through scholarship and thinking. I have approached this reflection specifically relating to the field of sex work, or what has been called ‘the sociology of sex work’ as a sub-discipline. For this reflection I reviewed all of the issues of the journal, a truly fascinating and indulgent exercise, to track how sex work research has emerged through the journal. There were some 47 articles directly relating to the sex industry/sex workers with many more circling the periphery of the broad subject.

Read more here.

A Sex Work Research Symposium: Examining Positionality in Documenting Sex Work and Sex Workers’ Rights

Lowthers, Megan, Magdalena Sabat, Elya M. Durisin, und Kamala Kempadoo. 2017. „A Sex Work Research Symposium: Examining Positionality in Documenting Sex Work and Sex Workers’ Rights“. Social Sciences 6 (2): 39. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6020039.
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Abstract

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Historically, academic literature on sex work has documented the changing debates, policies, and cultural discourse surrounding the sex industry, and their impact on the rights of sex workers worldwide. As sex work scholars look to the future of sex workers’ rights, however, we are also in a critical moment of self-reflection on how sex work scholarship engages with sex worker communities, produces knowledge surrounding sex work, and represents the lived experiences of sex workers’ rights, organizing, and activism. In this short Communication, proceedings from a recent sex work research symposium entitled, Sexual Economies, Politics, and Positionality in Sex Work Research are presented. Held at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, this symposium is a response to the need for sex work researchers, sex workers, and sex worker-led organizations to come together and critically examine the future of research on sex work and the politics of documenting sex workers’ rights.

Commodifying Intimacy in ‚Hard Times‘: A Hardcore Ethnography of a Luxury Brothel

Briggs, Daniel. „Commodifying Intimacy in ‚Hard Times‘: A Hardcore Ethnography of a Luxury Brothel“. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 2, Nr. 1 (26. April 2018): 66–88. https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.5621.

Abstract

This paper is a methodological reflection on an ongoing covert ethnography I have been undertaking in a luxury brothel in Madrid, Spain. By accident, this study became a research project when I was employed by the manager to review porn forums offering feedback on the women that worked there and taught English to him. For 18 months now, I have worked in the brothel a couple of nights a week doing these duties and have come to know the manager’s closest friends and family, the women who work there and the security staff. The context for the work is the expansion of the sex industry in an era of consumer society and self-gratification coupled with austerity politics which has disproportionately affected the opportunities for women in the formal labour market thus catapulting many into precarious situations in which selling sex becomes an option. This has crudely mixed with cultural change in Spain in the wake of increased neoliberal economics which have hollowed out notions of family, tradition and intimacy.