Search Results

Objectified Body/Embodied Subject1

Adelyn Lim

in Transnational Feminism and Women's Movements In Post-1997 Hong Kong: Solidarity Beyond the State

This chapter examines advocacy for the recognition of prostitution as legitimate work and sex workers as working women. The global restructuring of capital has reinforced the exploitation of gendered ... More

This chapter examines advocacy for the recognition of prostitution as legitimate work and sex workers as working women. The global restructuring of capital has reinforced the exploitation of gendered and racialized labor within regional and national sites and the flow of migrants who engage in sexual labor has become a site of intense feminist specification and engagement. In Hong Kong, women activists may disagree on prostitution itself as a practice, but there is extensive agreement that sex workers' entitlement to do their work and demand for recognition of their human rights are essential to cultural-political transformation and women's empowerment. The framing of feminism involves integrating sex workers into agenda setting, reflecting on local organizational forms, rhetoric, and strategies in response to global socio-cultural, economic, and political forces, and imagining new priorities, initiatives, and activities in acknowledgment of evolving feminist understandings.Less

Outcast Bodies: Money, Sex and Desire of Money Boys in Mainland China1

Travis S.K. Kong

in As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong

This chapter concentrates on the male sex workers in Beijing and Shanghai. There are forty-five in-depth interviews of money boys mainly coming from rural or semi-rural areas to big cities in China. ... More

This chapter concentrates on the male sex workers in Beijing and Shanghai. There are forty-five in-depth interviews of money boys mainly coming from rural or semi-rural areas to big cities in China. Contrary to the overtly one-sided and dominant representation of male sex workers as depressed, depraved, dissolute and violent sociopaths in popular Chinese culture and media representations, it is found that the option of sex work has offered new possibilities for survival, livelihood, and self-development for young migrants in a class-stratified society confronted with massive tensions between rural and urban developments. In the discussion of male prostitution, one view is that it is a survival strategy enforced by poverty, homelessness, and powerlessness — a form of slavery arising from economic, social, and cultural deprivation. The other view is that prostitution is a “rational” choice for men who are constrained by their marginalized positions in a highly class-stratified social structure. Male prostitution is a contested but negotiated arena of power, and the identity of the male sex worker involves a strategic self that constantly negotiates risks and dangers, excitements and gains, in the process of sexual transaction.Less

Introduction: “We Have Voices”

Chi Adanna Mgbako

in To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa

The introduction presents the issue of sex workers’ rights and the movement in Africa through both first-hand examples and stories as well as historical, societal, and scholarly context. It also sets ... More

The introduction presents the issue of sex workers’ rights and the movement in Africa through both first-hand examples and stories as well as historical, societal, and scholarly context. It also sets out the framework of the rest of the book, discusses the research methodology used, and explains how this book seeks to fill a void in both sex work studies and African feminist scholarship.Less

Survival Sex and Hiv/aids In an African City

Richard Parker, Regina Maria Barbosa, and Peter Aggleton

in Framing the Sexual Subject: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Power

This chapter discusses the political economy of sexual oppression. It maps the diverse social and cultural spaces of female and male sex work, and studies the intersecting structures of economic ... More

This chapter discusses the political economy of sexual oppression. It maps the diverse social and cultural spaces of female and male sex work, and studies the intersecting structures of economic marginalization, racism, sexism, and heterosexism that shape the possibilities for risk reduction on the part of sex workers in Durban, South Africa. It notes that sex work and sex workers have been often treated as no more than vectors of infection and danger. This chapter focuses on the ways various forms of sex work in different parts of Durban slowly take shape as part of a broader range of survival strategies by poor and marginalized men and women.Less

Introduction: “We Have Voices”

Chi Adanna Mgbako

in To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa

The introduction presents the issue of sex workers’ rights and the movement in Africa through both first-hand examples and stories as well as historical, societal, and scholarly context. It also sets ... More

The introduction presents the issue of sex workers’ rights and the movement in Africa through both first-hand examples and stories as well as historical, societal, and scholarly context. It also sets out the framework of the rest of the book, discusses the research methodology used, and explains how this book seeks to fill a void in both sex work studies and African feminist scholarship.Less

Risk and risk management in sex work post-Prostitution Reform Act: a public health perspective

Gillian Abel and Lisa Fitzgerald

in Taking the crime out of sex work: New Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation

In the sex-worker population, the priority of harm minimisation has been to minimise disease transmission through educating the workers on safe-sex practices. This harm-minimisation approach assumes ... More

In the sex-worker population, the priority of harm minimisation has been to minimise disease transmission through educating the workers on safe-sex practices. This harm-minimisation approach assumes that by educating the sex workers on HIV/AIDS and informing them of their responsibility in preventing transmission, they would make rational choices to protect themselves and others. However, the assumption that sex workers are vectors of diseases marginalises and blames them without considering the implications of poverty, gender, public fear, and law. For a more effective health approach in the sex industry, it is hence vital to consider structural and political issues such as poverty and law. Within this context, public-health workers have been challenged to take a more holistic approach to health promotion for sex workers. In addition to taking into consideration the health of the workers, their human rights and the need to create a safer working environment were also considered in the risk-management and harm-minimisation assessment of the sex industry. Within the broad context of harm minimisation commenced the advocacy for the decriminalisation of the sex industry. It was envisaged that by repealing the laws which criminalised sex-work activities, the autonomy of the sex workers and their capability to protect themselves would increase. It was theorised that under a decriminalised system, human rights and set standards for working environments would improve the health and safety of the workers. This chapter examines whether there have been gains for sex-worker health and safety in a decriminalised environment. It examines the main threats to health and safety identified by the participants: risks to sexual health, risks of violence and exploitation, and risks to emotional health.Less

From ‘toleration’ to zero tolerance: a view from the ground in Scotland

Ruth Morgan Thomas

in Regulating sex for sale: Prostitution policy reform in the UK

This chapter puts forward a sex workers' rights perspective in relation to the notion of ‘zero tolerance’ of prostitution. It records some of the experiences and voices of sex workers, and presents ... More

This chapter puts forward a sex workers' rights perspective in relation to the notion of ‘zero tolerance’ of prostitution. It records some of the experiences and voices of sex workers, and presents some of the evidence that calls into question the ‘zero-tolerance’ approach. The chapter notes that this evidence was gathered over the last two decades by SCOT-PEP, a community-based organization that was set up by sex workers for sex workers in 1989 in Edinburgh and which the author currently manages. It mainly argues that zero tolerance, in the context of violence against women and sex work, has become dogmatic and unresponsive to the actual needs of sex workers, silences the voices of sex workers, and undermines fundamental human rights.Less

“I Have My Own Room on 139th Street”: Black Women and the Urban Sex Economy

LaShawn Harris

in Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy

This chapter explores black women's multilayered roles within New York's sex commerce, moving beyond widely accepted historical interpretations that position black sex laborers primarily as street ... More

This chapter explores black women's multilayered roles within New York's sex commerce, moving beyond widely accepted historical interpretations that position black sex laborers primarily as street solicitors. Identifying black women as madam-prostitutes, casual prostitutes, and sex-house proprietors and entrepreneurs, this chapter addresses the difficulties of documenting sex work within black communities, the broad socioeconomic conditions and personal circumstances outlining black women's entrance into the urban sexual economy, and the occupational benefits of indoor prostitution. In an attempt to avoid or limit their presence on New York streets, black sex workers—when the opportunity arose—sold and performed sexual services in furnished rooms and hotels, in their own homes, in massage parlors and nightclubs, and in other legitimate and illegitimate commercial businesses. Furthermore, indoor and residential sexual labor was significant to sex laborers' working and personal lives.Less

History of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective

Catherine Healy, Calum Bennachie, and Anna Reed

in Taking the crime out of sex work: New Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation

This chapter outlines the history of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective (NZPC). It traces the collective's efforts to fight against social stigma and to overturn legislation that had a negative ... More

This chapter outlines the history of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective (NZPC). It traces the collective's efforts to fight against social stigma and to overturn legislation that had a negative implication on the lives of sex workers in New Zealand. The chapter begins by providing a short outline of the socio-political context in which the NZPC emerged in the late 1980s. After tracing the composition of the NZPC, it then proceeds to the ways in which the collective built support for decriminalising sex work in New Zealand.Less

Sex Work

Annuska Derks

in Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia

This chapter discusses how the poor conditions in the red-light districts in Phnom Penh have contributed to the image of a “gruesome” sex industry in Cambodia. Western media reports depict Cambodia ... More

This chapter discusses how the poor conditions in the red-light districts in Phnom Penh have contributed to the image of a “gruesome” sex industry in Cambodia. Western media reports depict Cambodia as a country where the “sex trade” flourishes, and where the associated AIDS epidemic threatens to result in its “next Killing Fields.” While ideas about sex workers as immoral women persist among many Cambodians, images of sex workers as slaves, commodities, and viruses have come to dominate reports on sex work. These reports portray young rural women, anxious to do anything to provide financial support for their families, have become tricked into a life of debt and virtual slavery. The chapter argues that these views reveal more about the moral attitudes of observers than about the daily lives, struggles, and experiences of the workers themselves.Less

Motherhood, Consumption, and the Purchase of Respectability

Megan Rivers-Moore

in Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica

Although sex work remains highly stigmatized, it allows sex workers to attain some level of economic, if not social, mobility. This chapter challenges the idea that sex work is always about mere ... More

Although sex work remains highly stigmatized, it allows sex workers to attain some level of economic, if not social, mobility. This chapter challenges the idea that sex work is always about mere subsistence. Instead, it suggests that sex tourism workers work to survive, but they also demonstrate significant personal ambition and aim not only to increase their own consumption levels, but to get ahead. Women are clear about what sex work enables for their families and themselves: a level of consumption otherwise unavailable to them as low-income and poor women. Sex work offers an opportunity to consume and to get ahead that these women have been unable to attain in other kinds of employment, primarily domestic and factory work. Furthermore, sex work allows women to think of themselves as particularly good mothers, able to provide for and spend important quality time with their kids. The chapter argues that survival, consumption, and motherhood are deployed, often in contradictory and conflicting ways, in order to counteract the effects that stigma has on sex workers. It also suggests that sex workers may very well be the quintessential subjects of neo-liberalism in Latin America, in their embrace of entrepreneurial work and consumption.Less

Hot Spots and Flows

Sverre Molland

in The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong

This chapter examines cross-border oscillations of Lao sex workers and some of their implications for how anti-trafficking programs envisage trafficking and mobility to take place. It begins with an ... More

This chapter examines cross-border oscillations of Lao sex workers and some of their implications for how anti-trafficking programs envisage trafficking and mobility to take place. It begins with an overview of migration patterns between Laos and Thailand and how the anti-trafficking sector has participated in articulating meanings of cross-border migration. It then considers income and price stratification in Laos and in Nong Kai, along with the role of customer frequency in sex workers' migratory trajectories. It also discusses the spatial dimension of trafficking and concludes by analyzing the ways that the imagery of socioeconomic differentiations across the Thai-Lao border has distorted understandings of actual migration practices within the arena of sex commerce.Less

Working the Prostitution Economy, 1870–1900

in I've Got to Make My Livin': Black Women's Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

This chapter examines the racial structure of the sex economy in Chicago during the period from 1870 to 1900. It explains that African American prostitutes confronted a racial hierarchy that ... More

This chapter examines the racial structure of the sex economy in Chicago during the period from 1870 to 1900. It explains that African American prostitutes confronted a racial hierarchy that determined where they worked and how much they earned and highlights the racial segregation of the sex workers in the Levee district. It also mentions that African American prostitutes and brothels consistently charged the lowest rates for their sexual services. This chapter also describes who African American sex workers found ways to cross the lines that defined the economy's racial hierarchy.Less

“Hata watufanyeje, kazi itaendelea”: Everyday Negotiations of State Regulation among Female Sex Workers in Nairobi, Kenya

Chimaraoke Izugbara

in Policing Pleasure: Sex Work, Policy, and the State in Global Perspective

This chapter examines the intricate set of arrangements employed by sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya, to defy arrest and regulation by law enforcement agents and to protect themselves and one another ... More

This chapter examines the intricate set of arrangements employed by sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya, to defy arrest and regulation by law enforcement agents and to protect themselves and one another from violent assaults by police and clients, along with the implications of these strategies for their well-being and vulnerability. Drawing on the author's three and half years of ethnographic work among sex workers in urban Nairobi, the chapter considers how the city's sex workers unite into a community of victims and inventors to counter the efforts of law enforcement agents to regulate prostitution. It also discusses the effects of criminalization, and specifically Nairobi's antiprostitution law, on sex workers and suggests that sex work in the city is intertwined with the postcolonial politics of Kenyan life.Less

New victimisations: female sex worker hate crime and the ‘ideal victim’

Karen Corteen

in Revisiting the “Ideal Victim”: Developments in Critical Victimology

Female sex worker victim characteristics and their social, situational and interactive contexts have not substantially changed. Yet, the manner in which female sex worker victimisation is currently ... More

Female sex worker victim characteristics and their social, situational and interactive contexts have not substantially changed. Yet, the manner in which female sex worker victimisation is currently understood has changed in some quarters. This chapter documents the unusual inclusion of female sex workers into Merseyside police hate crime policy and practice. Given that female sex workers embody a ‘non-ideal’ victim identity the focus here is to consider what this development may mean for Christie’s (1986) ‘ideal victim’ thesis. In so doing the role (or lack of) emotion and compassion will be discussed. The chapter concludes that victims and victimisation have been reimagined and new victimisations have arisen. However, with regard to hate crime, and the social construction of, and criminal justice responses to the victimisation of female sex workers Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ thesis remains contemporarily relevant and predominantly intact.Less

Lobbying for decriminalisation

Tim Barnett, Catherine Healy, Anna Reed, and Calum Bennachie

in Taking the crime out of sex work: New Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation

The campaign for the reform of New Zealand's sex work laws took nearly two decades. Due to the increasing awareness of the injustices of the old laws, people who were to gain from the reform began ... More

The campaign for the reform of New Zealand's sex work laws took nearly two decades. Due to the increasing awareness of the injustices of the old laws, people who were to gain from the reform began networking to build the New Zealand Prostitutes's Collective (NZPC), which is a nationwide sex-worker organisation. Through the NZPC, sex workers began to build awareness and support for their cause, thus creating a space to look to the long term. This chapter traces the networking, conceptualisation, drafting, and campaign-building stages of the law reform. It also describes the process of further explanation of the law to the public and outlines the parliamentary process through which it passed. To understand the law reform on the decriminalisation of the sex industry, the chapter begins with the history of the political context operating in New Zealand at the time of the decriminalisation process. The parliamentary system operating in the country is believed to have had a great impact on the success of the Prostitution Reform Bill. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the campaign and its outcome from the perspective of Tim Barnett, a Member of the Parliament who sponsored and introduced the Bill in the parliament. It also considers the perspective of the members of the NZPC.Less

Selling Sex, Selling Care: Affective Labor in the Tourism Sector

Megan Rivers-Moore

in Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica

Following the previous chapter’s focus on what men are purchasing in San José, this chapter asks what kind of work the women involved in providing sexual services for tourists are actually ... More

Following the previous chapter’s focus on what men are purchasing in San José, this chapter asks what kind of work the women involved in providing sexual services for tourists are actually performing, according to their own analysis of their experiences. Chapter three explores how and why sex workers define their work as involving care rather than just sexual-economic exchange. Drawing on a burgeoning literature on care work and gender relations, the chapter argues that sex work in the tourism sector is best understood as affective labor, and then assesses what this conceptual move allows for studies of sex work as well as for studies of care work. The chapter suggests that theorizing sex work as care allows a way around the ongoing debates about empowerment versus exploitation in prostitution, as well as a useful means of linking sex work to other kinds of labor provided by women in the global economy. Sex tourism is assessed here as part of a broader gendered service sector and leisure economy that has blossomed in a globalized context.Less

Fantasies of “Chinese-ness” and the Traffic in Women from Mainland China to Hong Kong in Fruit Chan's Durian Durian

Helen F. Siu (ed.)

in Merchants' Daughters: Women, Commerce, and Regional Culture in South China

This chapter analyzes cross-border prostitution as hauntingly portrayed in Fruit Chan's film, Durian Durian. It argues that the film questions hegemonic fantasies of “Chinese-ness” by putting into ... More

This chapter analyzes cross-border prostitution as hauntingly portrayed in Fruit Chan's film, Durian Durian. It argues that the film questions hegemonic fantasies of “Chinese-ness” by putting into circulation a set of haunting counter-hegemonic images of the female migrant that exposes flexible accumulation and the consumer fantasies it has generated in mainland China. The main protagonist, Xiao Yan, also personifies an incisive critique of the myth of the Chinese diasporic entrepreneur since the migrant sex worker is intimately linked to the opening up of the mainland to economic globalization. More strikingly, the migrant sex worker embodies many of the traits and characteristics of the savvy and flexible migrant entrepreneur that are celebrated as virtues and ideals both in Hong Kong and in the People's Republic of China, at the level of the state and society.Less