Download or read book Street Sex Workers Discourse written by Jill McCracken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers — the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers’ bodies, identities, and spirits — are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. As an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, this book disrupts some of the more prevalent academic and lay understandings about street prostitution by providing a thorough analysis of the material conditions surrounding street work and their connection to discourse. McCracken offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.

Download or read book Street Sex Workers Discourse written by Jill McCracken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers — the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers’ bodies, identities, and spirits — are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. As an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, this book disrupts some of the more prevalent academic and lay understandings about street prostitution by providing a thorough analysis of the material conditions surrounding street work and their connection to discourse. McCracken offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.

Download or read book Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker written by Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-25 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker considers how sex work is produced in news media narratives, a site where much of the general public draws its understanding of the industry in the absence of lived interaction with it. Taking New Zealand as a case study, this book considers an emerging discourse of acceptability for some sex workers, primarily those who do low-volume indoor work. Their acceptability is established in comparison with other kinds of sex workers, resulting in a redistribution but not a reduction of stigma. The conditions attached to acceptability reflect persistent anxieties aboutsex work: workers who are acceptable must give the impression that the sexual labour of the job is enjoyable and virtually indistinguishable from their personal life, eliding the work involved. Unacceptable workers have existing marginalisations magnified by their association with the industry, with migrant sex workers produced as devious or exploited, and transgender women’s involvement with the industry used to deny them the right to public space. The conditions attached to acceptability reveal how neoliberal discourses of choice, desire, authenticity, and personal responsibility inform the formation of sex work in the public eye.

Download or read book Realising Justice for Sex Workers written by Sharron A. FitzGerald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past two decades, feminist politics on prostitution has become more polarised and ideological. On the one hand, those on the radical spectrum of feminist politics have fought long and hard to criminalise sex purchase with the intention of ultimately abolishing prostitution. Other feminists have lobbied the state to recognise and institutionalise sex workers’ human rights. The collection is both a critical intervention in and a re-orientation of the schism in contemporary feminist prostitution politics. Contributors will use this schism as a platform from which to challenge current debates, and ‘think’ an alternative sex worker-centred politics for social justice. By placing sex workers’ lived experiences of prostitution at the centre of the conversation, the book rejects the hegemony of neo-abolitionism as the solution to the ‘problem’ of sex work. The book brings international, trans-disciplinary scholars together to address a rights-based agenda for sex work law and policy and consequently for sex workers’ lives. This collection offers an invaluable resource on the subject of how sex workers experience injustices and how we can mitigate this globally through a transformative vision of social justice.

Download or read book I Ain t Nobodies Ho written by Kathleen Read and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is based on 31 interviews conducted in 2012 with male, female, and transgender sex workers at the St. James Infirmary, a full-spectrum health clinic run by sex workers for sex workers, located in San Francisco, California. My primary goals were, first, to document the lived realities of a diverse range of sex workers who live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, and, second, to understand the impact of sex work discourse on the facilitation of stigma toward the sex work community and, finally, how that stigma influences the sex worker group identity and individual identity constructions. My primary findings indicate that although sex work discourse has traditionally been constructed within the dominant public sphere and not by sex workers themselves, this discourse has a profound effect on creating and perpetuating the stigma associated with sex work. In turn, this stigma affects both how the group and how individuals construct their identities, often negatively. Alternatively, a benefit of stigma is that it can induce the production of counterpublics which facilitate the emergence of new discourse. However, for this new discourse to gain acceptance into the public sphere, activist organizations must utilize traditional (and sometimes unintentionally marginalizing) strategies that can impact both the identity construction of the group and of individuals within the group. Understanding these complex relationships is therefore essential to understanding how activist organizations, such as the St. James Infirmary, situate themselves within the larger dominant public sphere, their impact on sex work discourse, and their impact on individual sex worker identity construction.

Download or read book Sex Work Prostitution and Policy written by Rebecca MF Hewer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of sex-work/prostitution has long generated contentious debate, particularly within the broad church of feminism. This antagonism is reflected in UK policy debates, which are further complicated by their enactment in spaces of neoliberal hegemony. This book analyses the plurality of narratives which contribute to Westminster sex-work/prostitution policy debates and subsequently seeks to situate them within the social and political conditions of their production. Hewer illustrates that contemporary sex-work/prostitution debates are constituted through a complex entanglement of ideologically hybrid perspectives, which variously challenge and ingrain extant relations of power. Moreover, by drawing on a range of feminist and other critical social theories, Hewer offers a way to think differently about both sex-work/prostitution debates and sex-work/prostitution itself. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students from across the social sciences with an interest in the language used to talk about sex-work and prostitution in policy debates.

Download or read book Challenging Perspectives on Street Based Sex Work written by Katie Hail-Jares and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2017-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are sex workers victims, criminals, or just trying to make a living? Over the last five years, public policy and academic discourse have moved from criminalization of sex workers to victim-based understanding, shaped by human trafficking. While most research focuses on macro-level policies and theories, less is known about the on-the-ground perspectives of people whose lives are impacted by sex work, including attorneys, social workers, police officers, probation officers, and sex workers themselves. Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work brings the voices of lower-echelon sex workers and those individuals charged with policy development and enforcement into conversation with one another. Chapters highlight some of the current approaches to sex work, such as diversion courts, trafficking task forces, law enforcement assisted diversion and decriminalization. It also examines how sex workers navigate seldom-discussed social phenomenon like gentrification, pregnancy, imperialism, and being subjects of research. Through dialogue, our authors reveal the complex reality of engaging in and regulating sex work in the United States and through American aid abroad. Contributors include: Aneesa A. Baboolal, Marie Bailey-Kloch, Mira Baylson, Nachale “Hua” Boonyapisomparn, Belinda Carter, Jennifer Cobbina, Ruby Corado, Eileen Corcoran, Kate D’Adamo, Edith Kinney, Margot Le Neveu, Martin A. Monto, Linda Muraresku, Erin O’Brien, Sharon Oselin. Catherine Paquette, Dan Steele, Chase Strangio, Signy Toquinto, and the editors.

Download or read book Reframing Prostitution written by N. Persak and published by Maklu. This book was released on 2014-07-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prostitution has always fascinated the public and bewildered policy makers. Reframing Prostitution explores several aspects of this multidimensional phenomenon, examining different ways in which prostitution is and was being practised in different places and different times, best practices in the regulation of prostitution as well as wider social and psychological issues, such as the construction of prostitution as incivility or of prostitutes as a socially problematic group or as victimised individuals. The book also addresses normative questions with respect to policy making, unmasking the purposes behind certain societal reactions towards prostitution as well as proposing innovative solutions that could reconcile societal fears of exploitation and abuse while meeting the rights and needs of individuals voluntarily involved in prostitution. With contributions across social science disciplines, this international collection presents a valuable discussion on the importance of empirical studies in various segments of prostitution, highlights social contexts around it and challenges regulatory responses that frame our thinking about prostitution, promoting fresh debate about future policy directions in this area.

Download or read book Sex Work and Human Dignity written by Stewart Cunningham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of human dignity is frequently, yet enigmatically, invoked in legal and political debates on sex work, where many people use it without much elaboration on exactly what they mean by it. Sex Work and Human Dignity: Law, Politics and Discourse sheds light on this enigma, by exploring how dignity-based discourses are used by those who write and talk about prostitution and also what role these discourses may play in shaping wider cultural understandings of sex work and sex workers. The book draws on political discourse theory and is international in its scope, with analysis of legal cases, textual sources, and empirical data gathered through interviews with activists from several different countries in the Global North and South. The book traces how the concept of dignity is used in a range of legal and political discourses on sex work and ultimately asks to what extent dignity-based discourses help to advance, or hinder, sex workers’ social inclusion. This book will appeal to students and researchers interested in sex work and feminism, as well as those who study human dignity. Its interdisciplinary nature means it will appeal to those working in a range of disciplines, including law, sociology, philosophy, and political theory.

Download or read book Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters written by Doctor Jo Doezema and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-13 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is the international community so concerned with the fate of prostitutes abroad? And why does the story of trafficking sound so familiar? In this pioneering new book, Jo Doezema argues that the current concern with trafficking in women is a modern manifestation of the myth of white slavery. Combining historical analysis with contemporary investigation, this book sheds light on the current preoccupations with trafficking in women. It examines in detail sex worker reactions to the myth of trafficking, questions the current feminist preoccupation with the 'suffering female body' and argues that feminism needs to move towards the creation of new myths. The analysis in this book is controversial but crucial, an alternative to the current panic discourses around trafficking in women. An essential read for anyone who is concerned with the increased movement of women internationally and the attempts of international and national governments to regulate this flow.

Download or read book Listening to the Language of Sex Workers An Analysis of Street Sex Worker Representations and Their Effects on Sex Workers and Society written by Jill Linnette McCracken and published by . This book was released on with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation argues that the material conditions of many street sex workers--the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers' bodies, identities, and spirits--are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. My research is an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, while situating sex work and the industry as rhetorical constructions. My research offers an example of how an examination of the signs and symbols that comprise"material conditions"can be rhetorically analyzed in order to better understand how goals, agendas, interests, and ideologies are represented and implemented through language. Located central to my analysis are the street sex workers' voices. I use an ideological rhetorical analysis, or rhetorically--the study of how language shapes and is shaped by cultures, institutions, and the individuals within them, and ideologically--the identification and examination of the underlying assumptions of communicative interactions. I delineate how these material conditions are reproduced and, at times, subverted, and I offer an outline for modifying the discourse used in policy in ways that are more empowering and authentic to sex workers' lives. Policy makers, activists, and academics, among others, wrestle with complicated issues to analyze and write laws and policies and to design social services. Discourse is always at the center of these struggles. Because my study investigates the language of policy-making and the people who forge it, it has implications for ethics and policy in relation to gender studies, cultural studies, and ethnographic research. Examining the rhetorical constructions and interactions and their related effects on policy elucidates the discursive complexity that exists in meaning-making systems. This analysis also offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.

Download or read book Sex Work written by Colette Parent and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-09-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, abolitionists sought to stamp out sex work by penalizing all involved. In the generation that followed, neo-abolitionists looked at the sex industry from a feminist perspective, claiming that workers were victims caught in a patriarchal matrix. Yet both agreed that the industry was a destructive and corrupting force that should be eliminated. In this radical volume, five academics and activists convey their vision of prostitution as work, reclaiming the place of sex workers in the discussion of their lives and their work, and opposing discourses that position them as merely victims without agency.

Download or read book Street Corner Secrets written by Svati P Shah and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street Corner Secrets challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city of Mumbai that are seldom placed within the same analytic frame—brothels, streets, and public day-wage labor markets (nakas), where sexual commerce may be solicited discretely alongside other income-generating activities. Focusing on women who migrated to Mumbai from rural, economically underdeveloped areas within India, Svati P. Shah argues that selling sexual services is one of a number of ways women working as laborers may earn a living, demonstrating that sex work, like day labor, is a part of India's vast informal economy. Here, various means of earning—legitimized or stigmatized, legal or illegal—overlap or exist in close proximity to one another, shaping a narrow field of livelihood options that women navigate daily. In the course of this rich ethnography, Shah discusses policing practices, migrants' access to housing and water, the idea of public space, critiques of states and citizenship, and the discursive location of violence within debates on sexual commerce. Throughout, the book analyzes the epistemology of prostitution, and the silences and secrets that constitute the discourse of sexual commerce on Mumbai's streets.

Download or read book Street Sex Work and Canadian Cities written by Shawna Ferris and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Our voices scrubbed out and forgotten. There are those who research and write about sex workers who often forget we are human.” —Amy Lebovitch Shawna Ferris gives a voice to sex workers who are often pushed to the background, even by those who fight for them. In the name of urban safety and orderliness, street sex workers face stigma, racism, and ignorance. Their human rights are ignored, and some even lose their lives. Ferris aims to reveal the cultural dimensions of this discrimination through literary and art-critical theory, legal and sociological research, and activist intervention. Canadian cities are striving for high safety ratings by eliminating crime, which includes “cleaning” urban areas of the street sex industry. Ironically, sex workers also want to live and work in a safe environment. Ferris questions these sanitizing political agendas, reviews exclusionary legislative and police initiatives, and examines media representations of sex workers. This book has much to offer to educators and activists, sex workers and anti-violence organizations, and academics studying women, cultural, gender, or indigenous issues.

Download or read book Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe written by Synnøve Økland Jahnsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once again, prostitution occupies a prominent position on public and political agendas, both nationally and internationally. A topic of concern and interest within social and academic realms, it is a highly moralised, contested issue that is at the centre of heated and drawn-out debates. With each chapter dedicated to a separate country and written by a national authority on the subject, Assessing European Prostitution Policies seeks to explore how prostitution is regulated in 21 European countries, thus drawing out important implications for an effective and humane prostitution policy. Indeed, this innovative volume brings together systematic accounts of how national and local forms of governance influence the commercial market for sex as well as the lives of sex workers and third parties. All chapters cover the history of prostitution policy, national laws regulating prostitution, policy formulation and implementation, the national discourse on prostitution, the gap between national and local regulation, the impact of policy on the lives and rights of sex workers, and sex worker advocacy organizations. In addition to this, the authors examine and highlight how immigration, labour, fiscal and welfare law have as much impact on the sex trade as designated prostitution law. A unique interdisciplinary title that is comprehensive in its coverage, Assessing European Prostitution Policies will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, sex worker advocacy organisations and policy makers interested in fields such as Sexuality and Prostitution, Public Policy, Criminology and Gender Studies.

Download or read book Criminalising the Purchase of Sex written by Jay Levy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an attempt to abolish prostitution, Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex in 1999, while simultaneously decriminalising its sale. In so doing, it set itself apart from other European states, promoting itself as the pioneer of a radical approach to prostitution. What has come to be referred to as ‘the Swedish model’ has been enormously influential, and has since been adopted and proposed by other countries. This book establishes the outcomes of this law – and the law’s justifying narratives – for the dynamics of Swedish sex work, and upon the lives of sex workers. Drawing on recent fieldwork undertaken in Sweden over several years, including qualitative interviewing and participant observation, Jay Levy argues that far from being a law to be emulated, the Swedish model has had many detrimental impacts, and has failed to demonstrably decrease levels of prostitution. Criminalising the Purchase of Sex: Lessons from Sweden utilises a wealth of respondent testimony and secondary research to redress the current lack of primary academic research and to contribute to academic discussion on this politically-charged and internationally relevant topic. This original and timely work will be of interest to sex worker rights organisations, policy makers and politicians, as well as researchers, academics and students across a number of related disciplines, including law, sociology, criminology, human geography and gender studies.

Download or read book The Subject of Prostitution written by Jane Scoular and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and contingencies of sex work in late modernity. The book analyses contemporary citizenship discourse and the law's ability to meet the competing demands of empowerment by sex workers and protection by radical feminists who view prostitution as the epitome of patriarchal sexual and economic relations. Its central focus is the role of law in both structuring and responding to the 'problem of prostitution'. By developing a distinctive constitutive approach to law, the author offers a more advanced analytical framework from which to understand how law matters in contemporary debates and also suggests how law could matter in more imaginative justice reforms. This is particularly pertinent in a period of unprecedented legal reform, both internationally and nationally, as legal norms simultaneously attempt to protect, empower and criminalise parties involved in the purchase of sexual services. The Subject of Prostitution aims to overcome the current aporia in these debates and suggest new ways to engage with the subject and law. As such, The Subject of Prostitution provides an advanced theoretical resource for policymakers, researchers and activists involved in contemporary struggles over the meanings and place of sex work in late modernity.