Prostitution and sex work

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teela Sanders ◽  
Barbara G. Brents
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sexual Behaviour ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Swedish Model ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Male Client ◽  
Sexual Services ◽  
Sex Wars

This essay discusses the debates about prostitution and sex work in relation to the ‘sex wars’ paradigm, posing questions about its theoretical usefulness in addressing the regulation of commercial sexual activity between adults. The authors map the global trend in accepting the ‘Swedish model’ for managing the sex industry, noting the problems that have resulted with the turn to criminalization that many Western countries have taken in recent years. This ‘turn’ has been influenced significantly by myths about sex trafficking and the belief that all commercial sex is in some ways forced, coerced, or exploitative. The authors discuss the discourses that frame the male client as the ‘offender’ and the female as the ‘victim and offender’. The consequences are reviewed both for individuals engaging in sexual services and for contemporary feminist debates. The human rights perspective can offer useful insights for understanding and regulating sexual behaviour.

scholarly journals The Double-Edged Sword of Health and Safety: COVID-19 and the Policing and Exclusion of Migrant Asian Massage Workers in North America

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Elene Lam ◽  
Elena Shih ◽  
Katherine Chin ◽  
Kate Zen
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The State ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Sexual Services

Migrant Asian massage workers in North America first experienced the impacts of COVID-19 in the final weeks of January 2020, when business dropped drastically due to widespread xenophobic fears that the virus was concentrated in Chinese diasporic communities. The sustained economic devastation, which began at least 8 weeks prior to the first social distancing and shelter in place orders issued in the U.S. and Canada, has been further complicated by a history of aggressive policing of migrant massage workers in the wake of the war against human trafficking. Migrant Asian massage businesses are increasingly policed as locales of potential illicit sex work and human trafficking, as police and anti-trafficking initiatives target migrant Asian massage workers despite the fact that most do not provide sexual services. The scapegoating of migrant Asian massage workers and criminalization of sex work have led to devastating systemic and interpersonal violence, including numerous deportations, arrests, and deaths, most notably the recent murder of eight people at three Atlanta-based spas. The policing of sex workers has historically been mobilized along fears of sexually transmitted disease and infection, and more recently, within the past two decades, around a moral panic against sex trafficking. New racial anxieties around the coronavirus as an Asian disease have been mobilized by the state to further cement the justification of policing Asian migrant workers along the axes of health, migration, and sexual labor. These justifications also solidify discriminatory social welfare regimes that exclude Asian migrant massage workers from accessing services on the basis of the informality and illegality of their work mixed with their precarious citizenship status. This paper draws from ethnographic participant observation and survey data collected by two sex worker organizations that work primarily with massage workers in Toronto and New York City to examine the double-edged sword of policing during the pandemic in the name of anti-trafficking coupled with exclusionary policies regarding emergency relief and social welfare, and its effects on migrant Asian massage workers in North America. Although not all migrant Asian massage workers, including those surveyed in this paper, provide sexual services, they are conflated, targeted, and treated as such by the state and therefore face similar barriers of criminalization, discrimination, and exclusion. This paper recognizes that most migrant Asian massage workers do not identify as sex workers and does not intend to label them as such or reproduce the scapegoating rhetoric used by law enforcement. Rather, it seeks to analyze how exclusionary attitudes and policies towards sex workers are transferred onto migrant Asian massage workers as well whether or not they provide sexual services.

scholarly journals Transformational sexualities: Motivations of women who pay for sexual services

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072090464
Author(s):  
Sarah Kingston ◽  
Natalie Hammond ◽  
Scarlett Redman
Keyword(s):  
Sex Workers ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Sexual Agency ◽  
Women Clients ◽  
Female Sex Worker ◽  
Sex Worker ◽  
Male Client ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Sexual Services

Previous research on client motivations to purchase sexual services in the UK has predominantly focused on the experiences of men. Women who buy sex have largely been overlooked as it is commonly assumed that women provide, rather than purchase, sexual services. In addressing this empirical absence, this article examines data gained from 49 interviews with women clients and sex workers. It examines the reasons why women decide to purchase sexual services in the UK. We argue that the increasing importance of contemporary capitalism and consumerism has shaped women's engagement in the sex industry as clients. We show how women's sexual agency and assertiveness as clients, inverts the female sex worker/male client binary assumed to characterize commercial sex and illustrates the overlap and convergence of male and female sexuality. Our research thus contributes to an understanding of female sexuality more broadly, as exemplifying the hallmarks of ‘transformational sexualities’ in cosmopolitanism (Plummer, 2015).

The Koreanization of the Australian Sex Industry: A Policy and Legislative Challenge

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-36
Author(s):  
Norma Caroine
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Australian Government ◽  
South Korean Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Government ◽  
Operating Environments ◽  
The Us

South Korea enacted Legislation in 2004 that penalizes pimps, traffickers, and sex industry customers while decriminalizing people in prostitution and offering assistance to leave the sex industry. In contrast, Australia Legally recognizes most sex industry activities. This article argues that Australia`s Laissezfaire approach to the sex industry hampers South Korean government efforts to prevent the crime of sex trafficking. Since 2004, pimps and traffickers have moved their activities from South Korea to countries like Australia and the US that maintain relatively hospitable operating environments for the sex industry. The Australian government should reconsider its approach to prostitution on the basis of its diplomatic obligations to countries Like South Korea and the need to uphold the human rights of women in Asia who are being trafficked and murdered as a result of sexual demand emanating from Australia. Australia should coordinate its policy on prostitution with South Korea to strengthen the region`s transnational anti-trafficking response.

scholarly journals Justice and Civil Liberties on Sex Work in Contemporary International Human Rights Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Belinda Brooks-Gordon ◽  
Marjan Wijers ◽  
Alison Jobe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Adult Women ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
International Consultation ◽  
Forced Labour

To fulfil obligations in international law State parties have to take the issue of human trafficking seriously. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides General Recommendations (GR) to member states on the interpretation of the Women’s Convention. In 2018 the CEDAW Committee started to develop a GR on trafficking in women and girls in a process planned to conclude in 2020. The first stage towards this was through the publication of a Concept Note to serve as a basis for dialogue during the two-year international consultation period. The Concept Note is a vital link in a textual chain because it frames the policy problem and actively constructs its own ‘documentary reality’. This article provides a critical analysis of the CEDAW Concept Note on the grounds that such analysis provides an understanding of its discursive construction of trafficking, migrant labour and sex work, by an institution responsible for international jurisprudence on human rights. Analysis of the Concept Note explores the documentary constructions including narratives that merge adult women with girls, the symbolism of exploitation, the silencing of scientific research, the elision of sex worker voices, and sex work as work. The analysis leads us to conclude that the General Recommendation should define what counts as ‘exploitation’, and ‘forced labour’, and address the growing international recognition of best evidence on the wider impact of sex work laws, in order that legal framing and constructions of sex trafficking are not erroneously used to curtail rights of sex workers.

scholarly journals Modern-day slavery, human rights and the sex industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Chrismas ◽  
Brandi Chrismas
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sex Slavery ◽  
The Government ◽  
Modern Day Slavery

This article explores the sex industry in Canada as modern-day slavery and an ongoing violation of basic human rights. Some argue that the sex industry is something that women or children choose to do as a legitimate profession, and others argue that they are exploited and manipulated by other people for indebtedness, for clothing, food, shelter or to support substance or alcohol addictions. How should the laws around sex trafficking and sexual exploitation be designed? The government could be in a position to legally ensure dignity and human rights protection for those engaged in selling sex. This paper highlights the perspectives of survivors of the sex industry as they describe heart-wrenching experiences that include torture, physical threats, psychological fear, and manipulation. As the public discourse grows around this ongoing scourge, momentum for change is also growing. There have been numerous efforts to address, disrupt, and end this social scourge. Our awareness of modern-day sex slavery atrocities seems to coincide with a greater sense of respect for fundamental human rights and a desire to protect them.

scholarly journals Hustling the Platform

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-551
Author(s):  
Kate Hardy ◽  
Camille Barbagallo
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Risky Behaviors ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Security Checks ◽  
Sexual Services ◽  
And Control

An increasing amount of sex work in the United Kingdom is now digitally mediated, as workers and clients identify each other, agree prices and services, undertake security checks, and often make payment through various platforms and websites. Existing accounts of “digital sex work” have been both overly technological deterministic and optimistic, largely invisibilizing capital and the new forms of power and control it enables. The authors argue that the dominant platform for digital sex work in the United Kingdom, AdultWork, is reshaping the market in direct sexual services, driving down standards and prices, and normalizing risky behaviors. The article posits that these changes in the sex industry are symptomatic and reflective of wider shifts in labor-capital relations and technology and therefore argues that bringing research on platform work and sex work into closer dialogue is mutually productive. Studies of digital sex work would benefit from critical insights into power and control in platform work, while scholars of platform work—and of work and employment more generally—have much to learn from paying attention to the gendered labor of sex workers. In particular, resistance and collective organizing among sex workers, some of the most marginalized workers in contemporary capitalism, can suggest wider strategies of labor resistance and transformation in platform work and beyond.

scholarly journals 'I've Never Been So Exploited': The consequences of FOSTA-SESTA in Aotearoa New Zealand

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Tichenor
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Safety Risks ◽  
Health And Safety Risks

Aotearoa New Zealand’s 2003 decriminalisation of sex work has reduced the exploitation of sex workers, as well as the health and safety risks in the industry. Nevertheless, United States-driven criminalising policies still influence sex workers abroad. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Acts (FOSTA-SESTA) effectively criminalised websites where sex workers advertise. Shortly before that, the FBI shut down the internationally used Backpage.com, leading many sex workers in both countries to return to the streets or brothels. These events contributed to the rising dominance of one advertising website, NewZealandGirls.com. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews and four observation cases with sex workers in Auckland, in this paper, I explore the international consequences of FOSTA-SESTA and the closure of Backpage on my participants. I show that this punitive approach to segments of the online sex industry has not only placed sex workers in greater financial insecurity, but has reduced their ability to control their working conditions. These outcomes, I conclude, have undermined the positive impacts of decriminalisation, while exacerbating socioeconomic, racial, gender, and legal inequalities in Auckland’s sex industry.

scholarly journals Editorial: Understanding Exploitation in Consensual Sex Work to Inform Occupational Health & Safety Regulation: Current Issues and Policy Implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 238
Author(s):  
Cecilia Benoit
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Safety Regulation ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Health Safety ◽  
Consensual Sex ◽  
Sexual Services

The impetus behind this Special Issue emerged from a quest to move beyond binary thinking in the contemporary period about people who sell sexual services, including recent disputes about “sex trafficking vs [...]

Trafficking

Focaal ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2007 (49) ◽  
pp. 124-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Schober
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Women And Children

Kamala Kempadoo, Trafficking and prostitution reconsidered: New perspectives on migration, sex work, and human rights. London and Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005, 247 pp., ISBN 1-59451-096-2 (paperback).Kathryn Farr, Sex trafficking: The global market in women and children. New York: Worth Publishers, 2005, 262 pp., ISBN 0-71675-548-3 (paperback).

scholarly journals Sex trafficking and sex tourism in a globalised world

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 1104-1115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Brooks ◽  
Vanessa Heaslip
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Sex Tourism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose This paper aims to explore the dark side of the relationship between gender, mobility, migration and tourism. Specifically, the paper looks at one form of human trafficking, the global sex industry and the relationship between sex trafficking and sex tourism. More particularly, the paper examines the global sex industry (Goh, 2009; Sasse, 2000, 2001) and the impact of migration and human rights aspects (Voronova and Radjenovic, 2016) of sex trafficking and sex tourism, as well as the emotional dimensions of trauma, violence and vulnerability (Heaslip, 2016). Design/methodology/approach The paper is an interdisciplinary discussion paper combining socio-economic perspectives (Goh, 2009; Brooks and Devasayaham, 2011), human rights perspectives (Cheah, 2006), migration perspectives (Voronova and Radjenovic, 2016), tourism perspectives (Carolin et al., 2015) and health perspectives (Cary et al., 2016; Matos et al., 2013; Reid and Jones, 2011). The contribution of these intersecting perspectives to an understanding of sex trafficking and sex tourism is explored. Findings The paper highlights the moral and ethical responsibility of the tourist industry to counteract sex trafficking and sex tourism, an issue which tourism studies have failed to fully engage with. In presenting the human costs of trafficking from a gender perspective, the paper considers the ways in which the tourism industries, in some countries, are attempting to respond. Research limitations/implications The originality of the research is the focus on the dark side of the relationship between gender, mobility and tourism through sex trafficking and sex tourism drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective. Social implications The paper looks at the individual and social implications of sex trafficking and sex tourism for different countries and states and for the individuals concerned. In addition, it looks at the ways in which the tourism industry is responding to sex trafficking and sex tourism and the social impact of this. Originality/value In theorising the relationship between gender, migration, sex trafficking and tourism from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring the societal and individual impact, this paper provides a framework for further empirical research or policy changes with regard to the intersection of sex trafficking and tourism.

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