Brothels as Hidden Organizations

This chapter examines the nature of the revelation-concealment dialectic faced by the brothels as these organizations work to strategically build visibility despite external pressures to keep them hidden and internal desires to protect the privacy of certain organizational stakeholders. Additionally, in instances of organizational visibility, the authors examine brothels’ strategies for managing core-stigma while attempting to project a socially-acceptable public image. Brothels address this revelation-concealment dialectic by adopting stigma-management strategies of distancing themselves from identities they perceive as socially undesirable and aligning themselves with non-stigmatized industry practices. At the same time, the brothels construct selectively-permeable organizational boundaries through the invitation of controlled outsider boundary-crossings and through the promotion of their own community-engagement efforts. These results extend research on hidden organizations to consider the particular image-management challenges faced by shadowed organizations.

Managing Work-Life Commitments in Legal Prostitution

In this chapter, the authors present data from participants about how legal prostitutes manage work and life boundaries. They argue that work-life management practices are different for stigmatized workers because they must cope with occupational stigma by segmenting work and life realms in acutely distinct ways. The data revealed that work-life boundaries are disciplined by legal mythologies and ambiguities surrounding worker restrictions, occupational ideologies of “work now, life later,” and perceived and experienced effects of community-based stigma. These legal, occupational, and community constructs ultimately privilege organizations’ and external communities’ interests, while individual dirty workers carry the weight of stigma.

Introduction

In Chapter 1, the authors argue that legal sex workers in Nevada experience significant oppression and unfair labor practices. They move beyond traditional feminist arguments about whether or not prostitution is a choice to a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of sex work as an occupation. This chapter explains how the book serves as both an updated resource about the laws and policies which guide legal prostitution in Nevada, and also an intimate look at what life and decision-making is like for women doing sex work. Chapter 1 includes background information on the theoretical lenses which guide the project: the communicative constitution of organizations and feminist standpoint theory. The authors explain how these lenses allow them to privilege the voices of sex workers, and give unique insight into life in the brothels.

When Transferable Skills Can’t Transfer

In Chapter 7 the authors explore the difficulties legal prostitutes experience transitioning out of sex work. Employers often seek universal or “transferrable” skills when hiring, and are less concerned about industry or occupational experience, as long as core skills are visible on applicants’ resumes. However, legal sex workers, like other people in stigmatized occupations or industries, must often hide their work history, which creates challenges for advertising their transferrable skills. This presents a problem of mobility. In this chapter, we argue that employers’ reliance on work history transparency and their desire for transferrable skills creates a paradox for workers in stigmatized fields. These workers must disclose their work history to reveal their transferrable skills. At the same time, they often cannot disclose their work history and the valuable skills gained in their stigmatized occupations. This prevents the transfer of skills, and ultimately, mobility out of stigmatized occupations.

Life after the Brothel

This chapter focuses on the voices of ex-legal sex workers and their narratives about their time in brothels, why they decided to leave, and how they view their past lives. The perspectives of former sex workers are often different from the women currently working in the brothels, and thus these reflections present an even more nuanced understanding of life in and out of the brothels. This is a particularly vulnerable population; some of the women have moved on to illegal prostitution while others are currently in non sex-work jobs, trying to conceal their past. The women share detailed stories and perspectives about their lives in the brothels and their current realities after leaving legal prostitution. Rather than presenting their words broken apart into themes, we present each woman, her story and her experiences together so that readers can begin to see what life is like for a few women as holistic beings.

Selling Intimacy

In this chapter, the authors examine how practices of secrecy inform emotion management and support-seeking behaviors. The findings suggest that concealment practices serve protective functions, contributing to the construction of distinct occupational and social identity roles, avoidance of dirty work stigma, and protection of clients’ definition of the situation. However, the authors also find that dirty workers tend to occupy a tensional space between revelation and concealment, especially when managing difficult emotions related to hidden identity roles. The analysis suggests that resources available for managing emotions are inextricably linked to interactional role performances, and dirty workers may violate secrecy norms to attain levels of intimacy and social support contingent upon shared knowledge of salient social roles.

Author Autoethnography

Chapter 5 is an autoethnographic account of author Breanna Mohr’s lived experiences working in a legal brothel. Initially choosing legal prostitution as an occupation when she was in her early twenties, she found brothel work as a way to have freedom to create her own schedule so she could devote more time to getting her undergraduate degree. Mohr discovered her passion for sex work research towards the end of her undergraduate degree and decided to pursue graduate school to continue her research. In this chapter, Mohr analyzes some critical incidents that have shaped her life in the brothel. She reveals the tension felt in negotiating a price for her services and how she grapples with deciding what monetary value is fair, what she deserves, and what she can get from the client. She also reflects on how taking ownership over her sex worker identity in academia has reduced the impact of shame from the societal stigma placed on legal prostitutes. Mohr tells her story with detail and a raw insider perspective of the industry.

The History and Laws of Nevada’s Legal Brothels

This chapter examines the ways in which Nevada’s history as a libertarian, “Wild West” mining town interweaves with the legal history of the state’s houses of prostitution. The legal brothels are major economic contributors, yet remain continually under public scrutiny because of moral objections to their work. Women working in Nevada’s legal brothels are subject to state laws, city and county ordinances, and informal “police rules”, all of which serve the primary purpose of promoting secrecy through segregation. Keeping legal prostitutes out of sight and away from the communities where they work allows brothels to avoid some stigma associated with the occupation, but also constrains the agency of working women. This legal and historical background provides important contextual information for making sense of brothels’ organizational practices and sex workers’ lived experiences at work and in the communities where they are situated.

Feminisms, Prostitution, and the Sex Trafficking Debates

Chapter 3 addresses the confusing, conflicting, and comingled landscape of sex work research, literature, and popular discourse. First, the authors address the deep divide amongst feminists about prostitution. Long a contentious issue for feminists, we review arguments that all prostitution is violence against women and arguments that prostitution is a viable, potentially empowering occupation. The authors sort through dichotomous positions about whether or not prostitution should be abolished or legalized. Next, they address the controversy between prostitution and trafficking. Currently, the United States is experiencing a moral panic about sex trafficking. An unlikely coalition between scholars and advocacy groups from radical feminism and the Christian right argue that all prostitution is trafficking. The purpose in this chapter is to untangle this conflation. Finally, the authors situate legal prostitution as different from illegal prostitution and legal prostitution in international contexts.

Theories of Organizing, Secrecy, and Stigma

This chapter presents important theoretical contexts for understanding life in legal brothels, including hidden organizations, dirty work, stigma, privacy, and secrecy. Many organizations hide aspects of their organization because their activities are stigmatized. However, because groups with conflicting ideologies, values, and belief systems hold organizations accountable, it is possible that any organization might occasionally experience stigma for some aspect of its business by some social audience. This chapter provides insight into the pervasive role of secrecy in shaping organizational practices, as well as how hidden organizations—and their stakeholders—function despite the stigma attached to their work.