WEEK 13: Sex Worker Activisms

This is my last blog post of the semester, and its topic is appropriately sex workers activisms. We’ve returned in the last few weeks to Ditmore’s argument that we move “beyond the ‘sex’ in sex work” in our consideration of the politics, policies and “problems” of the global sex industry. As we’ve discussed, she argues that sex workers are never only sex workers; like all people, they have lives that are separate from their work, and should thus be recognized and valued as human beings, valuable members of their communities, and labourers in the global economy.

This, as you know from our reading last week, is why, despite the difficulties of doing so, feminist researchers insist that sex workers’ voices and experiences be included in research processes – especially those whose objective is policy creation and implementation (O’Neill and Pitcher, in Ditmore 2010).

Our readings this week focus largely on the ongoing debate between sex workers and (some) FEMINISTS and the particular brand of feminist politics they advocate. This is not a new conversation, either for them or us, but ending the semester by identifying the fundamental conflicts and debates between factions is necessary to moving forward: As these readings make clear, sex workers (many of whom are also feminists) need the support of feminists and other social justice allies in order to achieve their goals of safety, improved working conditions, etc.

Ditmore refers to this in the Section 5 title as “organizing beyond divides, and the two chapters in this section describe the ways in which sex workers, friends and advocates can work together to achieve success. Garofalo focuses on sex worker organizing in Europe, out of which has emerged two recent documents, the Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto and the Declaration of the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe. Pay attention as your read this chapter to the following issues: the concerns of conference organizers, the process by which participants were chosen for the conference, where the funding came from, why political alliances were/are so important for sex worker activisms and organizing in Europe, and why the author argues that those political alliances should mobilize around migrant and labour rights rather than anti-trafficking discourses.

Ditmore’s chapter closes out the book by discussing the wide variety of sex worker activists and organizations that have been created in the last four decades or so, most of which have mobilized to form the Global Network of Sex Projects.

Nagle’s Section 5 undertakes a similar project, which is to document the trajectory of sex workers activism – but by highlighting the voices and experiences of sex worker feminists themselves who are involved in (at least) both political movements. Carol Leigh discusses her passionate engagement with feminism, her disagreements with anti-porn feminists, and the importance of the feminist critiques of language that led her to be the first person to use the term “sex worker.” Other chapters in this section engage in similar discusses about the contradictions and incongruities inherent in identifying and both a feminist and a sex worker, and these are what we’ll discuss in class.

And led by Leigh’s statement that “like many other women, [she] was raised to trade sexuality for survival, or some social advantage (i.e., a good husband or boyfriend)” (229), we’ll return to the argument that we ran into in Jeffreys several weeks ago that heterosexual marriage/sexual relations are just another form of prostitution. This argument justifies her (and other abolitionist feminists’) argument that all prostitution is a form of violence against women, while Leigh uses it to argue that prostitution is a form of work like any other in a patriarchal society in which women are taught/expected to use their (hetero)sexuality to get ahead. Here you start to see how one very old feminist critique of the gender imbalances between men and women (remember, British political theorist Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to make this argument back in 1792) can be mobilized for two very different – yet both feminist – agendas.

So, in addition to the specific issues I’ve flagged above, our overarching question for this week will be: What has been the cause of such historical animosity between sex workers and (some) feminists? And what might be done to repair the relationship?

Your Final Project and Some Other Stuff, Too

As I’ve mentioned in class, because Monday, April 9^th is a holiday, our last class will be Wednesday, April 11^th, and your Term Projects are due in hard copy at the start of class on that day. I’ll also be talking about the Final Exam on that day and will answer any questions that you have.

With all that in mind, don’t forget about my office hours if you have any questions, would like to brainstorm about the Term Project, or just want to chat!

 

I’ll see you all in class! In the meantime, happy reading, and please don’t hesitate to stop by during my office hours or e-mail me at kawilliams(at)mtroyal.ca if you have any questions.

WEEK 12: Sex Work and the State

This week marks the last week in Part 5 of our course, in which we’ve focused, as Ditmore, et al. advocate, on moving beyond the sex in sex work. In the first part of this section, we read and discussed the fact that, for most sex workers, being a sex worker isn’t their only—or even their primary—identity. This is a theme that will pop up this week, as well, particularly at the end of chapter 12 and in Patty Kelly’s chapter on the regulated sex industry in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Last week was all about putting the ‘work’ back in ‘sex work’ and thinking about why it is that researchers hardly ever seem to ask questions about the primary motivator for workers’ entry into the sex industry: money.

And this week, we’ll see a few different examples of how state policies and their implementation in Mexico, Germany, and the UK shape local sex industries within the context of NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC globalization. You’ll notice that a common theme among these articles is the identification of a dominant national/federal discourse regarding prostitution and the global sex industry alongside different, more localized discourses that affect how/is the dominant discourse gets used in local contexts.

A Review: Neoliberal Economic Globalization

Before I jump into my thoughts on the three chapters in Ditmore that you’re reading for this week, I thought a refresher/primer on the basics of globalization and its (mostly) overwhelmingly negative effects on women, poor people, and people of colour (and not just in the global South, either) would be helpful.

In class on January 11^th and then again in the Week 4 blog, I provided a very general overview of the basic tenets of NEOLIBERALISM and how this particular capitalist economic theory has been adopted by global policymakers and financial institutions as the only economic theory and implemented as the method through which economic globalization should be achieved.

According to Wikipedia, NEOLIBERALISM is a

contemporary form of economic liberalism that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets to promote globalization. Neoliberals therefore seek to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the world.

Additionally, neoliberalism as economic policy “seeks to transfer control of the economy from public to the private sector, under the belief that it will produce a more efficient government and improve the economic health of the nation” (“Neoliberalism,” Wikipedia; accessed 1/11/12).

This economic theory is then implemented in the following ways, all of which I mentioned in the Week 4 blog post:

1. There has been an increased emphasis on the role and power of the consumer-oriented marketplace (i.e., who buys what, why, and where).
2. Because of this, countries around the world (and smaller regions like states and provinces; think Alberta’s oil and gas industry) have intentionally adopted an export-oriented approach to production, focusing on making stuff to sell to others, elsewhere; this has meant moving away from making/producing stuff for and to ensure the health and well-being of their own citizens.
3. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have created layers of labour ranging from the corporation itself to subcontractors to home-based workers.
4. Structural adjustment policies (SAPs) have been implemented since the 1970s as a condition of granting “development” loans to countries, and these SAPs require governments, as a condition of their “development” loan from the IMF or World Bank, to radically restructure their economies to conform to rules and regulations of capitalism.

These four components of NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION have collectively caused the gap between rich people and poor people in most countries to widen and has actually served to increase the number of poor people in the world, most of whom are women. As a result of economic globalization, “the wealth of the world’s 200 richest people is greater than the combined incomes of the poorest 41 percent of humanity” (Anderson and Cavanagh, Field Guide to the Global Economy, p. 27). And that was more than ten years ago. A lot has happened since then, including the ramping up of the military-industrial complex as a result of the events of September 11, 2001 and the resultant “war on terror,” which is also wreaking havoc in the lives’ of people who were already suffering the effects of economic globalization, but that’s a topic for another course.

The money flow in conventional “development” projects is as follows:

Donor country (usually located in the Global North) à IMF or World Bank à In the form of a high-interest loan to the “developing” global South country.

It is the last part of this money flow that’s most important, because “development” projects fuel economic globalization through SAPs (see #4 above).  But the material effects of SAPs on peoples’ lives in “developing” countries—and increasingly in the global North—are in complete opposition to the goals and spirit of “development” as a word in the dictionary that suggests “progress,” forward movement, and “growth.” Rather, conventional “development” projects rooted in SAPs cause the very circumstances that most negatively affect women globally—and men, too, but differently—within the context of ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION. And, as I wrote earlier in the semester, this is key to understanding how and why SEX WORK fits into the puzzle and processes of the global economy.

This week’s readings

I think the connection between the catastrophic effects of ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION on women and the growth in the global sex industry over the course of the last twenty years or so is particularly clear in Patty Kelly’s chapter about state regulation of sex workers in Chiapas. As she demonstrates quite effectively, the relationship between the sex worker and the state in Chiapas is analogous to the relationship between the sex worker and her/his pimp. Her argument is similar to that of Jeffreys’ regarding sex trafficking in which she (Jeffreys) discusses the various ways that “states are involved in procuring and trafficking women” through legalization/regulation of the local sex industry (The Industrial Vagina, p. 173). To more fully understand Kelly’s argument, you may want to review chapter 8 in Jeffreys.

Chapter 11 compares and contrasts the implementation of prostitution policy in two German cities, pointing out that implementation of a federal law looks quite different in different local contexts and is dependent upon how local politicians, law enforcement agencies, and social service providers each conceptualize sex work. The authors argue that “changing the law alone does not change the position of sex work or the situation of sex workers in a given society” (187). Interestingly, you’ll notice that the authors’ explanation of the two ways that prostitution is discussed in the mainstream German media is quite similar to the same discussion here in Canada (190).

Chapter 12 advocates for including sex workers and community members in discussions about and implementation of local (anti?)prostitution policies.

Questions to think about as you read

1. What do MAQUILADORAS have to do with sex work? What are some gender stereotypes embedded in the connection?
2. Identify and discuss OBLIGADAS, MANTENIDOS, and INDEPENDIENTES.
3. Why does Kelly conclude that Mexico = pimp?
4. Discuss the different discourses regarding prostitution in Leipzig and Dortmund. How were these discourses mobilized in each city to create and implement prostitution policy?
5. What complications arise from engaging sex workers in research and consultation? And why do the authors of chapter 12 advocate doing so anyway?
6. What can you conclude about the living and working conditions of sex workers in the UK Midlands based on their concerns and recommendations?

Two Reminders

Don’t forget about my office hours if you have any questions, would like to brainstorm about the Term Project, or just want to chat!

Also, as always, keep track of your CRPs, which are due at the start of class on Mondays. Details about the assignment can be found here. Be sure to include all the required components as described and also remember to bring a copy to submit to me as well as a copy for yourself so that you can refer to it during class.

I’ll see you all in class! In the meantime, happy reading, and please don’t hesitate to stop by during my office hours or e-mail me at kawilliams(at)mtroyal.ca if you have any questions.

WEEK 11: Money and Sex

This week is, as the syllabus and the title of this blog post indicate, all about the connection between money and sex, a taboo subject which, as the authors of chapters 7 through 9 in Ditmore make clear, has frequently been overlooked in research (feminist or otherwise) on sex workers, sex work, and the global sex industry. The authors collectively point out that research on sex work has more often than not focused on the “sex” and not the “work.” They argue that shifting the conversation (as well as the research questions) toward the “work” will yield important discoveries about the importance of money that “can revolutionize the way we understand sex work, and draw important connections to other forms of labor” (Ditmore 5).

Ironically, as Monet points out (in Nagle, p. 219), money and sex are also the two things around which legislation and/or cultural tradition (s) have historically been created and enforced to restrict women’s activities. So why is it that mainstream feminists (particularly abolitionists) have refused to take a look at the global sex industry through the lens of money, economics, neo-liberal globalization, and the migration for work that these international economic processes necessitate?

Some thoughts on Option #2 of the Term Project

Before we get into the nitty gritty of this week’s materials, though, it occurred to me as I was reading chapter 7 in Ditmore that this piece is a nice example of a literature review, or a survey of literature, that’s required for option #2 of the Term Project. In this chapter, Willman offers a short and general discussion of why some economists have only recently begun researching the global sex industry and the sorts of questions they’re asking about it. She then includes other scholars who, although not economists, have considered the economic dimensions of sex work in their research. She ends by identifying a gap in the literature (the voices and experiences of sex workers themselves) and encourages scholars to ask questions about “what money really means to sex workers” by asking them (146).

The importance of money

And that’s where we’ll begin this week: By thinking about what money really means to sex workers, and why. What influence does money have on a person’s entry into the sex industry? And what part does it play in their decision to stay in or leave the profession? By focusing on the “work” part of sex work, we shift our thinking to the largely unexamined fact that, as Weldon points out, “[p]rostitutes aren’t just having sex; they are having sex for money” (151). And since this is “the simple exchange every other laborer makes—doing something relatively undesirable for compensation,” why is it that sex work, but not other forms of labour, is considered deviant (151)?

The other thing to think about here is the global economic context: Globally, women earn significantly less money than men in “women’s” jobs that are centred on caring, cleaning, clerical work, cashiering and catering. These are jobs that are underpaid, undervalued and usually involve exceptionally long hours and no benefits (such as vacation leave, sick time, and unemployment, disability and health insurance). These jobs often offer no opportunity for career advancement and, consequently, no opportunity for increased wages. As I’ve said before, most people in the world are poor, and most of those people are women. And their poverty isn’t their fault, nor is their lack of sustainable and viable opportunities for earning money to support themselves and their families.

But, as we’ve read, and as Petro’s interviews with a variety of sex workers demonstrate, not all women who enter the sex industry do so out of dire financial need; although, the need/desire for money is what they have in common with poor women who choose sex work (chapter 9 in Ditmore).

This need/desire for money is what drives the “bad whore” stigma, which is discussed in Nagle’s Section 4 along with areas of the sex industry that remain clouded in silence and myth. This section illuminates some of the benefits of sex work as well as some of the more complex political implications of sex work.

As you’re reading and preparing for class this week, keep in mind the following questions:

1.      In what specific ways are researchers’ positionalities (review Agustin in Ditmore, 23-27) revealed through the questions they tend to ask sex workers? According to Weldon’s chapter in Ditmore, how do these ideologically-laden questions skew research results and also, as a consequence, what people think they know about sex workers?

2.      Using specific evidence from our reading from this week (and previous weeks, if appropriate), discuss the working conditions of sex workers, including their day-to-day preparations for work, their treatment and status at work, and how they’re treated by various constituencies (such as law enforcement officials) outside of work.

3.      Where do RACISM and WHITE SUPREMACY come into play in the sex industry? Consider the experiences of women of colour and migrant sex workers as discussed by Petro in Ditmore and Aaren, et al in Nagle.

4.      In what ways is sex work the same as other kinds of labour that is done predominantly by women? In way ways is it different? What are the pros and cons of sex work?

Two Reminders

Don’t forget about my office hours if you have any questions, would like to brainstorm about the Term Project, or just want to chat!

Also, as always, keep track of your CRPs, which are due at the start of class on Mondays. Details about the assignment can be found here. Be sure to include all the required components as described and also remember to bring a copy to submit to me as well as a copy for yourself so that you can refer to it during class.

I’ll see you all in class! In the meantime, happy reading, and please don’t hesitate to stop by during my office hours or e-mail me at kawilliams(at)mtroyal.ca if you have any questions.

WEEK 10: Managing Multiple Roles

This week marks the start of our second-to-last unit in the course, which I’ve entitled (after Ditmore’s introduction) “Beyond the Sex in Sex Work.” Since we’ve already read her introduction (see Week 2) and talked about what she means by this concept, you already have a general idea about the sorts of issues that we’ll be reading and talking about over the course of the next few weeks. After focusing on feminist debates over sex work, the various sectors of the global sex industry, and the tricky decoding of trafficking discourses, we now get to hear and concentrate on the voices and perspectives of sex workers themselves. These voices have been there, of course: Doezema is a former sex worker, and we’ve already been reading around in Nagle’s collection of writings by feminist sex workers on various aspects of their jobs. But now and for the rest of the semester, we’re really going to focus on sex workers’ perspectives, approaches, opinions and strategies.

For this week, it’s all about sex workers managing multiple roles: in their relationships, in their communities, in their other paid employment, in their political affiliations, etc. As Ditmore says, “sex workers are never only sex workers” (3), and part of our job this week will be to explore their other identities in addition to and/or other than as sex workers. And, as we’ve been reminding ourselves all along, sex work (particularly prostitution) is done predominantly—but not exclusively—by women, and this week’s chapters in Ditmore start us thinking about the issues faced by male and transgender sex workers (chapters 5 and 6, respectively).

When reading around in Section 3 of Nagle, you’ll notice that this section attempts to provide an alternative to the dominant discourse that assumes that commercial sex is always about “women providing compliant sexual services to men” (11). Chapters on gay male prostitution, the work of a professional dominatrix, feminist porn, heterosexism and homophobia at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada, and the pros and cons of “butch whoredom” draw attention to the various forms that sex work can take for a wide variety of reasons in an almost infinite number of circumstances. All of which we’ll talk about in class!

Two Reminders

Don’t forget about my office hours if you have any questions, would like to brainstorm about the Term Project, or just want to chat!

Also, as always, keep track of your CRPs, which are due at the start of class on Mondays. Details about the assignment can be found here. Be sure to include all the required components as described and also remember to bring a copy to submit to me as well as a copy for yourself so that you can refer to it during class.

I’ll see you all in class! In the meantime, happy reading, and please don’t hesitate to stop by during my office hours or e-mail me at kawilliams(at)mtroyal.ca if you have any questions.