Sex Work Flashcards

Question

Lori Watson (what model to use)

Answer 1

Supports Nordic model - a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized: 1. Prostitution is an exploitative and unequal practice that entrenches existing patterns of gendered injustice 2. Full decriminalization of prostitution is incompatible with existing occupational health and safety standards and securing worker autonomy and equality 3. Sex trafficking and prostitution are functionally similar such that the distinction is irrelevant for public policy; attacking demand is necessary to address the inequalities that fuel both 4. Policies of toleration are proven to increase trafficking for sexual exploitation, demand reduction is most effective

Answer 2

1. Any position aiming to curtail prostitution rests on unjustifiable moralism or paternalism 2. Prostitution is a fully voluntary choice and should be protected. BUT Farley’s study into prostitution in nine countries, documents that 75% of women in prostitution were homeless at the time of entry, and there are limited exit options; sellers do not stand in reciprocal relations of equality with buyers 3. Even if prostitution is exploitative, allowing such exploitation makes sex workers better off 4. Persons have rights to markets in sex such that any prohibitive policies violate rights. BUT Watson argues you cannot buy and sell babies, and markets are not ‘morally neutral’ eg. brides being bought and sold entrench inequality

Answer 3

Argues against criminalisation: 1. Police officers often enforce laws against buying and selling unequally, with women who are targeted and arrested. Consequences for women are also far more severe, eg. with prior criminal convictions, cannot afford legal fees 2. Police are known to coerce and exort sex acts 3. Sex workers cannot be protected by law when crimes have been committed within or outside prostitution 4. Makes sex workers more vulnerable relative to buyers (johns) as buyers know police intervention is unlikely 5. Moral condemnation without practical effects

Answer 4

1. Argues against the phrase ‘sex work’ itself, and that it attempts to legitimise prostitution as ‘just another form of work’. 2. Social conditions of inequality (sex, age, class, race) structure the conditions of entry into prostitution and prostitution internally, hence legal approaches which tolerate or normalise prostitution violate equality principles. 3. When sex is the ‘service’, occupational health and safety standards applicable to every other form of work cannot be met, eg. exposure to infectious diseases. Condom use dependent on cooperation of the john (true) and can be removed to negotiate for a higher price. Health threats cannot be eliminated or reduced to an acceptable level by reasonable modifications eg. STIs. Rape and assault risk is also very high 4. Sex workers do not want to sign contracts for fear of losing autonomy over where they can work 5. Requiring persons in prostitution to comply with civil rights laws (for example, holding them responsible for discrimination for refusing to have sex with someone on the grounds that they are a member of a protected group) is incompatible with respecting their sexual autonomy

Answer 5

1. Because of asymmetrical inequalities between buyers and sellers, supports decriminalisation which raises their social status, and should be provided state support for their basic needs and means for exit. 2. Important for policymakers to know who is there, why they are there, who benefits from prostitution, and who is harmed. 3. Watson self-describes as an ‘egalitarian-liberal’, someone who argues that some level of substantive equality is a necessary condition for meaningfully protecting individual freedom

Answer 6

1. Poor conditions are not intrinsic to sex work - the fact that a person has poor economic prospects or exists in a state of social marginalisation due to sex, race etc does not entail she is incapable of consenting to work or it is wrong to pay for her labour (eg. raises example of selling your body for medical experiments - drug trials are work!) 2. Criminalisation perpetuates stigmatising judgements and reduce their bargaining power in the labour market 3. Paternalism cannot justify limiting the sex industry because even if sex work is difficult and distressing labour, sex workers are better judges of their own well-being than uninformed public officials who know nothing of their values and experiences which led them to choose sex work. Recognising the legitimacy of sex work need not conflict with embracing egalitarian values

Answer 7

1. Argues against sex-work exceptionalism, and that commercial sex exchange is not exploitative because of anything unique to sex; it is exploitative because it is labour under capitalism. 2. Categorises sex work as ‘intimate labour’ 3. Notes that Carol Leigh coined the term ‘sex work’ to provide an alternative to stigmatised language, BUT it avoids a sustained critique of systems of capitalist exploitation and by reproducing key facets of the peculiar rhetoric of work under late capital

Answer 8

Sex work is labour: 1. Identifies systemic economic issues relating to sex work while dissenting with anti-sex work feminists and organisations aiming to ‘rescue’ sex workers 2. Traditional methods of sex work solicitation eg. red light districts have changed as such districts become gentrified and much of sex work moves online. 3. Analyses the concept of the ‘prostitute imaginary’, which are narratives of sex work in the public consciousness, involving 1) dehumanisation, and 2) allows for exertion of control over women sex workers. 4. Typecasting sex work as exploitation or empowerment creates a false dichotomy and dissuades analysis of systemic economic issues: 1) survival sex and 2) lack of worker agency in industries other than sex work. 5. Argues against a ‘rescue industry’ because they 1) use violence or force, 2) lead to surveillance of workers by police and evictions by landlords, and 3) is ineffective on the rate of full-service sex work. 6. Managers in the industry eg. strip-club owners are responsible for ‘pornification’ rather than workers, and that ‘sex workers should not be expected to defend the existence of sex work in order to have the right to do it free from harm

Answer 9

Look at prostitution and the concept of a ‘deserving client’, usually a disabled man who is argued to need sex workers as the only way he can experience physical intimacy - argues this is an ableist idea, related to the desexualisation of disabled people

Answer 10

Responds to Overall, who argues that all sex work is characterised by conditions of capitalism and patriarchy, but Shrage argues this is contextually contingent. There are other contexts eg. Gambia has black male prostitutes, (older) white female customers. HOWEVER sex work does not have to be characterised by inequality in every single social context; just as the existence of high-class escorts who get paid well and can have high expectations for treatment does not in any way undercut the suffering of poor sex workers

Answer 11

‘The Erotic Professional positions herself as answering a ‘calling’ that seems to have barely anything to do with being paid’. Downplays any coercion and positions her as 'sex positive'. This creates the illusion that worker and client are united in their interests

Answer 12

In 2013, a Swedish family court ruled that a young mother named Jasmine did not know what was best for herself; the court saw her sex work not as a flexible job that gave her a livable income while caring full-time for her children, but as a form of ‘self-harm’. The judge ruled that as she was engaged in self-harm, that she was unable to care for her children, and disregarded her warnings that her ex-partner was violent. Her ex was awarded child custody, even though he was violent. When she visited him in order to see the children, he stabbed her to death

Answer 13

1980s - sex worker Nickie Roberts writes that the word to describe working minimum wage, working-class jobs is 'drudgery'. 'Why should I have to put up with a middle class woman asking me why I didn't "do anything - scrub toilets, even?" than become a stripper? What's so liberating about cleaning up other people's shit?' Jobs can be good or bad, but they are still 'jobs'

Answer 14

1. Stigmatisation of certain occupations may be well-founded, on reasoned arguments, but it may also be founded on prejudice or stereotypes of race and gender. Just like it would be fine to hope your child takes up a certain religion, it would be fine to want them not to take up sex work. But in both cases, it is wrong to stigmatise individuals in either category. 2. Argues sex work is 'just work', and is not morally significant enough to distinguish from other forms of work. Just like other kinds of work, there exist subjective moral grounds for objection, and normative grounds for significant regulation 3. Most cultures contain a continuum of commercially tinged relationships between men and women, from prostitution to the inclusion of money in marriage (dowry), expensive dates and sexual favours, eg. nightclub singer who takes song requests, or even a philosophy professor who provides intimate bodily services, in areas deemed central to selfhood

Answer 15

Stella Marr - It is a myth that legal brothels will protect women from pimps and violent johns; the legal brothels in Nevada exploit women too - the legality means that it become ideal business conditions for exploitation Barbara Brents - Evidence indicates women at Nevada brothels feel safe and free. 84% say the job felt safe; because the police, employers, and other workers were their to protect them. Women came there to work due to poverty, to escape the danger of illegal SW, or to supplement their careers in related SW industries (porn, dancing). There was no evidence of trafficking

Answer 16

Argues that anti-prostitution feminism is fundamentally symbolic, as well as carceral, as it invites state hand and regulation. But this carceral approach is often counterproductive, addressing symptoms rather than causes, and failing to grapple with the realities that women do not gain (and may in fact lose) from a punishment-oriented approach. For example, after mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence, white domestic abuse fell, and black domestic abuse rose (due to retaliation by husbands after arrest). Carceralism also reduces willingness to seek help when women know that it will result in the loss of their economic support systems. Eg. in Brazil, harsher domestic violence laws resulted in a drop in reporting due to fears by women Any form of criminalization ends with bad consequences: 1. In the UK, women working together for safety are charged with brothel keeping 2. In Germany, when there is heavy state-regulation, then money flows to managers (male) 3. Under the Nordic model, client demands for privacy and a lack of clients drive women to dangerous conditions

Answer 17

1. Renders questionable any sex work requiring workers to adopt a sexual subjectivity entirely limited by the desires and preferences of the client, and where their own subjectivity is not an engaged factor 2. It is not ethically problematic that a person doing certain labour is useful to the agent paying for this labour (teacher, waiter, sex worker), but it is if it requires the worker to adopt a subjectivity that is not recognised as ontologically distinct 3. BUT argues that queer sex work is acceptable, since 1) the derivatization that occurs in it is driven causally by wider comphet culture, and 2) objectification serves a key role in establishing identities, with sex work one of the few sites where queer desires are constructed as relevant and acceptable. Eg. Stychin - because gay porn enhances the subjectivity of gay men, it cannot be seen as objectifying them, and it not subject to the feminist critique of het porn 4. Hegemonic male heterosexuality is constructed to encourage men to derivatize women and to find derivatized representations of women sexually appealing, so wider context is also responsible. The difference is the privilege of male heterosexuality. Those with recognised and valued sexualities are under greater responsibility to refrain from and reject derivatization, because their privilege affords them greater scop of sexual expression and recognistion 5. Sex work is not inherently (need not be) derivatizing, since it can be constructed in ways that recognises the ontological specificity of the parties

Sex Work Flashcards

(41 cards)