Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work

Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work
Author: Katie Hail-Jares
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2017-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1439914540

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.

Sex Workers Unite

Sex Workers Unite
Author: Melinda Chateauvert
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807061239

A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America’s major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers—not as helpless victims in need of rescue. Even before transgender sex worker Sylvia Rivera threw a brick and sparked the Stonewall Riot in 1969, these trailblazing activists and allies challenged criminal sex laws and “whorephobia,” and were active in struggles for gay liberation, women’s rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. Although the multibillion-dollar international sex industry thrives, the United States remains one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution, and these discriminatory laws put workers at risk. In response, sex workers have organized to improve their working conditions and to challenge police and structural violence. Through individual confrontations and collective campaigns, they have pushed the boundaries of conventional organizing, called for decriminalization, and have reframed sex workers’ rights as human rights. Telling stories of sex workers, from the frontlines of the 1970s sex wars to the modern-day streets of SlutWalk, Chateauvert illuminates an underrepresented movement, introducing skilled activists who have organized a global campaign for self-determination and sexual freedom that is as multifaceted as the sex industry and as diverse as human sexuality.

Red Light Labour

Red Light Labour
Author: Elya M. Durisin
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2018-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774838264

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. The decision provoked wide interest but little new insight into sex work. Red Light Labour addresses Canada’s new legal regime regulating sex work through the analysis of past and present policy approaches and consideration of how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour that foreground the personal perspectives of workers and activists. The contributors highlight the struggle for civic and social inclusion by considering sex workers’ advocacy tactics, successes, and challenges. Red Light Labour promotes social and economic justice within a sex-work-as-labour framework. This book is a timely intervention that showcases up-to-date legal, policy, and social analysis of sex work in Canada.

Selling Sex

Selling Sex
Author: Emily Van der Meulen
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0774824484

"Despite being dubbed "the world's oldest profession," prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it has been criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. Interest in and concern over sex work is not grounded in the lived realities of those who work in the industry, but rather in inflammatory ideas about who is participating, how they wound up in this line of work, and what form it takes. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices - including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors - to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as the social stigma of sex work, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book."--Publisher's website.

Gender Violence, 3rd Edition

Gender Violence, 3rd Edition
Author: Laura L. O'Toole
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 600
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 147984392X

An updated edition of the groundbreaking anthology that explores the proliferation of gendered violence From Harvey Weinstein to Brett Kavanaugh, accusations of gender violence saturate today’s headlines. In this fully revised edition of Gender Violence, Laura L. O’Toole, Jessica R. Schiffman, and Rosemary Sullivan bring together a new, interdisciplinary group of scholars, with up-to-date material on emerging issues like workplace harassment, transgender violence, intersectionality, and the #MeToo movement. Contributors provide a fresh, informed perspective on gender violence, in all of its various forms. With twenty-nine new contributors, and twelve original essays, the third edition now includes emerging contemporary issues such as LGBTQ violence, sex work, and toxic masculinity. A trailblazing text, Gender Violence, Third Edition is an essential read for students, activists, and others.

Sex Work Matters

Sex Work Matters
Author: Melissa Hope Ditmore
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848138407

Sex Work Matters brings together sex workers, scholars and activists to present pioneering essays on the economics and sociology of sex work. From insights by sex workers on how they handle money, intimate relationships and daily harassment by the police, to the experience of male and transgender sex work, this fascinating and original book offers new theoretical frameworks for understanding the sex industry. The result is a vital new contribution to sex-worker rights that explores the topic in new ways, especially its cultural, economic and political dimensions. Readers weary of the sensational and often salacious treatment of the sex industry in the media and literature will find Sex Work Matters refreshing.

Leaving Prostitution

Leaving Prostitution
Author: Sharon S. Oselin
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2014
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 081477072X

While street prostitutes comprise only a small minority of sex workers, they have the highest rates of physical and sexual abuse, arrest and incarceration, drug addiction, and stigmatization, which stem from both their public visibility and their dangerous work settings. Exiting the trade can be a daunting task for street prostitutes; despite this, many do try at some point to leave sex work behind. Focusing on four different organizations based in Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Hartford that help prostitutes get off the streets, Sharon S. OselinOCOsa Leaving Prostitution aexplores the difficulties, rewards, and public responses to female street prostitutesOCO transition out of sex work. Through in-depth interviews and field research with street-level sex workers, Oselin illuminates their pathways into the trade and their experiences while in it, and the host of organizational, social, and individual factors that influence whether they are able to stop working as prostitutes altogether. She also speaks to staff at organizations that aid street prostitutes, and assesses the techniques they use to help these women develop self-esteem, healthy relationships with family and community, and workplace skills. Oselin paints a full picture of the difficulties these women face in moving away from sex work and the approaches that do and do not work to help them transform their lives. Further, she offers recommendations to help improve the quality of life for these women. A powerful ethnographic account, a Leaving Prostitution aprovides an essential understanding of getting out and staying out of sex work."

Not for Sale

Not for Sale
Author: Rebecca Whisnant
Publisher: Spinifex Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2004
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781876756499

Prostitution and pornography are linked with racism and male dominance as well as with imperialism, militarism (including torture) and global corporate culture. The result is devastating harm for women and children within these industries. Subjected to physical and psychological violence - poverty, drug addiction and homelessness are their usual companions. With its mix of personal stories, theory, research, testimony, and accounts of current activism, Not For Sale will be an invaluable resource for all those seeking to inform themselves about the realities of the sex business and will serve to strengthen and broaden feminist resistance to pornography and prostitution.

Male Sex Work and Society

Male Sex Work and Society
Author: Victor Minichiello
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2014-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1939594006

This new collection explores for the first time male sex work from a rich array of perspectives and disciplines. It aims to help enrich the ways in which we view both male sex work as a field of commerce and male sex worker themselves. Leading contributors examine the field both historically and cross-culturally from fields including public health, sociology, psychology, social services, history, filmography, economics, mental health, criminal justice, geography, and migration studies, and more. Synthesizing introductions by the editors help the reader understand the implications of the findings and conclusions for scholars, practitioners, students, and members of the interested/concerned public.

Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research

Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
Author: Susan Dewey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 809
Release: 2018-11-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351133896

The Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research unites 45 contributions from researchers, sex workers, activists, and practitioners who live and work in 28 countries throughout the world. Focusing tightly on the contemporary state of sex industry research through eight carefully selected themes, this volume sets a clear agenda for future research, activism, and policymaking. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective on an expanding field frequently divided by political and ideological conflicts, the handbook clearly establishes the parameters of the field while also showcasing the most vibrant contemporary empirical and theoretical work. Unprecedented in its global scope, the Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research will appeal to students, researchers, and policy makers interested in fields such as sociology of gender and sexuality; crime, justice, and the sex industry; sociology of work and professions; and sexual politics.