Women's Studies 2163A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Sex Worker, Janet Mock, Social Stigma
2 May 2018
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Lecture 6 – Sex work: Unmasking the Stigma and Stereotypes
- TOPICS:
o Myths and assumptions
o Legal models
o Stigma management
Sex work industry
- Large + complex trade
- Two main branches:
o Direct
▪ Street based
▪ Brothels
▪ Escorts
▪ Home based
▪ Independently-rented apartment
o Indirect
▪ Erotic dance/lap-dancing
▪ Retail
▪ Virtual
- Does stigma change based on the sex work you are involved in
o Webcaming is indirect – does not mean they are safe from the stigma
Assumptions and Myths
- How do you think sex workers are represented in the media? What are the stereotypes we associated
with sex workers?
o At risks for disease, slut, drug addict, hooker, cheap, junkie
o Oppressed and they must be saved – need to save ALL sex workers
o Theyre all women
o Minorities, indigenous are more likely to be sex workers
o Desperate, NEED the jobs to have the money, to do the drugs
o Come from unstable homes, trauma in the past
o Either glamorized life or the person who is just trying to pay her rent – two extremes
o Acceptable to buy if you are high class
- Sex work is inheritably oppressive and sex workers are all victims who need to be saved
o Deny agency of women who decide to do this work
- Sex workers can not feel empowered, nor do they enjoy their work because of its inherent exploitive
nature
o No agency
- Individuals enter the sex trade from a limited number of socioeconomic, educational and
racial/ethnic background
o E.g. they are a homogenous group
- Sex workers are a high risk group for HIV
o 90% of sex workers have been tested for HIV/AIDS (compared to 8% of sex buyers)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- Sex work and trafficking are the same
o NOT THE SAME
o Trafficking = involves force, fear tactics, coercion, identity taken, money managed or taken
by the pimp
▪ BUT right now receives the bulk of the media attention
o These women are salves and we need to save them
SO POPULAR! With Janet Mock
- Sex worker rescued by rich white man in media – Pretty Woman
- Culture is obsessed with objectification, victimization and silencing of sex workers
o Do not see portrayal of their lives and the politics
- We conflate the idea of what media talks about – sex slaves, sex trafficking
o Important vital issue BUT pity narrative
o Silence, and erase those who are engaged in the sex trade
- Sienna Baskin: Sex workers project
o Work with people in sex industry no matter the reason – choice, circumstances, coercion
▪ Choose it out of options
▪ Do sex work to meet their survival needs
▪ Forced to engage in sex work by someone else = human trafficking BUT human
trafficking is more broad than into the sex trade, there are other trades as well
- Melissa Grant:
o Able to afford to live
o Majority of stories about sex work are either about arrest or violence and death
o Do not get to hear about the sex workers themselves
o People want to talk about human, health, employment BUT we do not think of sex worker
issues as social justice conversation
- Do not see sex work as work
o They are damaged individuals
o Someone who is a sex worker is not heard of – they are silenced
o Have no agency
- Three basic ways that people enter the sex industry:
o 1. CHOICE
o 2.CIRCUMSTANCE
o 3. COERCION
- Why don’t we see sex work as work?
o Messaged we have been given as childhood
o Sex is intimate act, share with someone you love
▪ Sex work makes it a public act – hard for us as a culture
▪ What does it do to sex as a intimate practice if it is now a public practice
o Because historically speaking, sex workers were women
▪ Unpaid and unrecognized work that women do in the home, underpaid for
▪ Sex work is perhaps a symptom of that type of culture
o Not acknowledging it as work – we do not want you to have the power to control your own
sexuality
▪ Way of controlling female sexuality – social stigma, government regulation, social
sanctions
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
- If we sell sex in the form of sex work, how is that different than the other ways that we sell sex in our
cultures?
o Disrupt idea that sex is supposed to be a private act
Canadian Media
- Media is the way in which we get out information but also where the stigma of sex work is
reproduced
- Plays role in how sex work is represented and as a result, hoe we come to understand it
- Take well known stereotypes and use them in their headlines and stories, to create moral panics and
reinforce those negative stereotypes
Victoria, BC – times columnist (1980-2004)
- Analysis of how sex workers are represented in these well known stereotypes
- Their voices were not hold
- 3 OVERARCHING THEMES:
o Contagion
▪ Sex worker is vector of contagion
o Culpability
▪ Responsibility or blame
o Risk
- Early decades of the study, HIV/AIDS is on the rise
o Gets tied in with sex workers
- Vectors of contagion
o They are sources of disease, moral pollutants
o At risk of infecting and damaging the general population
o Position sex work as bad women
o A)DS infected prostitute still working – 1989
o ()V prostitute barred from city centre - 1992
o Whores not only offend the law, they are an embarrassment when the family goes
downtown for dinner – 1981
o street based sex worker are tarnishing images of Victorian BC
- Culpability
o Savvy criminals – comparable to murderers
o Publicly self-stigmatization
▪ Morally destitute
▪ Never again self respect
▪ Worthlessness
o Presented as women who cannot be rescued – fundamentally, orally damaged
o Mid 90s shift from solely responsible to victims of exploitation
▪ Women are regarded as so destitute, then how could they possible be responsible
- Risk
o Entrapment and trafficking as only routes – denies any choice or agency
▪ Saying this is the only reason that they could be in the sex work
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
