Inevitably Violent? Dynamics of Space, Governance, and Stigma in Understanding Violence against Sex Workers

Abstract

Radical feminists position any forms of sex work as gender violence against individuals and more broadly for all women in society. I argue against the ideological stance that sex work is inherently violent and as a result should be outlawed, setting out how this ideology and dogma has allowed structural factors to persist which have lead to inevitable violence. In this paper, I argue that despite the abdominally high levels of violence against sex workers across the globe, violence in sex work in not inevitable. Through a review of the literature as well as drawing on research from the UK, I deconstruct the myth of inevitable violence. In turn I argue that violence is dependent on three dynamics. First, environment: spaces in which sex work happens has an intrinsic bearing on the safety of those who work there. Second, the relationship to the state: how prostitution is governed in any one jurisdiction and the treatment of violence against sex workers by the police and judicial system dictates the very organisation of the sex industry and the regulation, health and safety of the sex work communities. Thirdly, I argue that social status and stigma have significant affects on societal attitudes towards sex workers and how they are treated. It is because of these interlocking structural, cultural, legal, and social dynamics that violence exists and therefore it is these exact dynamics that hold the solutions to preventing violence against sex workers. Towards the end of the paper, I examine the UK's 'Merseyside model' whereby police treat violence against sex workers as a hate crime. It is in these examples of innovative practice despite a national and international criminalisation agenda against sex workers, that human rights against a sexual minority group can be upheld.

Sprostytuowane, zranione, wrobione: konstruowanie reprezentacji pracownic seksualnych w dyskursie abolicyjnym

“…2014;ICRSE 2005ICRSE , 2015ICRSE , 2016Kempadoo, Doezema 1998;NSWP 2015;Sanders 2016;SWAN 2009;Ślęzak 2016). Kryminalizacja i penalizacja pracy seksualnej sprawiają, że osoby pracujące seksualnie funkcjonują często na marginesie lub poza granicami prawa.…”

The “Sociological Equation”: Intersections Between Street Sex Workers’ Agency and Their Theories about Their Customers

“…The systematic review by Deering et al (2014) confirms consistent evidence of disproportionate rates of violence, including lethal violence, directed at and experienced by sex workers. Street sex workers are particular targets (Kinnell, 2013;Sanders, 2016); most vulnerable are Indigenous (Lucchesi, 2019) and transgender workers (Nemoto et al, 2011). Rotenberg (2016) documented 294 known homicides of sex workers in Canada between 1991 and 2014, an average of more than 12 per year, though as Palmater (2016) points out, the over-representation of Indigenous women in street sex work, combined with inadequate responses to disappearances of Indigenous women (especially if they are sex workers), suggests the actual figure is much higher.…”

The Ambiguous Taxation of Prostitution: the Role of Fiscal Arrangements in Hindering the Sexual and Economic Citizenship of Sex Workers

“…In a country where the debate on taxation and its distribution stirs sanguine discussions and strong resentments against tax evaders (Guano, 2010), sex workers have become an easy target for frustrated citizens who, ignoring the predicament in which sex workers are caught, blame them for their woes and for the country's troubled public finances fuelling already strong anti-sex worker resentment and aversion. As Teela Sanders (2016) argues, the status that sex workers are given in society is shaped by broader structural and cultural factors which often contribute to violence against sex workers: social status and stigma have "significant effects on social attitude towards sex workers and how they are treated" (2016, p. 104). Thus, public and official discourses and practices which "position sex workers as non-citizens, as rubbish, not to be cared about" 'other' them as separate from 'normal' individuals, reinforcing "ideas which perpetuate associations with criminogenic offenders, immoral and dangerous sexuality, disease, incivility, and disgust" (Sanders, 2016, p. 104).…”