Tracing lines of horizontal hostility: How sex workers and gay activists battled for space, voice, and belonging in Vancouver, 1975–1985

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, indoor sex workers were pushed outdoors onto the streets of Vancouver's emergent gay West End, where a small stroll had operated for several years. While some gay activists contemplated solidarity with diversely gendered and racialized sex workers, others galvanized a campaign, alongside business owners, realtors, police, city councillors, and politicians to expel prostitution from their largely white, middle-class enclave. Sex workers commanded inadequate capital to thwart the anti-vice, neo-liberal lobby. Instead, an assimilationist, homonormative gay politics played out on the backs of an even more vulnerable and stigmatized sexual minoritythe majority of whom were low-income, street-involved women, men, and maleto-female (MTF) transsexuals of colour.

The Loss of Boystown and Transition to Online Sex Work: Strategies and Barriers to Increase Safety Among Men Sex Workers and Clients of Men

“…The interviews with men and trans sex workers and buyers expand on the literature documenting historical displacement of sex workers from Vancouver’s West End neighborhood (Ross, 2010; Ross & Sullivan, 2012), and provide important insights into the ways in which men in the sex work industry have experienced opposition from residents, urban planners, and police in the context of the gentrification of Boystown. The current study describes the displacement of visible sex work through elevated violence and harassment from police on the streets, exploiting the vulnerabilities of men sex workers and impeding their ability to protect against unsafe sexual transactions.…”

“…Historically, men sex workers in Vancouver, Canada, have faced considerable legal and political challenges, particularly during the mid-1970s and 1980s when those soliciting and working in the city’s gay West End neighborhood were met with Vancouver’s abolitionist residents, business owners, urban planners, and police who strove to expel sex workers from the area (Ross & Sullivan, 2012). Men sex workers continued to be pushed out from newly gentrified neighborhoods in Vancouver.…”

The impact of construction and gentrification on an outdoor trans sex work environment: Violence, displacement and policing

“…Policing practices continue to be instrumental in processes of gentrification as demonstrated in our study. For example, making complaints against sex workers is a common tactic used by residents and businesses to remove sex workers from an area (Ross and Sullivan, 2012). …”

Remaking South Beach: metropolitan gayborhood trajectories under homonormative entrepreneurialism

“…Such politics support (normalize) market-friendly ways of gender and sexual dissidence while marginalizing those that are not. Bell and Binnie (2004) draw attention to the new 'queer unwanted', which include sex workers, those who frequent cruising grounds and spaces of public sex (Ross and Sullivan, 2012;Andersson, 2012;Hubbard, 2001Hubbard, , 2004; transgenders (Nash, 2011;Doan, 2007); LGBT people of color (Weinraub, 2011;Visser, 2008;Nero, 2005;Nast, 2002); and the overtly political/activist/anti-capitalist (Freedman, 2013;Wilkey, 2013;G. Brown, 2007;Sears, 2005).…”