Dylan Kerrigan
  • Home
  • About
  • Academic Writings
    • Consultancy Summaries
  • Books
  • Opeds/Blogs
  • Other Writings
  • Teaching
    • Graduate Supervision
  • Therapeutic Cultures
  • In the Press
  • Presentations
  • Videos
  • Research
    • Data Visualisations
    • Past
    • Current
    • Future
  • Blog

Talking the Taboo

5/11/2012

0 Comments

 
_The need for and importance of sex worker rights.
Picture
Let’s talk about sex. Specifically sex workers. Those who are employed for sexual labour. The subject is taboo. Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggested societies see things as taboo when they are atypical, when they don’t fit neatly into a society’s normal worldview.

It is fairly uncontroversial to say that prostitution and other forms of sex work are taboo, not to mention illegal. Being taboo, such labour carries a high level of stigma with it. While the criminal status of sex work endangers personal security, encourages police harassment, and engenders abuse and assault. It also means a lack of legal access to workers’ rights and healthcare.

These various forms of oppression make sex workers a highly vulnerable group in society. Now, morally, many people believe sex work is wrong. Often such morality doesn’t look beyond the stigma.  Some ignore that sex work itself is hierarchically differentiated. For example, most stereotypes equate all sex workers with working the streets, or those who have been trafficked as sex slaves.

Both are often the result of structural issues in wider society, poverty and/or violence often being contributing factors in such situations. And in the hierarchy of sexual labour those positions are and have always been the most vulnerable. Yet it is naïve to believe that street walking, forced prostitution, and sex trafficking are an accurate representation of the varied nature of sex work. Rather this idea misrepresents sex work.

Massage parlours, classified ads, pornography, sex shops, peep shows, escorts, and “sport entertainment centres” found in various urban centres of Trinidad suggest most sex work is not to be found on the street at all. Sociologists have also asked if mistresses should be—in labouring terms–described as sex workers too. Do sugar daddies “keep” women financially for sexual returns? Is it a relationship of sexual and economic exchange?

The traditional narrative is that these relationships are based on romance and companionship rather than sexual exploitation. Does class group determine what is and isn’t sex work? Recognising hierarchy within the sex industry makes it easier to accept there is a diversity of experiences and reasons for becoming sex workers just as there are a variety of consumers from different classes and interests.

Our own history is heavily implicated in economic transactions for sex too. Frantz Fanon, discussing sex tourism, described the Caribbean as the “brothel of Europe,” while the Yankee dollar arriving during World War II drew Jean and Dinah famously to the trade. A long history of sex work exists here and sex work isn’t going away any time soon.

Evidence the world over shows throwing people in jail for sex work does not stop the business either, while increases in general economic prosperity bring growth to the sex industry, such as increases in brothels. From a social-science perspective, when you clear the morality away, sex work is service-orientated labour.

Now the suggestion is not that we should rid society of morality. Rather, perhaps its time to confront our own taboos. One way is to change our perspective on the problem of sex work and take it from a sex-worker-rights point of view over a religious and moral one. The first problem with this is that “sex work” is not a legal term here.

Existing legislation—specifically the Sexual Offences Act No 27 of 1986—means we are stuck with the term “prostitution” and its simplified representation of sex work, no doubt reinforcing negative stereotypes of sex workers as bad people along the way. The reality is this sort of simplification is not just about morality or wording; it also engenders higher levels of violence, abuse and exploitation against all sex workers.

Anthropologists often talk about structural violence. It describes social structures—economic, political, legal, religious, and cultural— that stop individuals, groups, and societies from being equal. Structural violence is often embedded in longstanding laws and taboos, normalised by stable institutions and regular experience. Because they seem so ordinary in our ways of understanding the world, they appear almost invisible.

In the case of sex workers, the structural reality of social and cultural stigma, alongside legal impediments, means sex workers are denied access to safety, healthcare, and legal standing for the sake of normality. Clearly there are forms of sex work that are purely exploitative. But is it that all sex work falls under such an umbrella? Or that by giving all sex workers rights it becomes easier to know when it does become exploitation?

Because sex sells and always will, whatever the moral, political or cultural climate.

http://guardian.co.tt/2012-11-05/talking-taboo
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Amerindian
    Bias
    Capitalism
    Carnival
    Census
    Change
    Charlotteville
    Christmas
    Cipriani
    Citizenship
    Class
    Clico
    Colonialism
    Comedy
    Community
    Conspiracy
    Corruption
    Crime
    Critical Thinking
    Cultural Logic
    Cultural Logic
    Cultural Myth
    Culture
    Degradation
    Development
    Differences
    Disabilities
    Discourse
    Discrimination
    Diversity
    Division
    Drugs
    Economic
    Economics
    Economy
    Education
    Emancipation
    Emigration
    Employment
    Environment
    Equality
    Ethnicity
    Ethnocentrism
    Ethnology
    Family
    Gang
    Gender
    Governance
    Government
    Grenada
    Hcu
    History
    Homophobia
    Identity
    Imperialism
    Inequality
    Institutions
    Intellectualism
    Justice
    Language
    Legislation
    Marriage
    Mas
    Militarism
    Military
    Morality
    Multiculturalism
    National Security
    Nepotism
    Opportunity
    Patriarchy
    Policy
    Politics
    Poverty
    Power
    Precolonial
    Prejudice
    Prisons
    Privatisation
    Privilege
    Progress
    Propaganda
    Prostitution
    Race
    Reflexivity
    Relationships
    Religion
    Rights
    Science
    Security
    Segregation
    Sexism
    Sexuality
    Sex Work
    Slavery
    (small-goal) Football
    Social Media
    Soe
    Solidarity
    Speed
    State
    Status
    Success
    Taboo
    Teaching
    Technology
    Tobago
    Tourism
    Trade
    Transparency
    University
    Violence
    War
    White Collar
    White-collar

    Archives

    December 2022
    October 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    August 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    February 2019
    November 2017
    October 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    RSS Feed