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Sex work in the context of "the neoliberal university": Revision

Sex work in the context of
Last updated December 21, 2011 - 8:25pm by sarah beth

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In 2005, Laura Agustin called for the development of cultural studies of commercial sex. Despite the appearance of a proliferation of sex work-related research, media attention to sex work because of Bedford v. Canada, and a certain amount of mainstreaming of sex-positive and queer feminisms in universities (maybe a product of women's studies departments increasingly accepting and becoming gender studies departments?), the bulk of the research I've looked at continues to isolate sex work as an exceptional category for study: it's almost as if sex work happens in a void. We can study nearly anything and everything about it, sometimes including things that are transgressive and often including things that are unethical, but we still study sex work as if it's totally exceptional and as if we will eventually produce findings that define, once and for all, what sex work is like. Agustin writes:
Little work exists in a sex-industry framework, but if we agree that it refers to all commercial goods and services of an erotic and sexual kind, then a rich field of human activities is involved. And every one of these activities operates in a complex socio-cultural context in which the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same. The cultural study of commercial sex would use a cultural-studies, interdisciplinary approach to fill gaps in knowledge about commercial sex and relate the findings to other social and cultural concepts. [...] An approach that considers commercial sex as culture would look for the
everyday practices involved and try to reveal how our societies distinguish between activities considered normatively ‘social’ and activities denounced as morally wrong. This means examining a range of activities that take in both commerce and sex. (618-19)
So my premise is to understand academic work as something that sometimes includes "services of an erotic and sexual kind." I don't mean I think profs are secretly selling blowjobs out of their offices on their off-hours (though I'm sure someone, somewhere is), but rather that universities do often deal in sex in other ways -- as subjects for research and teaching -- and definitely, while they might sometimes try to deny it, deal in bodies: student bodies, bodies of knowledge, people role-playing teacher and student, people filling chairs and offices, people bringing their sexual, gendered, racialized bodies with them everywhere they go. On the very odd occasion, that's even sexy (e.g., the Northwestern thing in 2010). At the same time, academic environments, for better and for worse, are often the context in which sex work is assigned meaning. Is it violence against all women? An empowering experience of being the petty bourgoisie? Plain old work under capitalism? Let's do some research and decide. 
Sex work is also often a place where our understanding of the university are formed and interpreted. I definitely encountered the porno-trope of Stern Professor and Naughty Schoolgirl long before stepping foot on a real university campus. I have revisited that trope in research (tk Kipnis) and read about how the roles are performed and consumed as an articulation and interpretation of tensions about gender and class. The word "coed" should have no meaning today, and it doesn't in universities where women's attendance is the norm, but it's kept alive and meaningful by porn. I suppose the contribution I want to make here is to figure out how to investigate sex work in a way that turns the lens on the environment where the investigation takes place, while still acknowledging the role of sex work environments in shaping and interpreting research. 
  • How is sex work made a part of universities: as sex worker students navigate university systems, as sex work becomes a topic for classes, as sex workers who can't access education continue to be viewed as research subjects?
  • How is the university made a part of sex work: as workers are called on to act out and interpret the roles of teachers, students, and doctors in various sex worksites; as "students" earn a premium price as prostitutes; as sex worker activists demand the resources for doing research themselves?
  • What potentials and limitations for knowledge -- about sex work and about the cultures of research and post-secondary education -- are made possible by these interactions?

 

Their reading list:

Required - 

Anonymous, Ph.D.. "I'd Rather Be a Whore Than an Academic." Bad Subjects 46 (1999). http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1999/46/anonymous.html

Recommended - (I've suggested they skim everything, and read in detail the things they find most interesting)

Craft, Nikki and Melissa Farley. "Why I Made the Choice to Become a Prostitute."Prostitution Research and Education. 1996. http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/WhyIMade.html

Isola, Mark John. "Academic Whores and Publishing Pimps." Bad Subjects 75 (2006). http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2006/75/isola.htm

Smallman, Vicky. "Contingent Academic Work in the Canadian Context." Retrieved from http://www.chicagococal.org/downloads/Unions-Canada.pdf

Purvis, Lara. "Hostile Clashes Dominate Women's Conference." Xtra. 18 July 2011. http://www.xtra.ca/public/Ottawa/Hostile_clashes_dominate_womens_conference-10497.aspx

Pivot Legal Society. Beyond Decriminalization: Sex Work, Human Rights and a New Framework for Law Reform. Vancouver: Pivot Legal Society, 2006. http://www.pivotlegal.org/sites/pivotlegal.org/files/BeyondDecrimLongReport.pdf (table of contents and executive summary, not the whole thing)

 

My reading list:

Agustin, Laura M. "The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex." Sexualities 8.5 (2005): 618-631.

Branch, Kathryn A., Rebecca Hayes-Smith, and Tara N. Richards. "Professors' Experiences With Student Disclosures of Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence: How 'Helping' Students Can Inform Teaching Practices." Feminist Criminology 6.1 (2011): 54-75. <http://fcx.sagepub.com/content/6/1/54.abstract>

Haig-Brown, Celia. "Creating Spaces: Testimonio, Impossible Knowledge, and Academe." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16.3 (2003): 415-433. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0951839032000086763>

Haberkom, Tyrell. "A Political Pedagogy, or In Lieu of Dismantling the University." Academic Matters: OCUFA's Journal of Higher Education. Oct-Nov 2011. 4 Dec 2011. Web. <http://www.academicmatters.ca/2011/10/a-political-pedagogy-or-in-lieu-of-dismantling-the-university/>

Lantz, Sarah. "Sex Work and Study." Traffic 3 "Write the Wrongs" (2003): 31-50.

MacDonald, Gayle.  Feminists Making Change in the University, "Dean's Work, Sex Work, Feminism and Social Change: What do these things have in Common?"  University College Dublin, Ireland, March, 2011. [I doubt I'll get a copy of the paper itself, but I sent an email asking what it was about, so maybe I'll get something interesting.]

Roberts, Ron, Sandra Bergström, and David La Rooy. "Sex Work and Students: An Exploratory Study." Journal of Further and Higher Education 31.4 (2007): 323-334. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03098770701625720>

Roche, Brenda, Alan Neaigus, and Maureen Miller. "Street Smarts and Urban Myths: Women, Sex Work, and the Role of Storytelling in Risk Reduction and Rationalization." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 19.2 (2005): 149-170. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/maq.2005.19.2.149/abstract>

Rosenbloom, Susan Rakosi, and Tina Fetner. "Sharing Secrets Slowly: Issues of Classroom Self-Disclosure Raised by Sex Worker Students." Teaching Sociology 29.4 (2001): 439-453. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/1318945>

 

What's Missing?

- Videos. The kids today like videos. I can't think of anything to show them. 

- I want to foster dialogue about reciprocity, commonality, and accountability between workers in both industries. That is easier said than done. I do not want to foster a debate about which job is "better" or whether or not this or that group of workers is oppressed. In my experience, this is also easier said than done. 

- I can't find any research, besides Jane Gallop's (and she's not exactly on the point I'm aiming for... plus she kind of creeps me out), on women's academic freedom in the 70s-90s, as women's studies departments were emerging, people were having "debates" about sexual harassment that tended to focus on women's rights vs. academic freedom, and the radical feminist anti-prostitution rhetoric we see today was crystallizing. I think this history might provide important context and models for other ways of doing things... and I think it must exist -- I just can't believe no one thought to reframe academic freedom debates in such a way that academic freedom and feminism were one and the same -- but I just don't know where to look. 

sarah beth

sarah beth

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