These are notes towards a combined guest lecture for Dr.CutiePants' class on sex work and Dr.Wonderful's class on queer theory and pop culture. (If you knew them, you'd think the silly fake names are totally apt.) It will be (I hope) a complete, coherent lecture by early February.
Big Picture
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 bourgeoisie? Plain old work under capitalism? Let's do some research and decide.
Sex work is also often a place where our understandings 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 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 -- that influenced how I think about sex work and also how I interpret my own academic relationships. 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.
Discussion
The linked subpages house very disorganized (and occasionally blank... all that typing is tiring) discussions of anything and everything I thought was interesting and related to the topic. I have every intention of narrowing and focusing as I work, but for the moment, it reflects the somewhat chaotic nature of my research process. (The folks I asked to look this over are definitely not expected to delve into the subpages, unless you really, really want to.)
Academic Limitations and Queer Potential
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.
Their reading list:
To address Dr. Wonderful's request for a more "101"-level talk and for inclusion of key perspectives in the reading, I'm thinking of a slightly revised list of readings. Is this too much for them? It's a lot of very easy reading, but it's still a lot. The idea is to not have to cover "what is sex work?" and "why aren't you talking about rescuing trafficked girls from white slavery?" myself, to make sure the students have the information they need to follow what I'm saying, and to get across an idea of how massive "sex work 101" and sex work research really are (the Pivot doc should accomplish that).
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>
Chez Stella. "Sex Work: 14 Answers to Your Questions." chezstella.org. Stella and UQAM’s Service aux collectivités, 2007. 29 Dec. 2011. <http://www.chezstella.org/docs/14answers.pdf>
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
- pages 3-9 only (the table of contents and executive summary...)
Sycamore, Mattilda Bernstein. "There's More to Life Than Platinum: Challenging the Tyranny of Sweatshop-Produced Rainbow Flags and Participatory Patriarchy." That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2008.
Yee, Jessica. "Sex Work and Feminism: An Interview with anna Saini." Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. Ed. Jessica Yee. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2011. 93-96.
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
Plaid, Andrea. "'No, I Would Follow the Porn Star's Advice': A Case Study in Educational Privilege and Kyriarchy." Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. Ed. Jessica Yee. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2011. 97-103.
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
Smallman, Vicky. "Contingent Academic Work in the Canadian Context." Retrieved from http://www.chicagococal.org/downloads/Unions-Canada.pdf
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>
Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008.
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>
Wilson-Kovacs, Dana. "Some Texts Do It Better: Women, Sexually-Explicit Texts and the Everyday." Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture. Ed. Feona Attwood. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
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