‘Children Ask the Damnedest Questions’: Sex(uality) Education as a Social Problem

Perspectives in Human Sexuality is an overview of key debates, research findings and theories in the area of sex and sexuality. This textbook written especially for undergraduate students offers a detailed and comprehensive introduction to sex and sexuality from an Australian and New Zealand perspective. It examines controversial issues such as sex and age, sex work and gay, lesbian and queer sex in a fair and balanced manner.

A Labour of Sex? Male and Female Prostitution

Perspectives in Human Sexuality is an overview of key debates, research findings and theories in the area of sex and sexuality. This textbook written especially for undergraduate students offers a detailed and comprehensive introduction to sex and sexuality from an Australian and New Zealand perspective. It examines controversial issues such as sex and age, sex work and gay, lesbian and queer sex in a fair and balanced manner.

The rise and fall of Rentboy.com

Earlier this week, the New York Police Department in partnership with Homeland Security arrested seven people and seized a number of documents pertaining to the website Rentboy.com. Although the website purports to help men connect for companionship only, authorities allege that it has been used to “facilitate the promotion, management, establishment, and carrying on of an unlawful activity, namely an enterprise involving prostitution”. Unlike Australia, which started the decriminalisation of sex work as early as 1979, sex work is illegal across all of the USA, save a few counties in Nevada where it is subject to heavy regulation. The raid on Rentboy.com raises important questions about sex work, including its visibility, consumer demand for such services, and the ongoing marginalisation of those who buy and sell sexual services...

Recasting 'Black Venus' in the new African Diaspora

This article explores the ways in which transnational feminist analysis can be deployed to reconfigure new gendered and racialized cartographies of the African Diaspora in Europe. First, I position contemporary film representations of trafficked Nigerian sex workers in Italy in dialogical relation to 19th century discourses of black sexuality - in particular, Sharpley-Whiting's (1999) reinscribed 'Black Venus Master Narrative' - and assess historical and geographical (dis)continuities in their modes of signification. Second, by linking endemic factors feeding the supply of Nigerian women for the purposes of (in)voluntary participation in the Italian sex industry, such as the localized feminization of poverty and regionally specific perceptions of sex work as a temporary economic strategy, I engage with broader feminist debates on victimization and agency in global sex work and migration literatures. In doing so, this dialectical think piece highlights the gendered complexities of new African diasporic formations and the ways in which their growth is facilitated by broader illegal networks that shape and are shaped by vicissitudes in glocalized economies. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Confronting law affectively: encounters of a Patpong sex tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises.

Knowledge, risk perceptions and condom usage in male sex workers from three Australian cities

The study identifies factors associated with knowledge and perception of risk of HIV/AIDS, as well as attitudes to and usage of condoms by a sample of male sex workers (MSW). One hundred and eighty-five male sex workers completed a self-reported questionnaire, including knowledge about HIV transmission, attitudes to condom use and perceptions and personal susceptibility to HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk, and a two-week diary recording use of condom during commercial sex encounters. The findings reveal that condom use was found in 77.7% of the encounters with clients and the majority of the respondents perceived themselves to be at no risk for HIV because of sex work. Independent sex workers from Melbourne and workers who owned their place of residence used condoms in a significant lower proportion. Generally speaking, knowledge about the risks associated with AIDS was high, with respondents showing lower knowledge about the risks associated with unprotected receptive or active oral sex. Participants held a positive attitude to condom use; most considered the provisions of condoms to be their responsibility rather than clients; and they were more worried about contracting an STI than HIV. Those who scored higher on the knowledge scale had more positive attitudes to condom use and those who had a more positive attitude to condom use recorded a perceived lower risk of contracting STI but not HIV. The study discusses the relevance of these findings for public health risk reduction and sexual health education campaigns.

In search of work. International migration of women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Selected bibliography

Includes bibliography

Occupational health and safety among commercial sex workers in Ghana

The topic of occupational health and safety (OHS) has been investigated for many years and continues to be a concept often researched today. Generally speaking OHS research has been centered around food safety, construction safety, transportation safety, fire safety, drug and alcohol testing, health and medical management, and industrial hygiene to name a few. However, the concept of OHS concerning female commercial sex workers (FCSWs) has rarely been investigated, often neglected, seldom discussed and is lacking in sound research. Although regarded as the "oldest profession", commercial sex work (CSW) has consistently been ignored, disregarded and under-researched due to the illegality and stigmatization of prostitution. This paper reviews occupational safety and health issues faced by FCSWs in Tema and Accra, Ghana, through in-depth interviews, visits to women's homes, field work, informal conversations and participant observations with FCSWs over a period of two months. Facets of OHS that emerged among FCSWs included sexually transmissible infections, risks associated with harassment and violence from police and clients, alcohol and drug use, irregular hospital visits and/or lack of hospital visits, immigration issues, legal and policing risks. We argue that CSW be viewed as an occupation in great need of interventions to reduce workplace risks and improve the health and safety of FCSWs^

Governmentality gone wild: How the separation of sex workers from 'communities' contributes to violence against sex workers

Sex workers are members of our communities, whether they are local or national communities. In law, mainstream media representations, and research sex workers are positioned as outside of or in opposition to communities. Even within marginalized communities sex workers are excluded when appeals to respectability politics are made. In this thesis I analyze three analytic sites from three areas of social life. The first chapter performs a textual analysis of The Bedford Decision (2013) and the resulting Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (2014) as an examination of law. The second chapter is an analysis of filmic discourse on community, sex workers, and violence in the mainstream film London Road (2015) as an examination of mainstream media. The third chapter draws upon empirical research, i.e. in-depth interviews with three current and former sex workers in Ottawa, Canada and analyzes the transcripts using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to center how sex workers’ understanding of their work, community, and the laws and policies that are supposed govern and protect them. In my preface and conclusion I discuss some of the ethical dilemmas I encountered while conducting this research. My findings suggest that sex workers are being positioned and understood as outside of communities in ways that contribute to violence against sex workers. The implications of this research suggest that people who speak in the name of communities—communities in the sense of local neighborhood communities, activist communities, and national communities—need to recognize that sex workers are part of their communities and be accountable to ensuring they are treated as members. Researchers who conduct research on sex work and sex workers need to be accountable to their participants and the impacts their research may have on laws and policies. Sex workers are an over-researched population yet their voices are largely misappropriated or silenced in popular research and policy debates.

Commercial sex, clients, and Christian morals: Paying for sex in Ireland

This article reports on the results of a study on men who pay for sex across Ireland. In presenting a detailed picture of the diverse group of sex workers’ clients, their motives and attitudes, we debunk the prevalent stereotypes about men who pay for sex, as continuously used in the public discourse about sex work on both sides of the Irish border: we show that the majority of clients do not fit the image of violent, careless misogynists. We argue that these debates about commercial sex as well as the experiences of those who pay for sex are shaped and nurtured by the specific local context, by conservative Christian morals and the dominant sex-negative culture across Ireland. Finally, we argue that the criminalization of paying for sex which came into effect in Northern Ireland in 2015 and is being discussed in the Republic of Ireland will likely not stop the majority of clients from paying for sex and thus fail to achieve its aim to reduce or abolish sex work.

‘Ulster Says No’: Regulating the consumption of commercial sex spaces and services in Northern Ireland

Commercial forms of sex such as prostitution/sex work, strip clubs and even sex shops have been the subject of much political debate and policy regulation over the last decade or so in the UK and Ireland. These myriad forms of commercial sex and land usage have managed to survive and even thrive in the face of public outcry and regulation. Despite being part of the UK we suggest that Northern Ireland has steered its own regulatory course, whereby the consumption of commercial sexual spaces and services have been the subject of intense moral and legal oversight in ways that are not apparent in other UK regions. Nevertheless, in spite of this we also argue that the context of Northern Ireland may provide some lessons for the ways that religious values and moral reasoning can influence debates on commercial sex elsewhere.

Drifters, Party Boys and Incumbents: The life patterns of male street-based sex workers

This paper is based on a qualitative study of male street-based prostitution. It suggests that the street-based sector is more varied, with sellers adopting a wider range of working practices, than is commonly acknowledged in the literature on male prostitution. Drawing on data from Manchester, England I identify a number of ‘life patterns’ among male street sellers that reflect varied working practices based on issues around rational decision-making and the sex worker’s relationship to place and environment. The discussion has implications for urban policies around street-based sex work but also for a more general understanding of male sex work in international and comparative perspective.

Violência contra as mulheres trabalhadoras do sexo e vulnerabilidade ao HIV/AIDS em 10 cidades brasileiras

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Saúde, 2016.