Teela Sanders

The Risks of Street Prostitution: Punters, Police and Protesters

For female street sex workers in Britain, selling sex means managing risks. Violence from male clients, harassment from community protesters and criminalisation through overpolicing are daily hazards on the street. Using qualitative data and extensive field observations of the street market in Birmingham, UK, it is argued in this paper that street sex workers do not passively accept these risks but, instead, manage occupational hazards by manipulating, separating, controlling and resisting urban spaces. Women actively use space to inform their collective and individual working practices to minimise harm and maximise profits. However, the findings conclude that sites of street prostitution are made increasingly dangerous for women through punitive policing policies, conservative heterosexual discourses and a lack of realistic prostitution policy that addresses the central issues relating to commercial sex.

Controllable Laughter Managing Sex Work through Humour

This article contributes to the sociology of work by analysing the nature and prevalence of humour as a coping strategy in the sex industry. In conjunction with describing six different types of humour observed in the female sex industry, this article establishes humour as a form of ‘emotion work’ (Hochschild, 1979). Evidence from an empirical study of female prostitution in a large British city documents how sex workers consciously manipulate humour as a social and psychological distancing technique. First, humour is adopted as a business strategy where impression management and ‘body work’ (Tyler and Abbott, 1998) enable individuals to conform to the aesthetic ideal of the ‘prostitute’. Second, joking relations shape the emotions aroused by selling sex, manage client interaction and establish support networks with colleagues. They are also a vehicle for defining group membership, dissent and divisions. It is argued that these social and psychological processes are an example of how women in extreme professions perform ‘ emotion work’. In the case of sex workers, humour contributes to a range of defence mechanisms that are necessary to protect personal and emotional well being.

Becoming an Ex–Sex Worker: Making Transitions Out of a Deviant Career

This article has four core aims. First, to identify the processes of change women undertake to leave sex work through a typology of transitions. The typology suggests four dominant ways out of sex work as reactionary, gradual planning, natural progression, and “yo-yoing.” Second, the article argues against the low self-control theory by asserting that sex workers engage in specific deviant “careers” rather than stable deviant roles and, therefore, exit to “complete conformist” once sex work is ceased. Third, it rejects Mansson and Hedin’s claim that the “emotional commitment” of individual women is the key factor to leaving but instead argues that structural, political, cultural, and legal factors as well as cognitive transformations and agency are key determinants in trapping women in the industry. Fourth, the article challenges the U.K. policy context that reinforces “exiting” through compulsory rehabilitation and the criminalization of sex work.

Sexing Up the Subject: Methodological Nuances in Researching the Female Sex Industry

There has been a recent expansion in research into various markets and aspects of the sex industry. With investigation on the increase, this article takes a step back to consider the trials and tribulations of researching female sex work. First the article reviews the difficulties that can be posed by ethics committees and offers solutions to convince officials of the feasibility of the setting and method. Second, concentrating on the access phase, I explore the methodological nuances of researching the sensitive, sometimes hidden and often illicit world of commercial sex. Third, I analyse how inquiry into commercial sexual behaviour and the sexual fieldsite presents particular issues in terms of managing ethical dilemmas in the field; negotiating the researcher role; and both the pleasures and dangers of researching this aspect of social life where the main topics are sex and money. In the conclusion I draw links between the methods used to investigate the sex industry and the development of theoretical debates. These points will be made with reference to the literature and my own work over the past five years in the UK sex industry, including a 10-month ethnography of the indoor prostitution markets.

Mainstreaming the Sex Industry: Economic Inclusion and Social Ambivalence

This paper seeks to analyse the expansion of commercial sex through processes of mainstreaming in economic and social institutions. We argue that cultural changes and neo-liberal policies and attitudes have enabled economic mainstreaming, whilst social ambivalence continues to provide the backdrop to a prolific and profitable global industry. We chart the advancement of sexual consumption and sexual service provision in late capitalism before defining the concept of ‘mainstreaming’ applied here. We use the case studies of Las Vegas and Leeds to identify various social and economic dimensions to the mainstreaming process and the ways these play out in law and regulation. While social and economic processes have integrated sexual services into night-time commerce, remaining social ambivalence fuels transgression and marginalization of the industry which in fact assists the mainstreaming process. Finally, we project some implications for gender relations, work, and inequalities as a result of the integration of sexual services into the economy.

Before, during and after: Realism, Reflexivity and Ethnography:

In this paper we argue that what is missing from many ethnographic accounts is a recognition that dilemmas inevitably emerge for the researcher before they make contact with the research setting, during the process of ethnographic research, and subsequently in the lengthy time taken to unravel the theoretical importance of the research after the fieldwork has ended. Using a comparison of two ethnographies as case studies, and by recourse to a realist methodology, such dilemmas are, we argue, overdetermined by many non-observable social structures that influence the everyday research process. We argue that specific mechanisms determine both the process and the outcome of the ethnographic journey in the before, during and after stages of research. For example we demonstrate how biography and the wider process of institutional knowledge production are two key resources that influence research practice. We use the term pragmatic realism as a means to reflect upon some of the connections between the dilemmas of research and real structures in these three stages.

Housing and Transitional Phases Out of ‘Disordered’ Lives: The Case of Leaving Homelessness and Street Sex Work

This paper combines the findings from two empirical qualitative studies that examine transitions out of lifestyles and identities considered ‘disordered’. Focusing on womens experiences of homelessness and street sex work the paper explores these transitions and the barriers the participants encounter in establishing ‘ordered’ lives. Four key points will be made. First, the mechanisms that can lead to successful transitions (housing, networks and welfare services) can often present barriers to change. Second, the ‘yo-yo’ effect, whereby women move in and out of negative situations in an ongoing cycle, is common. Third, it is argued that transitions are only successful if individuals find identity and ‘ontological security’. Housing is a crucial aspect in these transitions; however, it can have negative as well as positive effects. It is argued that there is strong evidence to suggest that the conditional welfare services given through the entanglement of the welfare and criminal justice systems play a pivotal role in maintaining marginal lifestyles and a cycle of entrapment into social exclusion. These wider issues of the marginalisation of women who are assumed to be ‘deviant’ and ‘disordered’ are connected to broader changes in the West that criminalise and oppress citizens who are outside of mainstream society.

The Geographical Mobility, Preferences and Pleasures of Prolific Punters: a Demonstration Study of the Activities of Prostitutes' Clients

Clients of prostitutes have been traditionally neglected in the study of prostitution. This demonstration study suggests that the Internet, particularly one prominent website for patrons of commercial sex in Britain, can assist in learning more about the activities of prostitutes’ clients, their patterns of behaviour and the organisation of commercial sex in contemporary society. The specific focus here is on the geographical locations of the paid sexual encounters of the ten most prolific authors who contribute to a popular website. It reveals 105 different locations identified in the reports with some punters travelling extensively for their pleasures. The study then focuses on a comparison of the activities of two of these punters showing how they both largely inhabit different worlds of the sex industry but also share some experiences. This paper contributes additional knowledge about prostitution at several levels: first, a microanalysis of a small sample of clients’ purchasing patterns highlights the habits of some prolific patrons; second, alongside these patterns, the website offers a window onto the hidden world of prostitution in late modernity which in turn reveals some organisational features of prostitution; and third, the use of the Internet as a qualitative data source is explored.

Female street sex workers, sexual violence, and protection strategies

Abstract This paper reviews empirical findings on physical and sexual violence against female street working sex workers, drawing on the findings from the researchers own study. Thirty-two female street sex workers were interviewed in a city in the South West of England during 1998. The ethical issues of researching female prostitution are discussed in relation to this specific research project. The main findings from the current literature and this original study highlight the possible connections between childhood sexual abuse, entrance into the sex industry at an early age, and continual experience of violence. This paper explores violence from pimps and clients as well as how the street environment exposes sex workers to risk. Concluding discussion explores the self protection strategies of individual sex workers and the female sex work community as a means of maintaining a survivor identity and not a victim identity.

Controlling the ‘anti sexual’ city: Sexual citizenship and the disciplining of female street sex workers

This article makes connections between the politics and policies relating to prostitution and anti social behaviour, with the construction of sexual citizenship. Through an analysis of what I have termed policing the ‘anti sexual’ city, I argue that new social technologies of control applied by a range of policing agencies include a gendered and sexual dimension to enforce ‘appropriate’ conduct among those considered to be sexually ‘disordered’ and ‘uncivil’. I apply the concept of public patriarchy to the case of the management of female street prostitution, through New Labour’s insistence on an eradication and ‘exiting’ agenda. I argue that ‘forced welfarism’, through anti social behaviour mechanisms, are used to enforce ‘correct’ sexual citizenship through the tools of public patriarchy. Mechanisms of coercion, rehabilitation, and responsibilization are applied to sex workers through the contradictory narratives of ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ that are played out in policy and practice. In summary, I argue that anti social behaviour policies that implement contractual governance have become a vehicle for ensuring that the benchmarks of sexual citizenship are maintained through the politics of inclusion and exclusion.