Mary Laing - Queer Sex Work

Queer Sex Work provides a fabulous antidote to the dominant, hetero-normative orientation of most research and policymaking regarding commercial sex. Multidisciplinary and comprehensive in the range of issues covered, the book offers many fresh insights on the role of gender, sexuality, activism, and individuals experiences when engaging in sex work. It should be required reading for policymakers who legislate in this area.

Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology, George Washington University, USA

Deploying queer as both an empirical descriptor and as an incisive analytic, this volume makes a necessary intervention into current debates around sex, work, and the vast domain of experience in between.

Elizabeth Bernstein, Associate Professor of Womens Studies and Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

Essential reading and an excellent text that brings a much-needed focus on queer sex work, as well as addressing relevant theories, practices and methodologies in order to queer sex work.

Maggie ONeill, Professor of Criminology, School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, UK

Queer Sex Work

Sex work is a subject of significant contestation across academic disciplines, as well as within legal, medical, moral, feminist, political and socio-cultural discourses. A large body of research exists, but much of this focuses on the sale of sex by women to men and ignores other performances, practices, meanings and embodiments in the contemporary sex industry. A queer agenda is important in order to challenge hetero-centric gender norms and to develop new insights into how gender, sex, power, crime, work, migration, space/place, health and intimacy are understood in the context of commercial sexual encounters.

Queer Sex Work explores what it might mean to be, do and think queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BDSM and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex.

This unique and multidisciplinary volume will be indispensable for scholars and students of the global sex trade and of gender, sexuality, feminism and queer theory more broadly, as well as policymakers, activists and practitioners interested in the politics and practice of sex work in local, national and international contexts.

Mary Laing, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria University.

Katy Pilcher, PhD, is a Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University.

Nicola Smith, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Birmingham.

Routledge Studies in Crime and Society

1. Sex Work

Labour, mobility and sexual services

Edited by JaneMaree Maher, Sharon Pickering and Alison Gerard

2. State Crime and Resistance

Edited by Elizabeth Stanley and Jude McCulloch

3. Collective Morality and Crime in the Americas

Christopher Birkbeck

4. Talking Criminal Justice

Language and the just society

Michael J. Coyle

5. Women Exiting Prison

Critical essays on gender, post-release support and survival

Bree Carlton and Marie Segrave

6. Collective Violence, Democracy and Protest Policing

David R. Mansley

7. Prostitution in the Community

Attitudes, action and resistance

Sarah Kingston

8. Surveillance, Capital and Resistance

Michael McCahill and Rachel L. Finn

9. Crime, Community and Morality

Simon Green

10. Flexible Workers

Labour, regulation and the political economy of the stripping industry

Teela Sanders and Kate Hardy

11. Histories of State Surveillance in Europe and Beyond

Edited by Kees Boersma, Rosamunde van Brakel, Chiara Fonio and Pieter Wagenaar

12. Rape, Victims and Investigations

Experiences and perceptions of law enforcement officers responding to reported rapes

Shana L. Maier

13. Understanding Gender Based Violence

National and international contexts

Edited by Nadia Aghtaie and Geetanjali Gangoli

14. Queer Sex Work

Edited by Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher and Nicola Smith

Queer Sex Work

Edited by
Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher and
Nicola Smith

First published 2015

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 selection and editorial material, Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher and Nicola Smith; individual chapters, the contributors.

The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Queer sex work / edited by Mary Laing, Katy Pilcher and Nicola Smith.

pages cm. (Routledge studies in crime and society ; 14)

1. Prostitution. 2. Sex-oriented businesses. 3. Gays. 4. Queer theory. I. Laing, Mary Whowell.

HQ118.Q44 2015

306.74dc23

2014030148

ISBN: 978-0-415-70455-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-76196-0 (ebk)

To PG. You were always there when we needed you.
Thank you, from all of us.

Contents

NICOLA SMITH, MARY LAING AND KATY PILCHER

NICOLA SMITH

HEATHER BERG

HELEN HESTER

MICHAEL MCNAMARA, ZEB TORTORICI AND VIRGIE TOVAR

CHRISTOPHER B. PATTERSON

ZAHRA STARDUST

VICTORIA HOLT

CASSANDRA AVENATTI AND ELIZA JONES

KITTY STRYKER

TEELA SANDERS

TUPPY OWENS

DANA COLLINS

KATY PILCHER

ALLAN TYLER

LESLEY PROCTER

MIREILLE MILLER-YOUNG

CLARISSA SMITH, FEONA ATTWOOD AND MARTIN BARKER

BECKI L. ROSS

MICHAEL ATKINS

RYAN ELIZABETH COLE, ELENA JEFFREYS AND JANELLE FAWKES

MEG PANICHELLI, STPHANIE WAHAB, PENELOPE SAUNDERS AND MOSHOULA CAPOUS-DESYLLAS

ALEX BRYCE, ROSIE CAMPBELL, JANE PITCHER, MARY LAING, ADELE IRVING, JOSH BRANDON, KERRI SWINDELLS AND SOPHIE SAFRAZYAN

RACHEL SCHREIBER

CATHERINE BEWLEY

DENNIS ALTMAN

Figures

Table

Dennis Altman is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Human Security at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of 12 books and, among other accolades, was awarded the Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the field of sociology of sexualities by the American Sociological Associations Section on Sexualities in 2013.