Course Description
Whether we know it or not, each of our lives is intertwined with the lives of sex workers. This course looks at how that happens, by situating sex work in the broader contexts of culture and society. The course offers an overview of the sex industry in a variety of theoretical and material contexts, as well as an in-depth focus on prostitution in the Canadian context—a timely issue, considering the recent appearance of three Canadian sex workers at the Supreme Court of Canada to argue for the decriminalization of prostitution.
Taking “The Prostitute” as the tropic image through which all sex workers are regulated, this course examines conflicting images of who prostitutes and other sex workers are, and how those images developed. In addition to reading key texts by scholarly experts on the sex industry, we will hear from sex workers themselves about their jobs and about their guidelines for students and scholars researching the sex industry.
Students will learn to analyze sex work as work through a variety of theoretical lenses, and to identify similarities and differences in legal and policy positions that respond to feminism, queer theory, critiques of neoliberalism and globalization, postcolonial praxis, and progressive legalism. In the final third of the course, we will look more closely at the areas in which labour policies affect sex workers, including occupational health and safety, the roles of clients and third parties in the sex industry, and sex workers’ labour organizing.
Learning Objectives
On successful completion of this course, students will:
- be familiar with the scope and modern history of the sex industry
- understand critical and participatory approaches to research ethics, and be able to apply them to study of marginalized workers
- be able to identify sex workers’ labour conditions, including areas for improvement in safety, income and stability
- be able to identify key mainstream, feminist, queer, postcolonial, anticapitalist and labour positions on the sex industry
- be able to identify the aims and structure of the sex workers’ rights movement
- be able to discuss and debate the roles of clients and third parties in the sex industry
- be able to discuss and debate how questions and problems of class, race, gender, sexuality, nation, and belonging are combined and expressed in policy related to sex work
Reading List for an Imaginary Class on Sex Work and Sex Workers: