Sex Workers and Criminalization in North America and China ― Ethical and Legal Issues in Exclusionary Regimes

This book explores the impacts exacted by criminalization on the lives of women involved in sex work in the U.S., Canada, and China - three countries that criminally punish most forms of sex work. Criminalization exacts a set of negative totalizing effects on sex workers throughout the world through a process elsewhere articulated as the exclusionary regime, a dense coalescence of punitive forces which involves both governance in the form of the criminal justice system and engagement with the courts and other state agents, and regular patterns of action, including myriad forms of discrimination resulting from stigma. Despite the considerable cultural and economic differences between the US and Canada compared to China, all embrace a philosophical paradigm that positions sex work as inherently harmful to both women who engage in it and society more generally. This perspective conveniently ignores the complex economic and social forces that, for some women, makes sex work the most appealing employment choice from an otherwise constrained menu of options. Analysis presented here demonstrates how well-intentioned law and public policy can have unforeseen consequences, particularly when designed by those ignorant of the realities of sex workers’ everyday lives. The existence of an exclusionary regime that eschews evidence-based knowledge in favor of morality-based legislation raises numerous ethical issues for both researchers and society at large. The multiple case studies employed will illustrate a single, theoretical theme. In so doing, the book addresses the complex means by which state-endorsed exclusionary practices seem to further entrench the inequalities that shape the lives of many women involved in sex work in North America and China.

Anthropologist Susan Dewey is an Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wyoming, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on research methods, sex work, and public policy. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Tiantian Zheng is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at State University of New York, Cortland. Her book Red Lights is the Winner of the 2010 Sara A. Whaley Book Prize from the National Women’s Studies Association for the significant contribution to the topic of women and labor. Her book Ethnographies of Prostitution in Contemporary China is the Winner of the 2011 Research Publication Book Award from the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States. Treena Orchard is an Associate Professor in the School of Health Studies and an Affiliate in Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. An anthropologist with cultural and medical expertise, she has conducted ethnographic research with women in sex work, people with HIV/AIDS, Aboriginal populations, and those of sexual minority status across Canada and in India. Her areas of special research interest include sexuality and sex work, gender, marginalization, and the politics of health. Her research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Western University. She is also involved in local and national activism related to the rights of women and other marginalized populations. Tonia St. Germain holds a has a J.D. from Antioch School of Law and is the former Director of Gender Studies at Eastern Oregon University.