Sex worker rights are human rights: an approach to solidaristic normative theory

ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue for solidaristic normative theorizing, which entails engaging in sustained dialogue with people who experience oppression and working with them to advance their struggles for justice. We draw guidance from Indigenous, Black, and Latine scholars, who have long done this type of work. We develop and apply principles of inductive recursivity, which privileges the insights of those who experience oppression; comprehensiveness of research materials and attentiveness to power; skeptical but empathetic scrutiny when assessing research materials; and accountability through reflexivity and ongoing relationships with oppressed individuals, groups, and communities. With reference to the struggles of major sex worker rights organizations in Canada and the United States to address the harms associated with criminalization, we outline our approach to theory building and illustrate what it looks like in practice. By developing a conceptual link between the everyday harms faced by sex workers, due in large part to criminal laws around their professional activities, and the deeper ontological and epistemological injustices against them, we hope that our theorizing contributes – even in a small way – to public understanding of the depth of the oppressive governance regime of criminalization and the importance of dismantling it.

KEYWORDS:

• Solidaristic normative theory
• political solidarity
• sex worker rights
• prostitution policy
• morality policy

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Nadine Flagel, Chris Atchison, Beatrice Omboga, Christine Bruckert, Jenn Clamen, and Naomi Sayers for their important contributions to this article. We are deeply indebted to their expertise and thank them for their generosity. We take full responsibility for any remaining weaknesses and errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 It is well established that criminal laws around sex work are a major contributor of harms against sex workers (Platt et al. 2018). For studies on the direct harms associated with criminalization, see Bruckert (2015); Bungay and Guta (2018); Chu and Glass (2013); Duff et al. (2017); Krüsi et al. (2014); Krüsi, Belak, and Sex Workers United Against Violence (2018); Lowman (2000, 2013); Lowman and Fraser (1995); Shaver, Lewis, and Maticka-Tyndale (2011). For indirect harms, such as barriers to accessing health care services, see Goldenberg et al. (2014); Goldenberg et al. (2017); Krüsi et al. (2014); Phillips and Benoit (2005); Puri et al. (2017); Shaver, Lewis, and Maticka-Tyndale (2011); Socías et al. (2016); Sou et al. (2017).

2 See for example Anzaldúa (2002); Cordeiro, Soares, and Rittenmeyer (2016); Coulthard and Simpson (2016); Freire (1986); Moraga (2002); Rose and Glass (2008); Sandoval (2000); Shelby (2002); Simpson (2017); Wing (2014).

3 As Cree and Saulteaux scholar Gina Starblanket (2017, 22) writes, “Indigenous peoples and communities, from grassroots to academic, are increasingly moving towards the adoption of political strategies and cultural practices that are grounded in Indigenous visions of freedom and autonomy.” She goes on: “The term ‘resurgence’ is increasingly used in Indigenous scholarship to describe both individual and collective practices that embody this reorientation” (Starblanket 2017, 22).

4 This is scholarship about which we are currently learning. We came to the term “grounded” from the grounded theory of Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss (2015), which is a dominant approach in qualitative methodology that we have employed (loosely) in previous work (see for example Johnson, Burns, and Porth 2017). We have since put time into learning about Indigenous understandings of grounded normativity, which are rooted in place, territory, land, and water, to learn about possibilities for engaging more solidaristically in endeavors toward decolonization and Indigenous resurgence, as well as endeavors toward ending racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and other forms of oppression.

5 Jenn Clamen, National Coordinator, Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, comments on draft article, March 9, 2021.

6 Sex workers have long organized to advance their rights and freedom, to raise awareness about harms that they face and how to mitigate them, and to build community (see Chateauvert 2013; Fitzgerald and McGarry 2018; Kempadoo and Doezema 1998; Lebovitch and Ferris 2019; Majic 2013; Sanders, O’Neil, and Pitcher 2009; Showden and Majic 2014). Nevertheless, with the exceptions of the New Zealand Sex Workers’ Collective and the Scarlet Alliance in Australia, they have not been successful in their efforts to decriminalize sex work, and criminalization remains dominant worldwide. In Canada in 2014, the government introduced a criminalization regime with the intention of eliminating sex work. Essentially, they implemented an “end demand model” to criminalize the purchase of sexual services and re-established laws to criminalize the sale of sexual services in public space, advertising sexual services, and benefitting materially from the sale or purchase of sexual services.

7 Jenn Clamen, National Coordinator, Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, comments on draft article, March 9, 2021.

8 In our analysis, we privilege direct statements by the major sex worker rights organizations in the US and Canada because they make meaningful the “everyday injustices” that their members face under current governance regimes that involve criminalizing sex work. Working from comprehensive lists of such organizations as posted on key websites (see for example BAYSWAN nd and Global Network of Sex Work Projects nd), we identified organizations with public statements on legal regimes for prostitution. The statements take the form of mission statements, “Who We Are”/“About Us” statements, and reports written by these organizations.

9 Several of Canada’s previous sex work laws were struck down due to their violation of sex workers’ Section 7 rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to life, liberty, and security of the person (see Bedford v. Canada (Attorney General) 2013).

10 See https://anunusualacademic.com/comics/.

11 Jenn Clamen, National Coordinator, Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, comments on draft article, March 9, 2021.

Additional information

Funding

The work for this article has been supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant.

Notes on contributors

Genevieve Fuji Johnson

Genevieve Fuji Johnson is a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, Canada. With Kerry Porth, her current work focuses on the governance of sex work in Canadian and US cities. Together, they are working on a book project, and corresponding graphic novel, that develops a case for solidaristic scholarship explicitly serving the justice struggles of marginalized communities.

Kerry Porth

Kerry Porth is a former sex worker and current sex worker rights activist. She has years of experience of working with marginalized people and grassroots movements in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to effect social change through strategic litigation, public education, and advocacy. She has worked on research projects relating to the sex industry and regularly lectures at colleges and universities. Her expertise includes sex work activism, training, policy, law, and governance.