Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labour and Other Stories of the Lumpen Proletariat- Rethinking Sex Work

今天，我们正处于围绕性工作和人口贩卖的全球性恐慌的阵痛之中。媒体上没有一天不提到性奴役和贩卖的可怕事件，特别是第三世界妇女。与这一报道相匹配的是，一些国家政府针对人口贩运和性工作的法律改革举措的激增，其中包括美国政府，它通过一项国内法，在国际上释放了一个废除主义政权。与这些努力并行的还有国际公共卫生机构、捐助机构和非政府组织，它们把性工作者社区作为预防艾滋病毒工作的关键。这导致了对性工作者权利的一些保护，但只是边际保护。正是在这些将性工作者视为性奴隶和疾病传播媒介的流行表象的背景下，我问——作为工作者的性工作者呢？为了进一步思考这个问题，我建议在休假期间写一本关于如何将性工作概念化为工作的书手稿，并对印度出版的性工作著作进行批判性阅读。虽然读者仅限于印度性工作辩论的特殊性，但激发这本书和读者的问题是——女权主义学者是如何将性工作理论化的？如果他们主要把性工作视为男权暴力，这是否与性工作者的经历产生共鸣？这种女权主义方法的优点和缺点是什么？如果合乎逻辑的结果是废除性工作，这对今天靠性工作谋生的女性意味着什么？另一方面，如果我们认为性工作是性劳动的一种形式，我们还会试图废除它吗？如果不是，我们应该像对待其他形式的工作一样对待它，还是应该给予特殊对待？如果它像其他工作一样，我们如何保护性工作者免受性产业的伤害？为了研究这些问题，我借鉴了在当前关于性工作的辩论中被边缘化的女权主义理论流派，即社会主义女权主义。在将家务劳动概念化为一种生殖劳动的过程中，社会主义女权主义确定了家庭主妇的性劳动，从而为将性工作理论化为性劳动打开了大门。然而，大多数社会主义女权主义者并不主张将性工作视为合法工作。然而，如果我们假设性工作涉及性劳动，我们该如何理解性市场的政治经济学？为此，我对印度的两个性行业进行了实证研究，其中一个行业的性工作者在妓院工作，另一个行业的性工作者在更分散的机构环境中工作。我特别关注的问题是，性工作者是否在奴役、工资关系或自营职业的条件下工作？在同性性产业中，性工作者还有哪些不同之处？我们能实事求是地说所有的性工作者都有共同的兴趣吗？在大多数与性工作有关的活动都是犯罪的情况下，她们如何继续卖淫？将性工作定为刑事犯罪，催生了什么样的非法经济？这种犯罪化的社会影响是什么？如果我们废除刑法，这是否自动意味着性工作者的境况会更好？若否，如何规管性产业，以赋予性工作者权力？通过借鉴法律理论学派——法律现实主义，我调查了除了最明显的法律——刑法之外，实际上与性产业有关的各种类型的法律。这些包括其他私人法律规则、非正式社会规范和市场惯例。通过对法律在性产业中所扮演角色的复杂叙述，我认为，除非我们知道这些法律是如何影响性市场的，否则我们无法确定任何特定政策对性市场和性工作者的实际影响。

We are today in the throes of a global sex panic around sex work and trafficking. Not a day goes by without mention in the media of horrific instances of sex slavery and trafficking, especially of third world women. Matching the pace of this coverage is the proliferation of law reform initiatives against trafficking and sex work by several national governments, including, the US government, which through a domestic law, has unleashed an abolitionist regime internationally. Parallel to these efforts, are international public health agencies, donor agencies and NGOs that have targeted sex worker communities as vital to their HIV prevention efforts. This has resulted in some, but only marginal, protection of sex workers' rights. It is against the backdrop of these popular representations of the sex worker as sex slave and vector of disease that I ask- what about the sex worker as worker? To further contemplate this question, I propose over the leave period, to produce a book manuscript on how to conceptualise sex work as work and a critical reader of published Indian writings on sex work. While the reader is limited to the specificities of the Indian sex work debates, the questions that animate both the book and reader are- how have feminist scholars theorised sex work? If they have predominantly viewed sex work as nothing but, patriarchal violence, does this resonate with the experiences of sex workers? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this feminist approach? If its logical outcome is to abolish sex work, what does this mean for women who today earn a living from sex work? If on the other hand, we believe that sex work involves a form of sexual labour, would we still try to abolish it? If not, should we treat it like any other form of work or does it warrant special treatment? If it is like other work, how do we protect sex workers form the harms of the sex industry? To examine these questions, I draw on a school of feminist theory that is marginalised in current debates on sex work, namely, socialist feminism. In the process of conceptualising housework as a form of reproductive labour, socialist feminism identified the sexual labour of the housewife, thus opening the door for theorising sex work as sexual labour. Socialist feminists for the most part, however, did not advocate treating sex work as legitimate work. If however, we are to assume that sex work involves sexual labour, how should we understand the political economy of sex markets? For this, I empirically study two sex industries in India, one where sex workers worked in brothels and the other where sex workers worked in more diffused institutional settings. Questions I pursue in particular are, whether sex workers work under conditions of slavery, wage relations or self-employment? In what other ways are sex workers differentially placed within the same sex industry? Can we realistically speak of all sex workers as sharing common interests? How do they continue to sell sex when most activities relating to sex work are criminal? What economies of illegality are fostered by this criminalisation of sex work? What are the social effects of such criminalisation? If we repeal the criminal law, would this automatically mean that sex workers will be better off? If not, what is the most appropriate way to regulate sex industries so as to empower sex workers? By drawing on a school of legal theory, legal realism, I investigate the various types of laws that are in fact implicated in sex industries other than the most visible law, namely, the criminal law. These include other private legal rules, informal social norms and market practices. By producing a complicated narrative of the role of the law in the sex industry, I suggest that unless we know how such laws impact sex markets, we cannot decide one way or the other, the actual effect of any particular policy on sex markets and sex workers.