Porn & Sex Work Flashcards
What is sex work?
process that involves a transaction between a seller and buyer of sexual service
What is an escort agency?
a company sends sex trade workers to off-site locations such as homes, hotels and motels
What is the survival sex trade?
They work in the street for enough money to survive, often have issues with addiction
They are the lowest paid sex workers and often have a pimp
Have the highest risk of arrest, violence and STIs
Often marginalized
How can we help those in the survival sex trade?
LISTEN to what they need.
ex: can’t get services without an address, they don’t need to be saved or forced they need to be listened to!!
What are brothels/house prostitution?
sex workers who work in a brothel or “massage parlour”. They exist in most cities where it is illegal.
Usually pay part of wages to a pimp or madame
See just as many clients as street based sex workers
Most likely to consistently use condoms with a client. So much safer indoors because there are policies and other people there to help
What is a call girl/escort?
A sex worker who is contacted privately by clients and generally changes more as they offer more services like going on date to events, overnight stays.
Usually works through an escort agency.
Safest form of sex work - they have the most control
What is a dominatrix?
Online or in person BDSM activity
Rarely remove clothes or engage in penetrative sex/genital contact
What two laws were recently passed in the states and what did they state (FOSTA/SESTA)? How did this backfire?
There was a law that says people who own twitter for example are not responsible but…
Now… if there is any form of sex work on a platform; the platform is responsible
The goal was to protect people from sex work
♣ But by putting everything further underground; it makes law enforcement harder to find someone
What is a gigolo?
male sex worker who is paid or otherwise compensated for providing sexual services to women
What is a Bar hustlers (street)/call boys/escorts?
male version of a call girl, hired by men
What is a street hustler?
a male sex worker who services male clients. associated with high drug use rates
What are many transwomen trying to pay for from their sex works
gender-reassignment
Explain trans sex workers
generally work on the streets
high risk of STI/HIV - due to penetrative anal sex
high drug use
clients are heterosexual men
What are exotic dancers?
exotic dancing/stripping
legal
wide range of quality of clubs and how the dancers are treated
similar backgrounds of sex workers
Where did most of the laws about sex come from?
Britain
In 1759 what did the NS Act ban?
“vagrancy” (homeless/in a sex work area without an explanation) and “lewd behavior” (any sexual behavior)
at this time indoor sex (massage parlours) was frowned upon but not illegal
in the 1800s sex works was mostly in…
brothels
in 1827 NB banned..
bawdy houses
in 1892 new canadian criminal codes outlawed
(existing on the street and not having a good account of yourself),
bawdy houses,
and living off the avails of prostitution
In 1970 what happened?
Repeal of the vagrancy aspect of the criminal code
For a minute - no laws around sex work
In 1972 what was made illegal?
“Solicitation”. Therefore asking or offering was illegal but the johns kept getting away!!
So in 1978 what clarification was added to the law?
The law applied to both men and women, therefore those offering and buying sex
What are the current laws surrounding sex work in Canada?
It is illegal to…
o Purchase sexual services
o Advertise sexual services
o Communicate about sexual services in public places (bans street based sex work)
o Operate a bawdy house
o Financially benefit from the sale of sexual services (harmful: bodyguards cannot be hired for escorts)
Who becomes a sex worker?
- More likely than general population to have abuse histories (emotional, physical or sexual abuse)
- Young, female, uneducated
- Poverty, financial need
- People who are marginalized
The survival sex trade is most commonly linked to…
drug addictions to be able to pay for drugs
What are 4 legal options for dealing with STW?
- criminalization: making it or activities related to it illegal
- legalization/regulation: making it legal but subject to regulations. almost unwanted because then government can define when, where and how people can use their bodies.
- abolition: allowing it and punishing those who exploit it
- decriminalization: repeal all laws (NZ). Sex work is work, treat it like one
Do women enjoy the sex they’re having?
Rarely achieve orgasm
don’t enjoy giving a hand job, oral or have their breasts touched
What is psychological and physical health of these workers?
- Threat of violence (40 times higher death rate than the general population)
- Risks highest for racialized people
- Many sex workers have been raped or physically assaulted
- Risk of contracting HIV and other STIs (higher for trans)
- Condom use varies by sex work environment (less likely during oral)
- Psychological symptoms related to anxiety and depression
- Stigma of the work (don’t tell families, cant apply for loans, don’t have labour codes)
What do Johns want?
- Most common activity is fellatio (50%)
- Only 24% of men reported engaging in vaginal intercourse
- Most prefer a non-prostitute relationship, but 18% prefer prostitutes
- Most reported similar sexual activates with regular partner and prostitute
- Sex with a prostitute is reported to be easier sexually and psychologically
What is porn?
Textual, visual, and audial material that promotes or creates sexual arousal and presents sexuality on an unequal, unbalanced, violent or degrading manner
AND
Any sexually explicit work deemed obscene according to legal criteria and therefore exempt from freedom of speech protections
What is erotica?
Textual, visual, and audial material that promotes or creates sexual arousal and shows enjoyment of sexuality in an equal and balanced manner toward people of either sex
What are 3 obscenity laws in the USA?
- The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive (defined by community tolerance test – therefore, varies by community) way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law
- The work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
- Whether an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work appeals to a prurient interest in sex (no other value except sexual)
What are obscenity laws in Canada?
- (1) Every one commits an offense who
- (a) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, circulates, or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record…
- (8) For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene.
- To be considered “obscene” a work must include undue exploitation of sex
- A “community standard of tolerance test” should be applied to determine if it is obscene
What are the 3 categories of obscenity (2 illegal, 1 legal)?
o Material that mixes sex with violence and/or includes children (illegal)
o Material that involves sex and degradation (illegal)
o Nonviolent and nondegrading to women and children (obscene but legal)
What happened with the little sister book store?
An LGBT bookstore and art emporium
Took Customs Canada to court over censorship and seizure of their shipments
o Losing thousands, a year
LGBT & Kink porn is unfairly discriminated against
Won their case that Canada customs was unfairly discriminating
But still nothing has changed
What is the feminist anti porn movement?
Pornography is violence against women
Women are portrayed as object for male pleasure & women are coerced into porn
What is the porn addiction anti porn movement?
Internet access to pornography is causing irreparable damage to men and relationships
Saying the only way to avoid this is to never look at porn
- Fight the new drug
What is the NoFap
Challenge in which people abstain from porn or masturbation for a period of time to test self control.
What is the scientific rebuttal to anti-porn?
No evidence that porn changes the brain in ways different from other stimuli
Porn is a symptom, not a cause of a problem
No consistent evidence that porn causes erectile dysfunction
o Effects are likely dependent on the individual
What is the issue with neurological studies on porn in animals
they don’t care about porn
What did a study find about rats and sex and tiny jackets ?
Rats who first had sex wearing a tiny leather jacket, only had sex as adults when wearing a tiny leather jacket
how do brains reposed to still and video porn images in fMRI studies?
similarly
What does it mean that fMRI study found pleasurable stimuli activates similar reward structures in the brain?
looking at sex would be the same as looking at cake
EEG study found desire predicted a
P300 spike, but self-identified hypersexuality did not
What is the pro-porn movement?
that women’s enjoyment of erotic material should not be silenced
sex-positive and focused on the fact that women can make and enjoy porn material
What are the downfalls to the pro-porn movement?
ignores the reality of the degradation that does occur in the mainstream porn industry
What is the middle ground suggested by candy gallop?
make love not porn
Pro sex, pro porn, and pro knowing the difference
Argues that if porn is the primary form of sex education, that people need to know it isn’t real sex – started makelovenotporn.com and .tv
both sexes like a bit of
romance thrown in just to establish there is a relationship
