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The International Association for the Study of
Sexuality, Culture and Society 2011 Conference: A
summary of the content related to sex work
The 8th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society took
place in Madrid from the 6-9 July 2011. There were many papers that covered issues of curiosity to sex
work researchers – particularly in relation to the connections between sexuality and the economy. We
are unable to highlight all of the papers that may be of interest from the 400 abstracts which were
presented. However, we have pulled together all of those abstracts which mentioned the key words
“sex work”, “prostitution” or “prostitute”. There was overlap in abstracts highlighted by the different
search categories and we have chosen not to incorporate abstracts more than once.
Issues covered by the abstracts include:
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The connections between international and national law related to sex work
Migration and mobility
Empowerment and agency
National law, policy and regulatory frameworks
Masculinities and gender
Media and cultural representations of sex work
Disclaimer: We do not recommend or agree with the findings presented in all of the abstracts included in
this document.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abstracts with the key word “sex work”
Developing Support Services for Sex Workers: The Value of Participatory Action
Author: Emma Harris
Institution: Swansea University
Country: United Kingdom
Gender inequality is prevalent in the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales. Arguably, this is
heightened by recent changes to the laws that govern sex work. Failing to acknowledge the absence of
full citizenship for sex workers, and perhaps moreover the need to keep sex workers safe, the provisions
in the Policing and Crime Act 2010 aim to coerce sex workers by court order into rehabilitation. A
consequence of this is an increasing demand on services – despite the fact that there is a lack of
evidence as to how best services can support sex workers. It is against this background that this paper
focuses on the role of peers as both researchers and mentors/advocates within the service development
framework in Wales. The paper discusses two projects: “Going Home” offers peer mentorship to women
with criminal records; “Sex Work Research Wales” adopts a participatory action research approach and
aims to up-skill sex worker research participants and develop a peer mentorship framework – facilitating
a better understanding of how sex workers can be best supported (those who are engaged in
rehabilitation programs and those who for whatever reason choose not to engage), and working
towards a model of good practice. It is argued that participatory action research and the development of
peer mentorship roles can make for the social inclusion of sex workers towards sex workers attaining
fuller citizenship. Overall, the paper argues for sustainable models of inclusionary support for sex
workers that promote equality for all sex workers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Supporting Transgender Sex Workers
Author: Pete Clark
Institution: Swansea University
Country: United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, attempts to engage sex workers for the purpose of research and to assist them
to access service provision have been met with mixed success. The terms “hidden population” and “hard
to reach” are frequently used as an excuse for inactivity. The majority of interventions have been aimed
at women selling sex. However, more recently there has been the recognition that men also sell sex (to
men and women). Nevertheless, it is true to say that in Wales there is a lack of service provision for all
sex workers (both men and women) who work in brothels and massage parlors. More worryingly, within
this hidden population of sex workers there is another group that has barely been recognized in the UK.
Transgender sex work is probably the most invisible aspect of sex work. This paper suggests that the
numbers of transgender sex workers are increasing in Wales. Furthermore, it highlights the lack of
knowledge and inequity in law and policy that allows transgender sex workers to operate in a vacuum.
The paper draws on the experiences of current transgender sex workers and argues that there is a need
for increased awareness and recognition (both within law and health services) of this hidden population
of sex workers within Wales.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Equality for Sex Workers? Sex Workers as Members of the Community and their Right to be Safe
Author: Tracey Sagar
Institution: Swansea University
Country: United Kingdom
The British government aims to eradicate sex work from the community on the premise that sex work
cannot be tolerated by communities at the local level. This paper considers the role of policy makers and
argues that the strategic policy direction of the British central government is an approach that lacks an
evidential foundation. Furthermore, that it will continue to make for the sexual repression of sex
workers in the United Kingdom – negating the right to buy and sell sex in a safe environment. The
argument is supported by recent empirical research carried out in Wales. In particular, the paper
highlights the multi-agency collaboration taking place at the local level in the city of Cardiff and the drive
towards local policy development that is based on local evidence. Importantly, research in Cardiff
suggests that “the community” may desire a pragmatic response to sex work (rather than the
eradication of sex work), which is underpinned by the need to keep sex workers safe. The Cardiff
findings are critically discussed in light of political indifference to the rights of sex workers. Drawing to a
close, the paper outlines ongoing sex work research in Wales.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------International Law, Nation States and the Status of International Law Making on Sexuality: Law, Health
and Rights and the Conditions for Sexual Diversity
Author: Alice Miller
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Country: USA
The World Health Organization (WHO) project addresses seven different topics in sexuality and sexual
rights in light of authoritative standards at international, regional and national levels. The goal is to
engage with and present the evidence of legal standards that support sexual health. This paper explores
a key challenge in the WHO project – holding a delicate balance – assessing international human rights
law as it is in regard to sexuality (in the light of human rights principles of non-discrimination, rights to
health, protection of privacy, rights to participation, freedom from violence, etc.) without confusing this
with the advocates’ claim of what international law should be on sexual rights. This paper will explore
some critical concerns which sustain and constrain the balancing act: first, the way in which regional,
national laws and international law governing key aspects of sexual health may be in alignment, tension,
or contradiction with human rights principles; second, the implications of engaging with sexuality as a
contemporary site of global political contestation, and acknowledging that international human rights
law evolves as a project of this contestation. One key implication for the WHO project requires
developing an approach to gaps, incoherence, and even regressive aspects of authoritative international
legal standards on some of the sexual health topics. To explore this tension, we present a background on
international laws relating to specific topics in sexual health and rights, such as criminalization of many
forms of consensual sex (sex outside marriage, including same sex behavior and sex work), laws and
standards determining access to sexual health services, freedom of expression, and violence, among
others. We conclude with an analytic framework which we argue can sustain this dynamically balanced
approach and be constructively used by health and law policy makers in many different contexts as they
assess their laws in light of the goals to promote sexual health and human diversity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Regulating Sexuality and its Political Contexts: Critical Review of Laws and Policies on Anti-Prostitution
since the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China
Author: Suiming Pan
Institution: Renmin University of China
Country: China
Prostitution was claimed to be successfully eradicated after the founding of the People’s Republic of
China in 1949, but has reemerged since the late 1970s when China began its Open Door and Reform
Policy. Starting in the 1980s, the Chinese government began to once again wholeheartedly prohibit
prostitution. From 1981 to 2006, more than 60 laws and regulations concerning prostitution were issued
at the national level. This paper will conduct a detailed text analysis on the regulations in concrete social
and political contexts, examine their theoretical rationale and changing legal practices in a period of
over 20 years, and therefore, provide insights to policy proposals on sex work in China. Anti-prostitution
regulations cover key issues such as why prostitution should be prohibited and what is the major
significance of prohibiting prostitution; the government’s analysis of why prostitution exists; the issue of
rural women; foreigners selling sex; preventing the expansion of prostitution; educational remedies;
fines and penalties for prostitutes and entertainment venues; the costs of treating sexually transmitted
diseases; investigating police dereliction of duty and leadership responsibility; striking against organized
crime, etc. Anti-prostitution regulation has experienced four contextualized stages in terms of different
focuses and severity of penalty. Re-emerged prostitution was explained as “flies that enter [from
outside]” and “dying embers [the ugly phenomena from the old society] that flare up again.” The
rationale of anti-prostitution could be summarized as a “theory of disgrace [to Chinese socialism]” and a
“theory of destroying people’s heart and body.” Anti-prostitution policy should be understood more as a
political issue rather than merely a moral and legal issue in the Chinese context. The socialist
government aims to maintain its political rationale through establishing its moral superiority in society
by prohibiting prostitution. Rights-based policy proposals on sex work in China should take a situated
understanding of its political nature.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sexualities and States in Asia: Identities and Population Mobility
Author: Sonia Correa
Institution: Sexuality Policy Watch
Country: Brazil
The Asian Regional Dialogue examined a rapidly changing landscape in which sexuality, state, public
health, science and technology, and population mobility intersect. In discussing this complexity the very
notion of region was interrogated. Specifically in respect to state and sexualities, two areas will be
highlighted in the session. The first is sexual identity in its relation to policies and the law. The Asian
debates emphasized lived sexual variability and fluidity: the shifting and reinvented identities that blur
gender and sexual categories. But this kaleidoscopic panorama contrasts with the tendency of law and
policy to fixate identities. State recognition of diverse sexual and gender identities can be liberating
when transformed conditions allow, for instance, to inscribe a “third gender” in official documents, as in
the case of Nepal, India and Indonesia. However it is also critical to acknowledge that law, human rights
discourse and biomedicine constantly require and recreate “clearly defined” subjects (of discrimination
and violence, or of rights) or diagnostic groups (e.g. “gender dysphorics”). The new conditions of state
engagement with sexual variability trigger contradictions and challenges that must also be critically
examined. Another aspect to be addressed is migration flows. The numbers of migrants are substantial
and the disciplining and stigmatizing effects of state control of people’s mobility are blatant. Migration
rules prevailing in Asia are systematically gendered and sexualized, implying strict rules concerning
marriage, sexual conduct, as well as norms regarding racial and ethnic mixing. While today borders tend
to become more permeable and porous, this is leading to a clear trend of resealing borders and
triggering hysteria and moral panic about migrant “hordes” that quite often are described in sexualized
terms (i.e. sex workers, unmarried women, HIV positive people), leading to surveillance measures such
as strict migration contracts between states but also brothel raids, detention and confinement.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Navigating the “Bajo Mundo”: Transgender Mobility and the Regulation of Sex and Gender in the Eastern
Dominican Republic
Author: Mark Padilla
Institution: University of Michigan
Country: USA
In recent years literature on sexual citizenship has become increasingly pronounced, emphasizing the
social and political exclusion of individuals with non-normative gender and sexuality. This paper aims to
explicate the intersection of informal labor, citizenship, and gender / sexuality by examining their
intersection in the organization of space and mobility. Using the case of transgendered sex workers in
the Eastern Dominican Republic, we outline a theoretical framework that aims to advance conceptual
discussions in critical medical anthropology by placing them into dialogue with gender / sexuality theory.
Drawing on ethnographic data with a community of transgender sex workers in La Romana – a tourismdependent Dominican resort area known for its commercial sex economy – this paper examines how
transgender space intersects with gendered patterns of exclusion, violence, the drug economy, and
invisibility. The paper seeks to investigate the outer reaches of normative gender and sexuality as
individuals navigate a socially abandoned terrain, wherein individuals struggle to attain a degree of
visibility and citizenship by occupying and remaking marginal public spaces. Drawing on theories of
zones of social abandonment and gender transgression, we argue that the organization of social space
and patterns of gendered violence in this context are governed largely by ongoing struggles to assert
and subvert normative constructions of gender and sexuality in a rapidly changing neoliberal economy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------All Sex Contains Labor, Only Some of Us Are Stigmatized: Including Sex Workers in the Sexual Justice
Agenda
Author: Giulia Garofalo
Institution: GEXcel Centre of Gender Excellence
Country: Italy
In the last decade the sex workers’ rights movement has multiplied its initiatives and gained global
visibility. However, in many contexts, it still lacks the political support one would expect from sexual
rights movements. Typically these activist communities perceive sex workers as “betrayers” and
conceive of sexual autonomy as being at odds with selling sex. Sex workers are therefore supported only
to the extent that they can be clearly identified as victims, and rarely when they are radically politicized
and proud of what they do. Based on participant observation among sex workers´ organizations in 6
European cities and at the European level, this paper challenges these divisions by elaborating the
“situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1991) of sex workers´ rights activists as people who belong to groups
subordinated along lines of gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity/nationality. The theoretical turn
that may include their analyses in a broader agenda for sex justice draws on materialist feminism (Tabet,
1991) and interactionism (Goffman, 1963). The shift consists in seeing how all sex, whether paid or
unpaid, might in fact contain a part of labor that can be more or less symmetrically distributed between
the sex actors. This labor can be thought of as a form of “relational labor,” i.e. the labor of making all
those face-to-face performances that constitute us as social selves, and that remains largely invisible,
unpaid and non-negotiated. Furthermore, it is systematically attributed to certain groups of people, to
the advantage of others, in a process constituting the former as “stigmatized” or “abnormal” and the
latter as “normal.” If, as activists indicate, this labor is what “abnormal” women get instead of being
specifically rewarded in the sex industry, then one may start to understand why sex work may be
claimed as a space of resistance by people who are stigmatized as women, LGBTQI and Black/migrant.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Parents’ Alcohol Abuse and Risk Taking Behavior among Men: Findings from Images from India
Author: Singh Ajay, Ravi K. Verma, Saroj Sedalia
Institution: International Center for Research on Women - ICRW
Country: India
The International Men and Gender Equity Survey (IMAGES) is a multi-country, research and advocacy
effort designed to promote gender equality at a large scale. IMAGES is being implemented by Instituto
Promundo and ICRW in eight countries, including India. IMAGES is one of the most comprehensive
survey instruments ever developed to collect data from both men and women on gender dynamics. The
findings presented here are from India data. Studies have shown that parent’s alcohol abuse during
childhood is an important precursor for later misuse of alcohol. Studies have also shown that children
whose parents abused alcohol are more violent as adults and indulge in risk taking behaviors such as
multi partner sex and sex with sex workers, which makes them vulnerable to STD and HIV. The
objectives were to explore the extent of alcohol misuse by parents during their childhood; explore the
association between parent’s drinking behavior and childhood exposure to drug abuse and risk taking
behaviors, and; explore the linkages of parent’s alcohol misuse and risk taking behaviors of men when
they grow up The researchers used a structured questionnaire, and a combination of self-administered
and interview approaches, to collect quantitative data from women and men. The data were collected
using handheld computers. Parental alcohol abuse was determined through the affirmation: “One or
both of my parents were too drunk or high on drugs to take care of me.” In India, the study was carried
out in New Delhi and in Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh). The India sample was selected using systematic
random sampling and consists of a total of 1500 men and 500 women, ages 18 to 59 years, representing
different socio-economic groups. Mean age of men was around 32 years and around half of them (45%)
were unmarried. Around 15 percent of men reported parental alcohol abuse. It was also found that the
men who reported parental abuse also reported; Childhood drug abuse (29% Vs 12%), violent behavior
during childhood (92% Vs 65%), violence against women when they grew up (53% Vs 32%). It was also
seen that men who reported parental alcohol abuse also reported consuming more alcohol (61% Vs
41%). They also reported more binge drinking (44% Vs 34%), had sex with paid sex partner (43% Vs
24%). They also reported more number of sexual partners (28% Vs 15%). Interestingly more men with
parental alcohol abuse reported to suffer from mental stress and suicidal thoughts (86% Vs 60%). Such
men also reported coming forced sexual acts with their partners (36% Vs 22%). Multivariate analysis
confirms that men who reported drinking alcohol were 3 times and two times more likely to report
about multi-partner sex and paid sex respectively. And also those who reported parent’s alcohol abuse
were 1.6 and 1.8 times more likely to indulge in multi-partner sex and paid sex respectively.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New Face of Female Sex Work In Pakistan: Need for Innovative Interventions
Author: Narjis Rizvi
Institution: Aga Khan Medical University
Country: Pakistan
The aim of this paper is to describe the socio-demographic characteristics, sexual interactions, marital
relationship, and reproductive and sexual health of Female Sex Workers (FSW) in two cities of Pakistan.
Women were recruited through: peer networks for in-depth qualitative interviews; and respondentdriven sampling for structured interviews and clinical examinations. Our study data showed that mostly
illiterate (n=345, 64%), married (n=490, 91%) women with children (n=462, 98%) living with their
families (n=478, 91%) sell sex part-time during the day at kothie khanas, hotels or special rooms behind
shops. Although poverty is the root cause, lack of education and skills are the key factors that pushed
women into the sex trade. The mean age at first intercourse was reported to be 16 years, yet a
significant proportion had had sexual contact before the age of 15 (39%) with someone other than their
husband (37%); the experience was perceived “unwanted” (40%) or even “forced” (5%). The high
contraception rate (64%) especially condom use (54%) reported in the quantitative survey was denied
during in-depth interviews due to client preferences. Abortion by locally available midwives or dais is
used as a frequent method (58%) of contraception. Though prevalence of STIs was low, a sizeable
proportion reported experiencing STI symptom (n=317, 63%) for which informal healthcare providers
were accessed. Violence (physical, sexual or both) was almost universal and the most common
perpetuators were husbands (66%) for physical violence and police (43%) for sexual abuse. Female sex
trade in Pakistan is mainly part-time by married women who sell sex due to lack of education, skill
training and employment resulting from gender disparities. Sex education is non-existent and
reproductive health services are inadequate. Standardized reproductive and sexual healthcare
interventions involving informal healthcare sector would improve reproductive health indicators, yet
socio-economic and gender disparities demand long-term multi-sectoral structural strategies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Patterns, Meanings and Contexts of Adolescent Male to Male Sexual Experience in Pakistan: Results of a
Qualitative Study in Five Cities Aimed at Improving Sexual Health and Social Protection Programming
Author: Jan Willem de Lind van Wijngaarden, Bushra Rani, Qasim Iqbal
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Country: Netherlands
The Pakistani National AIDS Control Programme, UNAIDS and UNICEF commissioned a study on
adolescent male to male sex. Eight contexts were identified: the workplace, institutions, the family
home, the street, situations involving sex work, bacha bazi relationships (between a married adult man
and a young adolescent), sex involving feminized males and sex within gay/egalitarian relationships. 83
young males (aged 13-25) were recruited in the study across five cities, divided over each identified
category, using purposive sampling via collaborating NGOs as well as the personal networks of the two
interviewers. Participants were interviewed using a structured open questionnaire. Besides many
reports of consensual sexual experiences, rape and sexual abuse were widely reported across the
identified settings. Local understandings of masculinity appear to sanction sexual contacts between
males and “not-yet-men” (boys) or “non-males” (khawajasira/moorat). Sex with male family members
was widely reported, often but not always forced. Explanations for abuse were the strict separation of
males and females, the freedom of movement given to boys as compared to girls, and the value of sex
as a commodity to exchange in contexts of acute poverty. Feminized males living in groups under a guru
had the strongest support system. The young men in this study often belonged to, and moved between,
several of the eight distinguished forms of male to male sex. It was often difficult to distinguish between
pleasure and abuse, consensual and forced sex, even when studying the life of a single individual. Social
protection and sexual health services for these adolescents need to be better integrated to reflect this.
Immediate (and relatively inexpensive) intervention opportunities exist to reduce the vulnerability to
HIV and STIs among feminized males, street-based adolescents, male sex workers, and gays, as well as in
workplace- and institutional settings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Popular Culture + Financial Crisis = HIV/AIDS Increase
Author: Edwards Orain
Institution: Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network - JYAN
Country: Jamaica
Present day Jamaican youth are plagued with issues of sexual inequalities caused by cultural norms and
the economic situation. The 2010 UNGASS country progress report stated that 1.6% of the Jamaican
adult populace is infected with the HIV/AIDS virus; among this population are the most vulnerable
groups (youth, MSM and commercial sex workers). Victims of cultural and legislative practices, these
individuals are prone to rapid HIV/AIDS infection due to weak condom negotiation, financial
dependency on older males, national stigmatization and discrimination, limited access to resources and
lack of comprehensive sex education. Consultations have been done with members of the U.W.I Gender
Centre, as well with tertiary students. Several focus groups and sexual reproductive health and rights
sessions have been conducted on the U.W.I campus and within several rural areas. A focus group with
ten Caribbean MSM was conducted and scholarly work was used to support findings. Questionnaires
have been issued to tertiary students for data. Cultural discrimination has led to fewer young MSM
purchasing condoms and lubricants. Many young MSM are unaware of their status. Many young females
refuse to negotiate condom usage based on current financial circumstances. Many tertiary female
students solicit informal sexual acts for financial assistance from older men. Rural youth are greatly
deprived of comprehensive sex education, and young Jamaican females are unaware of the various
forms of contraception. Tabooed sexual behaviors are now being practiced. The data collected over the
last year has propelled the organization to steer its focus on creating a more youth-friendly environment
such as pharmacies, clinics and schools that will provide youth-friendly counselors and professionals as
well as materials. In addition, the JYAN has pledged to highlight and promote employment and academic
opportunities for Jamaican youth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“It’s Good We’re Strong Girls”: Safe Sex, Agency and Necessity among Sex Workers in Fiji
Author: Karen McMillan
Institution: University of New South Wales
Country: Australia
Theorizing of sex work tends to conceptualize it either as a victimization of the vulnerable or as a valid
work choice. Sex work is illegal in Fiji but has become increasingly visible and subject to state efforts to
suppress it. Sex workers are also a target group for HIV prevention. Qualitative research into HIV
prevention and sex work in Fiji conducted in 2009 involved 40 in-depth interviews with a range of sex
workers who were asked to talk about their lives: their history, practice and experiences of sex work,
and their relationships with clients and others, including safe sex negotiation. The research concluded
that poverty and marginalization are central drivers of sex work in Fiji and are underwritten by structural
inequalities that pivot on sexual identity. The study data also show that a dichotomy between sex work
as either structurally determined or a right of choice is neither necessary nor helpful to an
understanding of barriers to and facilitators of HIV risk reduction in Fiji. Interviewee’s stories do clearly
evidence the ways that sex work is underwritten by feminine disenfranchisement and resultant poverty,
and also by the social marginalization of transgender women. These same factors undermine sex
workers’ abilities to protect themselves from HIV. The narratives also show that sex worker agency is
frequently expressed through safe sex negotiation. Differences between women and transgender were
noted with respect to motivations for sex work, and perceptions of the degree of agency afforded in and
by sex work. Further, women involved in sex work described more agency in relationships with clients
than in their intimate relationships. The study indicated that experiences of sex work in Fiji are also
differentiated by ethnicity and that more needs to be known about the HIV prevention needs of IndoFijian family women who are sex workers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Assessing the Patterns and Drivers of Migration/Mobility and their Links with HIV among Sex-Workers
and Male Workers in Four Indian States
Author: Singh Ajay
Institution: International Center for Research on Women - ICRW
Country: India
Migration and mobility within and between states in India have been identified as potential risk factors
for HIV transmission. This research project aims to understand the patterns and drivers of mobility
among female sex workers and male migrant workers in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil
Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The overall goal of the study was to describe the broad migration patterns of
female sex workers and migrant men as they relate to HIV transmission and to assess the underlying and
proximate determinants of migration at the individual, family and community levels. The study uses
both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection to explore the linkages between mobility
and HIV risk among migrant men and female sex workers. The researchers used handheld computers to
collect the quantitative data. The Female sex workers and male migrant workers were selected
randomly in select districts of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The study
shows that around four-fifths of sex workers had moved at least twice in the last two years. Nearly two-
thirds of FSWs and a similar proportion of male migrant workers consume alcohol. More than half of the
FSWs consumed alcohol prior to sex. The practice of alcohol use prior to sex among FSWs has a
significant association with inconsistent condom use during sex, and these effects are independent of
degree of mobility. Almost all the FSWs reported having sex with paying partners in the week prior to
the survey. About fifteen percent of the total sample of male migrant workers reported sex with FSWs in
the last 12 months prior to the survey. The average number of paying partners for FSWs in the past
week was fifteen (SD=10), whereas for male migrant workers in the past year it was four (SD=6.0).
Approximately one-third of the FSWs and the male migrant workers reported inconsistent condom use
in sex with paying partners, in the case of FSWs and paid partners in case of male migrants (34.7% and
33.9%, respectively). Approximately half of the total FSWs reported sex with non-paying partners in the
week prior to the survey. In the total sample of male migrant workers, sixteen percent reported sex with
unpaid partners, in contrast to 45% among clients of FSWs. Inconsistent condom use in sex with unpaid
partners is high in all three groups, FSWs (60.1 percent), all male migrant workers (79.7%) and clients of
FSWs (65%). The results also suggest that FSWs with higher mobility than those with lesser mobility are
less likely to consume all different types of alcohol brands (22.6% versus 18.9%, AOR=0.7, 95% CI=0.60.8). On the contrary, the male migrant workers with higher mobility are more likely to drink all the
types of alcohol brands (7.7% versus 22.1%, AOR=3.4, 95% CI=2.9-3.9) when compared to those men
with lesser mobility.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The High Risk Sexual Behavior and Strategies for the Prevention of STDs/HIV among MSM and Male
Transvestites in Jayapura-Papua, Indonesia
Author: Maimunah Munir, Iskandar Nugraha
Institution: The University of Airlangga
Country: Indonesia
A range of data confirms that the spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua has become a generalized epidemic, with
sexual contact the principal means of transmission. Data from the 2006 Risk Behavior and HIV
Prevalence in Tanah Papua survey (STHP) indicates that on average these local Papuan men have 3-4
sexual partners. The most recent data compiled by the Province of Papua Health Department indicates
that more than 90% of HIV transmission in Jayapura takes place through sexual contact between people
in the 15-49 age group. The high level of migration into urban centers is known to have contributed to
the HIV epidemic in Papua. The implementation of Special Autonomy (Otsus) legislation in 2001 resulted
in the emergence of a group of local men termed “mobile men with money,” i.e. men who regularly or
permanently move in and out of Papua for employment or education or to fulfill traditional obligations
in their home villages. Some of them are regular customers of different categories of sex workers. This
has produced a high incidence of HIV in women who work as caregivers and household managers
(housewives) and who are unfamiliar with the use of condoms. Apart from heterosexual men, previous
research has shown that there are other sub-groups of these mobile men who are part of the urban
sexuality dynamic, i.e. men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgendered males (waria in
Indonesian local terminology). These two socially marginalized groups are significantly under-researched
since the local government does not have accurate data or sufficient specific programs/strategies to
male sexual health. International and local NGOs are more concerned with heterosexual men as the
primary target for the prevention of STD/HIV transmission. MSM and transgendered males are also
vulnerable to HIV infection given their unsafe sex, bisexual sexual behavior, and frequently use drugs.
The paper has two basic questions. Firstly, what are the sexual practices and networks among MSM and
transgendered males? How do they seek out and choose sexual partners? Secondly, what preventative
strategies do they employ to reduce the risk of STD/HIV infection (i.e. condom use, tests/treatment for
STDs/HIV)? The research will use the qualitative approach of the PEER method, which has already been
used in HIV/AIDS research, especially among marginal groups. The components of the research are two
training workshops and in-depth interviews with 20 respondents (10 MSM and 10 male transgender).
The interview questions will be developed by the principal researchers in conjunction with the selected
PEER participants, focusing on keywords such as high risk sexual practices, multiple partners, alcohol
consumption, the availability and use of condoms, and local preventative practices.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ethnographic Research on Health Issues in China’s Urban Sex Industry
Author: Tiantian Zheng
Institution: State University of New York
Country: China
In this paper, I will draw on my three years of ethnographic experience in China to illustrate how I
utilized anthropology to identify and address the social issues that confront the communities where I
conducted my fieldwork. I will argue that doing interdisciplinary research, in my case, combining
anthropology and public health, is crucial to helping solve these social issues. In my research, I observed
that women sex workers that were informed about the dangers of HIV/STDs and the risk-reduction
benefits of condom use were nonetheless unable to convince their clients to use condoms. This
intractable social issue of the unequal economic relations that disempower women sex workers in
relation to their clients spurred me to conduct research combining anthropology and public health. I
embarked on research concentrating on male sex consumers’ perception of condoms as the point of
departure for STD/HIV research and policy intervention. My research departs from the dominant public
health paradigm but at the same time, enriches it with ethnography to help advance the social policies
on STDs and HIV/AIDS that can contribute to the health of women and men.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Reflections on Identity-Based Research
Author: Juliana Cano Nieto
Institution: Independent Researcher
Country: Colombia - Syrian Arab Republic
A 2009 research in Honduras showed that at least 19 transgender women doing sex work were
murdered between 2004-2009. It also evidenced that transgender women generally face illegal
detentions and police brutality. Asking several of the interviewed women if biological women engaged
in sex work faced similar situations, they answered yes. However, my research was limited to an
identity-based analysis, and I was only able to slightly touch upon the situation of a group of people
suffering similar human rights violations. One must recognize that the identity-based framework has
helped in individual rights claims and advocacy; yet, it has limitations that need to be recognized and
addressed. This can be done through human rights research with a sexual rights framework. The
identity-based framework may overlook issues of intersectionality and disregard people who do not
want to be bound by fixed sexual categories. Such a framework also poses challenges when working in
countries where LGBT identities are not recognized, like countries in the Eastern hemisphere, or where
identities are de facto criminalized, like in several African and Middle Eastern countries. Through my
research and advocacy in Honduras and Cameroon, I have found that using a sexual rights framework in
human rights research offers unique opportunities that identity-based research does not. It can
strengthen findings by showing that situations like those of transgender women in Honduras also affect
other women. It can also better serve political empowerment and acceptance among historically
excluded populations facing similar violations to their bodily integrity and sexual autonomy. Finally, it
can push the boundaries of international advocacy to achieve an affirmative vision of sexuality as a
fundamental aspect for all people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Governance and agency: Actions to crack down on prostitution, their influence over the terms and
content of sex work in China
Author: Yingying Huang, Pan Suiming
Institution: Institute of Sexuality and Gender
Sex work is illegal in China. The government cracks down regularly every year and in 2010, made its
most serious effort since the Maoist era to eradicate prostitution. Previous studies on female sex
workers (FSWs) have addressed their great vulnerabilities to HIV/STI, and a few have pointed out the
importance of documenting social determinants of health risks. However, the politicalized nature of sex
work as a tolerated yet illegal activity, and how this position influences its terms and contents have not
been fully understood. Moreover, the agency which has emerged among sex work is greatly neglected.
Using the ‘structure-agency’ interactive theoretical model and grounded approach, we aim to analyze
the impact of the crackdown on sex work, documenting power dynamics between the government and
sex work, and the agency of sex workers and managers through strategies they have adopted. We
observed 10 red light districts in 8 cities and counties, and interviewed 170 FSWs (street standers,
working at small hair salons, karaoke halls, massage parlors and nightclubs), managers and a few sex
work grassroots groups. We demonstrate diversity of both implementation by police and activities
adopted by FSW in response. These include: going underground; recruiting work though invisible
channels (cell phones, internet, regular clients); increasing mobility; diversifying work in venue types;
increasing part-time work; changing sexual content; expanding sexual networks; and challenging
condom promotion under a risky environment. In some cases these responses create additional risk of
violence and exposure to STI, often undermining outreach efforts by health workers. Such police actions
are unlikely to reduce sex work, but may worsen the risk involved in their work. Applying right-based
framework, this paper provides strategic policy recommendations with situated understanding of
China’s political contexts, and detailed terms and contents of sex work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Visiting the Barracks”: Prostitution, Heteronormativity and Power in the Peruvian Army
Author: Lourdes Hurtado
Institution: University of Notre Dame
Country: USA
In Captain Pantoja and the Special Services, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa talks about the
tribulations of an army officer when he is charge of organizing a visitadoras corps, a group of sex
workers that provide "services" to enlisted men in the Amazonian rainforest. Although the novel is set in
the tone of a comedy, it indeed referred to a practice that was common within the Peruvian army until
the 1980s. Visitadoras’ periodical presence in military posts that were far from urban centers was
regarded as necessary to keep men’s morale high and to avoid problems with the local population. The
military even had a codified name for them, "Class Seven." In this paper, I examine the military discourse
about the practice of masked prostitution promoted by the Peruvian State within the army’s barracks.
By examining military manuals and press that indirectly refer to this practice and drawing on interviews
with army officers who witnessed the implementation of this "service" in the 1960s and 1970s, I
reconstruct an aspect of the military's discourse about issues of sexuality, power and heteronormativity
within the Peruvian army in the context of the Cold War. During most of the twentieth century, the
army was the most important and bureaucratized state institution in Peru. Thus, studying this
institution’s discourses about sex, body, normativity and power, clustered around the topic of organized
and controlled prostitution within the barracks, sheds light onto the wider relationship between the
army and Peruvian society in general, and on the role this institution played in shaping some
mainstream ideas about what men's proper behavior should be in Peru.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A Study on Child Sex Tourism (CST) in Major Tourist Destinations in Ethiopia
Author: Ayode Desta
Institution: Social Welfare Management Consultancy
Country: Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, little is known about the magnitude and trend of the problem of CST. However, fragmented
studies on commercial sexual exploitation of children give some clues about the pervasiveness of the
problem. With this backdrop, this national study explored the scale of child sex tourism in six major
tourist attraction hotspots in Ethiopia. The study aimed at stimulating policy recommendations with a
critical review of legal and policy atmosphere in relation to child sex tourism in the country. The study
used mixed methods such as in-depth/life history interviews, FGDs and observation to generate both
quantitative and qualitative data from girls/children engaged in commercial sex work, key informants
and community members in every study site. In addition, existing policy and legal frameworks related to
child sex tourism in Ethiopia were reviewed. The findings revealed that a third of girls are vulnerable to
child sex tourism. Despite the burgeoning trend, child sex tourism does not receive attention from policy
makers and the public at large. It appears that CST seems to have been widely misconceived by victim
children, their families and the community at large. Poverty, interplay of demand and supply structures
exacerbates the gravity of the problem, and policy and legislative provisions appear to be deficient.
Child sex tourism is on the rise in Ethiopia, but regulatory provisions are not in place. The study suggests
a multi-stakeholders approach as a better strategy to mitigate the problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Exploring the Performance of Masculinities in the Lives of Irish Drug Using Sex Workers
Author: Paul Ryan, Gemma Cox, Teresa Whitaker
Institution: National University of Ireland
Country: Ireland
This paper explores data from a study conducted in 2009. This research was conducted in response to
Action 98 of the Irish National Drugs Strategy, which requires the NACD to carry out research on
problematic drug use amongst prostitutes because they are seen as an at risk group. The study
conducted 35 qualitative interviews with drug using sex workers in Dublin. In this paper I discuss the
findings of the interviews I conducted with a group of male sex workers and staff from a range of harm
reduction services who struggle to meet their complex needs. The interviews reveal how the men’s lives
defy conventional narratives of defining young sex workers as victims (Kaye, 2010: 86), while remaining
beyond the reach of sex work services geared primarily towards women. The paper explores how the
men occupy a space in which they perform a range of masculinities in their everyday lives in how they
negotiate relationships with clients, service providers and their own peers. Their lives are further
complicated by drug use, which has excluded them from a range of transitional housing services. As a
result the men exist in a transitory world from “couch to couch” dipping into a variety of services, none
of whom know the totality of the men’s stories or possess the resources to forge a solution. Within
stories of violence and survival there exist narratives which seek to construct alternative biographies
that co-exist (and eventually replace) their stigmatized identities of drug using sex worker.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sexuality as Criterion for Ethnic Selection and Exclusion: Chinese Female Migrants in Southeast Asia
Author: Melody Chia-Wen Lu
Institution: National University of Singapore
Country: Singapore
In the context of feminized migration in Asia, with female migrants migrating alone to work and live in
private and intimate domains, the regulation of their sexuality has become a dominant concern for host
societies. The burgeoning scholarship on migration and citizenship has focused on how racial, class and
gender differences constitute the basis of discrimination and exclusion while scholarly work on migrant
domestic and care labor has focused on how regulation of sexuality is embedded in mechanisms of
disciplining female migrants. However, despite the broad-ranging scholarship, the question of why
female migrants of particular ethnicities are singled out as “sexual others” and thus excluded from the
formal migration channels and deprived of citizenship entitlements has yet to be adequately addressed.
This paper aims to bring the regulation of sexuality into the analysis of migration, citizenship and social
exclusion using empirical studies of women from the People's Republic of China (PRC) migrating to
Singapore and Malaysia for work and for marriage. The data are collected from two-year qualitative
fieldwork as part of a research project entitled State Boundaries, Cultural Politics and Gender
Negotiations of International Marriages in Singapore and Malaysia. PRC women are barred from formal
labor recruitment channels (in Malaysia) and prohibited to work in the domestic sector; the PRC
marriage immigrants are also subjected to stricter scrutiny in the naturalization process; and in the case
of Malaysia, they are subjected to regular raids and constantly suspected to be sex workers. This paper
argues that in addition to the state’s ethno-nationalistic governance and ethnicized market demands,
what lies at the core of the logics of ethnic deterrence of Chinese female migrants and the justification
of the violence against and surveillance toward them is the anxiety about Chinese women’s sexuality.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Community Media: How it Can Empower Poor Transsexual People from Developing Countries Socially
and Economically
Author: Kalki Subramaniam
Institution: Sahodari Foundation
Country: India
In many developing countries, transsexual people face severe discrimination and very limited
acceptance in society. The rapid changes and the revolutionary growth of the internet in developing
countries have provided great potential to empower poor and underprivileged transsexual people and
other marginalized groups as community journalists who bring news and information for their social,
political and economic empowerment. The ability to socially network in local languages and video
blogging through websites like Blogspot, YouTube and Vimeo in local languages will make it possible for
the poor transsexual people to share, exchange and empower themselves with the necessary
information and data to advocate for their rights in their countries. Providing media training to these
people in community journalism, video filming, editing, blogging in local languages and broadcasting will
certainly make change and pave way for their social, economical and political empowerment in their
countries. The training should be facilitated and provided by media institutions supporting LGBT rights,
non-governmental and community, academic institutions, human rights organizations and individuals
who have knowledge in community journalism. An excellent and successful example has been “Project
Kalki” (http://projectkalki.blogspot.com) from India, through which the author trains underprivileged
transgender sex workers and beggars in community journalism and transforms them as community
journalists and documentary filmmakers. A study conducted by the author among 100 poor transsexuals
in 2010 in two cities shows that 95% showed great interest in being citizen journalists. This paper will
present the ideas and methods on transforming the transsexual sex workers and beggars as community
journalists and documentary filmmakers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Improvement of Public Awareness on HIV/AIDS and Sexuality
Author: Abdullah Al Mohiuddin
Institution: Society for Development - ANTAR
Country: Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a low prevalence but a high risk country on HIV/AIDS. At present in Bangladesh the
reported case of HIV infection is 874, among whose 240 turned to AIDS. Some of the factors, which
make Bangladesh more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS epidemics, are high prevalence of risky sexual
behaviours such as sex with sex workers (due to availability and accessibility to sex workers), high
prevalence of STIs among sex workers; low condom use in commercial sex, etc. Around 300 NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs) working in the area of STD& AIDS have formed a network and
about 135 are actively engaged in HIV/AIDS-related activities in the country. HIV/AIDS is a cross cutting
issue in Bangladesh. There is a program in Bangladesh for prevention of HIV/AIDS. Bangladesh has no
particular program on sexuality because sexuality is a hidden problem in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’
Government integrated the sexual program with the existing program of HIV/AIDS with the help of
NGOs in Bangladesh which will ultimately lead to HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Most of the organization’s
focus in Bangladesh for HIV/AIDS and sexuality is on preventive work with children and young people
(15-24) through friendly BCC and IEC materials and especially through work with men and boys. At the
same time we are realizing that there are HIV/AIDS positive children in our program. The aim is to
reduce the associated stigma and discrimination, create a space for direct service (including Anti
Retroviral Therapy- ART) for the children living with HIV/AIDS, as well as to prevent further spread.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Moralising and Criminalising: the Suppression of Sexual Freedom in Zimbabwe
Author: Sian Maseko
Institution: Sexual Rights Centre
Country: Zimbabwe
The recent Constitution making process in Zimbabwe created a platform for many conservative and
oppressive opinions and views on sex and sexuality to emerge. This paper will explore the work of the
Sexual Rights Centre to challenge the Zimbabwean government’s attempts to legislate and criminalize
certain aspects of sexuality. Zimbabwean laws are particularly oppressive for sexual minorities and
women and this inevitably has an impact on how sex is perceived and the extent to which individuals
can and do have control over their bodies and sexuality. The Sexual Rights Centre works with the LGBT
community, sex workers and women living with HIV/AIDS to assert their fundamental sexual rights. The
Sexual Rights Centre (SRC) works also with the judiciary, teachers, medical practitioners and counsellors
to challenge the hetero-normative approach and promote a sexual rights discourse in public service
provision. The SRC seeks to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable and marginalized groups, train key
service providers in providing relevant and appropriate services for all individuals concerning sexual
issues and lobby the judiciary and policy-makers for change in laws and legislation. Sexual rights should
not be considered only for the private domain, but instead it is crucial to discuss them openly and in the
broader context of human rights. The criminalization of certain aspects of sexuality, including same-sex
relations and abortion reinforce stigma and discrimination and serious violations of human rights. It is
crucial to work with service providers, particularly in an oppressive context such as Zimbabwe. For
example, medical practitioners openly acknowledge the importance of working with the LGBT
community, which is not reflected by the stance of the government. If sexual rights are not
acknowledged or realized in the Constitution, what are the implications? How can service providers
support advocacy work for sexual rights?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hidden Identity: Unbuild
Author: Mohammad Rofiqul Islam
Institution: Bandhu Social Welfare Society
Country: Bangladesh
“Under the Rainbow” is a cultural program for the community minorities group and organization. It was
arranged collaboratively with Goethe Institute of Bangladesh and Bandhu Social Welfare Society (BSWS).
The objectives of “Under the Rainbow” are social mobilization of the minorities groups and ensuring
cultural participation and empowerment of the community. Part of the program is a photo exhibition of
gays in Bangladesh, from different level like age, Muslim leader (IMAM) , HIV infected persons,
adolescent male sex workers, Kothi ( girlish man and gay love relationship). I came forward and
submitted my photos under the gay love relationship category. I shared my love life and showed my love
letter as proof. After sharing this, I felt relieved and free, as if a big burden has been lifted from my
shoulders. My family, friends and neighbors accepted me for who I am. I am now bolder in talking about
the plight of other gays in the country and encouraging them to come forward. I am thankful to BSWS
for giving me the chance to know myself better and in doing so, helping others to accept themselves
with respect and dignity. However, I know I still have a lot to learn hence the interest to join this
conference as my knowledge is limited in my country.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abstracts with the key work “prostitution”
Gender Equality in AIDS Prevention among Youth
Author: Lilian Orubo, Paul Moses Mutiga
Institution: Ambassadors of Change
Country: Kenya
Among youth in Kenya (15-24 years), 79% of those who are HIV positive are women, who are 5-6 times
more likely to have HIV than their male counterparts. Stereotyped gender roles and society's
misinformed conception of girls lowers their productive, gainful work as well as their crucial access to
inheritance of land and housing (non-income). Feminization of HIV creates the urgent need to rectify
inequalities that have not been successfully addressed. The study was carried out between April and
September 2009 in Nakuru, Kenya. The overall aim was to reduce impacts of HIV/AIDS among youth,
particularly girls through behavior change, reduced levels of HIV infection, enhanced access to youthfriendly services, treatment for opportunistic infections, and access to ARVs. Qualitative and
quantitative research methods were applied through group discussions, structured interviews engaging
296 adolescent girls in slum areas, in and out of school by a trained duo. Gender inequalities in access to
economic resources affect how girls can protect themselves from HIV. HIV exploits social norms
entrenched in the society. 69% of the adolescents interviewed reported their first sexual intercourse to
have been forced or rape. HIV risk escalates among adolescent girls because of their susceptibility to
rape, sexual coercion, trafficking for prostitution, and harmful cultural practices, e.g. FGM. Girls’ support
and safety networks are extremely thin and fragmented. Among slum dwellers, only a minority of young
girls live with their parents, many are in single family households, and a considerable number are on
their own in an extremely crowded, violent environment where adolescent girls get exposed to sexual
violence and molestation. Young people make up a significant proportion (over 79%) of the slumdwelling population. Over 58% of girls are estimated to engage in excessive consumption. They also
abuse alcohol, trade sex with multiple unprotected partners, and the majority are underemployed or
unemployed. Unemployment is a key factor for HIV infection among adolescent girls.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sexual Practices of the Transgender Community
Author: Zia Ahmad, Muhammad Munir
Institution: Plus Development Foundation
Country: Pakistan
Pakistan, the second most populous Muslim nation in the world, has started to finally experience and
confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The country had been relatively safe from any indigenous HIV cases for
around two decades, with most of the infections being attributable to deported HIV positive migrants
from the Gulf States. However, the virus finally seems to have found a home-base, as evidenced by the
recent HIV outbreaks among the injection drug user community. Extremely high-risk behavior has also
been documented among Hijras (sex workers) and long-distance truck drivers. The weak government
response coupled with the extremely distressing social demographics of this South-Asian republic also
helps to compound the problem. The time is ripe now to prepare in advance, to take the appropriate
measures to curtail further spread of the disease. If this opportunity is not utilized right now, little if at
all could be done later. On the bottom rungs of Pakistan's social ladder, the eunuch-transvestites or
"Hijras" scrape out a hard existence. Cultural descendants of the court eunuchs of the Mughal Empire
(1526-1858), the Hijras now earn their living as beggars, dancers and prostitutes. Though often reported
on in India, the Hijras of Pakistan are relatively unknown outside of that country. Most Pakistani cities
have sizable Hijra communities, divided into clan groups living mostly in slums and presided over by a
leader or guru. Hijra means hermaphrodite in Urdu, but most Hijras are homosexual transvestites, some
of whom have gone through a crude sex-change operation. The Hijras are both feared and pitied in
Pakistan, feared for their supposed ability to place curses, pitied for being outcast children of Allah.
Most Hijras leave or are ejected from traditional Pakistani families around puberty and then join the
Hijra community for life. Many have also reported that Hijras will kidnap young men, forcibly castrate
them and force them into prostitution, gaining income for the community. More Hijras, however, earn
their living by begging, and by dancing at carnivals, weddings and births and sexual activities. Hijras are
especially apt to visit the families of recently born male children where they are paid to give blessings-or to simply go away. The objective was to assess risk behaviors including number and type of sex
partners, condom use, knowledge of STIs and HIV/AIDS among hijras (eunuch) of Lahore, Pakistan. Two
hundred hijras were recruited through Respondent Driven Sampling and interviewed by a team of
experienced interviewers. Lessons Learned: The mean age of the respondents was 29.2 ± 6.3 years
(Range 18 - 55). More than two third (68.5%) were illiterate; 23% were married. Among married, 89%
were married to women and had 1 to 7 children. Sixty percent had taken some hard drug (Cocaine,
Heroin, Morphine and Amphetamine) during the last 12 months and 3% had injected drugs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------State and Travesti Organizations in Buenos Aires: Ethnography of a Tense Relationship
Author: María Soledad Cutuli
Institution: Universidad de Buenos Aires
Country: Argentina
Through this paper we present partial results of our current PhD research in Social Anthropology, in
which we enquire into the organizational and political practices carried out by travesti associations in
the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. By means of an ethnographical and political perspective, we aim
to analyze the relations and tensions between the claims of these groups and the public policies related
to them. Our research method is based on qualitative techniques such as participant observation and in
depth interviews, developed on the fieldwork done since 2008, as well as the analysis of secondary
written sources. In the last two decades, many different transvestite organizations have been formed.
During the 1990s, the main objectives of the pioneer groups consisted in, on the one hand, struggling
against the violence perpetrated by police officers and the legislation that legitimated it, and, on the
other hand, carrying out HIV/AIDS prevention activities; both mainly in favor of people working in
prostitution. Although these issues are still present in the associations’ agendas, their purposes have
now been diversified, including demands to equal access to education, dwelling, health and dignified
labor. The preliminary conclusions of this article propose to emphasize the state’s different dimensions,
its policies and agencies as main factors of the setting up and development of these groups. As a result
of years of struggle and intense negotiations, and because of changes in the national and international
contexts, incipient access to citizenship rights has occurred, from which travestis have been historically
excluded because of their non-normative sexualities and gender identities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sex, Money and “Love”: Global Exchanges involving Brazilian Women
Author: Adriana Piscitelli
Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Country: Brazil
In Brazil, diverse forms of incompletely commodified sex have long coexisted with what is more
traditionally conceptualized as prostitution. The intensification of international tourism and migration
has led to the recreation of these traditional patterns with foreign partners alongside with the shaping
of new varieties of sexual/economic/affective exchanges. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out
in transnational scenarios, since 2000 in Fortaleza, considered to be a center of sex tourism in the
Northeast of Brazil and since 2004 with Brazilian women that migrated from different sectors of the sex
markets to Italy and Spain, I explore the lines that distinguish different commodified/affective
relationships in heterosexual exchanges and also the connections among them. My main argument is
that as contexts change, one finds reconfigurations of practices, beliefs and styles of affection which are
widely diffused throughout the Brazilian lower and lower middle classes, affecting relationships in which
economic contributions are exchanged for sex and affection in transactions that are not understood to
be prostitution and also programas, the explicit payment for sexual services in money considered as
prostitution and ideally severed from affection. This process is effaced in academic studies that fuse “sex
tourism” with prostitution and in a public debate that combines these relationships, when they involve
poorer/”darker” women, with sex trafficking. The analysis of these shifting interpenetrations between
economics and affection also contributes to question socio-anthropological approaches that use the
presence of “love” as a classificatory operator for relationships and those that consider its existence as
an expression of “westernization”. Both perspectives might be as problematic as the belief that the
reconfigurations of traditional Brazilian forms of sexual and economic exchange, now taking place in the
global social environment, must result in greater risks for women and smaller margins for female
agency.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Depoliticizing Sexuality. Television Representations of Prostitution in Argentina
Author: Carolina Justo von Lurzer
Institution: CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires
Country: Argentina
This paper falls within the framework of the research carried out to describe and analyze television
representations of prostitution as an area of construction, reproduction and articulation of meanings on
socio-sexual and gender relations and for sexual regulation and normalization. These meanings
contribute to create the scenario for the social assessment of sexual practices in a given space at a
certain time. Media representations can be thought of as a scenario where social classifications are
reconsidered, confirmed, contested and articulated in different ways depending on specific interests
and time and space variables. Hence, the importance of problematizing what the media offers to public
consideration when representing of prostitution, which are oriented towards gender relations and
sexual and emotional ties among other aspects. This research is based on the critical analysis of the
television discourse in research journalism and fictional narratives on prostitution between 2000 and
2008. In this paper, which presents some of the conclusions of my Master Thesis, I elaborate on the
prevailing modalities of enunciation in journalistic research and its major discursive operations and on
the depoliticization of prostitution and the use of individual testimonies for a realistic effect. There has
been a substantial growth in the public circulation of discourses in connection with sexual and
reproductive rights and sexual diversity movements (Moreno, 2008; Sabsay, 2002) concurrent with the
proliferation of issues related to sexuality from the most diverse genres of the cultural industry. We are
interested in these modes of inclusion since the relationship between the cultural industries and the
“issues” of the groups the sexual system has subalternized (Rubin, 1989) –what’s more, the relationship
between the cultural industries and these subalternized groups as an “issue” – is a key concept in a
context of endless dispute over definitions in the matter of sexual rights and policies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fallen Women and Disgraced Men: Gender, Sexuality and the Patriarchal Nation in Puerto Rican Cinema
Author: Radost Rangelova
Institution: Gettysburg College
Country: USA
This paper analyzes the relationship between gender, sexuality and national identity in the Puerto Rican
films “Maruja” and “Life of Sin.” The paper argues that, by responding to specific historical and cultural
contexts, the films condemn and thwart the sexual liberation of their female protagonists in order to
construct and reproduce a traditional Puerto Rican national model built upon patriarchal power and
hierarchical gender roles. The main issues and questions are: how are femininity and masculinity
represented in the films that the paper analyzes, and what is the power hierarchy in which they are
incorporated? How is the relationship between femininity, patriarchy and Puerto Rican national identity
constructed? Are there instances of subversion of the traditional patriarchal national model, and how do
they challenge the image of the “great Puerto Rican family”? The representations of women in the two
films respond to particular historical processes. “Maruja” condemns female sexual liberation,
reproducing the traditional image of the “great Puerto Rican family,” developed in the 1940s and 1950s.
“Life of Sin” responds to the death of Isabel la Negra, the prostitute that serves as a prototype for the
protagonist, condemns prostitution, and associating the woman’s behavior with an ethical failure that
threatens the construction of the Puerto Rican national family model. The parallel analysis of the two
films demonstrates the way the image of the “great Puerto Rican family” has been constructed at the
expense of gender and sexual equality and female liberation in Puerto Rico. A productive next step
would be the analysis of the construction of gender, sexuality and the family in the work of Puerto Rican
lesbian writers. How do they challenge the subjugated position of the woman in the traditional
patriarchal family and in the social project of the national family?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abstracts with the key work “prostitute”
“Let the World Know We are Out to Misbehave”: Re-Configuring the Good-Time-Girl
Author: Grace Waichigo
Institution: Community Information for Transparency and Empowerment - CIET
Country: South Africa
There has been a wave of female writers in Africa using popular fiction to (re)tell the story of the
financially and sexually empowered, educated, single female adult inhabitants of cities and towns.
Though initially dismissed by authors and scholars of “serious” literature in Africa as shallow, popular
literature has gradually earned recognition in academia, and is now acknowledged as a site where
people articulate ways of grappling with everyday struggles. By analyzing Monica Genya’s texts “The
Wrong King of Girl” and “The Other Side of Love”, this paper seeks to discuss the portrayal of women,
not only in literature, but in also in society because literature is a microcosm of society. It seeks to
unpack the single financially and sexually empowered woman, often referred to as the good-time-girl, as
inhabitants of most cities and towns. Who is the good-time-girl? Why is this woman described as a
good-time-girl? How is she different from the prostitute? This paper will engage with authors and
scholars of gender, feminism and African literature, in an attempt to (re)define the good-time-girl and
(re)tell her-story, thereby assigning her agency, while problematizing ubiquitous and binary
representations of women as either good or bad. By centralizing the good-time-girl and re-appropriating
her to represent female emancipation in a society burdened with adrocentrism, her marginality is
revised and complex representations of women in African societies are acknowledged. This paper will
therefore engage with a patriarchal culture that influences the narration of her-story, as well as trace
the achievements and limitations of feminist campaigns in African literature and beyond.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Whose Representation is it Anyways? The Productivity of Social and Academic Exclusion in Generating
New Knowledge about Sexuality and Gender
Author: Treena Orchard, Arn Schilder
Institution: The University of Western Ontario
Country: Canada
This paper explores the complex structural processes within academic institutions that work to exclude
certain forms of knowledge. Going beyond existing examinations of the implications of the suppression
of unorthodox epistemologies, this paper draws from experiences of being silenced in my work with
marginalized populations at risk for HIV/AIDS as a reflexive opportunity to critically examine the
challenges faced when trying to produce new ideas and have them recognized. The data for this paper
come from the first author’s participation as a (female) PhD student conducting HIV/AIDS prevention
research with female prostitutes in India. Here the focus is how the insistence upon “real” data from the
team leaders, all of whom were male academics in their 50s, forced me to excise from my field notes
and publications any mention of emotions and how my gender influenced my ethnographic work and
findings. The second example pertains to difficulties we experienced when publishing a manuscript on
rectal douching in the hygienic routines and HIV-related experiences of gay men. In this instance what
comes to light is the lingering power of the “taboo” in the naming and framing of sexual and bodily
(im)possibilities. These two experiences illustrate how particular forms of knowledge are subordinated
by dominant research institutions and provide an opportunity to examine broader issues of
representation. It has been through these “lessons” about what counts and what does not count as
authoritative knowledge that the often hidden forces and relations of power that place boundaries on
legitimate forms of knowledge emerged and thus can be contested. This paper provides new insights
into the implications of the institutional subjugation of unconventional ideas and issues and contributes
to emerging research that pushes against these boundaries of exclusion in the pursuit of new knowledge
about sexuality, gender, and representation.