Week 12: Sex Work

Mandatory Reading

• Jones, A. (2016). “I get paid to have orgasms”: Adult webcam models’ negotiation of pleasure and danger. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 42(1), 227-256.
• Rodríguez, J. M. (2023). Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, working sex. Duke University Press.
  • Introduction; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Epilogue.
• Short Reading:
  • McCombs, E. (2018). This Bill Is Killing Us’: 9 Sex Workers On Their Lives In The Wake Of FOSTA. HuffPost. SexWorker_Syllabus
  • Mistress Snow. (5 December 2019). I Told My Mentor I Was a Dominatrix, The Chronicle Review, https://www.chronicle.com/article/i-told-my-mentor-i-was-a-dominatrix/ SexWorker_Syllabus

Further Reading

• Jones A., Patella-Rey P., & Berg H. (2024). Sex Worker Syllabus and Toolkit for Academics.
• Yang, L., & Xu, Y. (2016). “The love that dare not speak its name”: The fate of Chinese danmei communities in the 2014 anti-porn campaign. In M. McLelland (Ed.), The end of cool Japan (pp. 163–183). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315637884-9/love-dare-speak-name-ling-yang-yanrui-xu

Advanced UG Version

• Jones, A. (2015). Sex work in a digital era. Sociology Compass, 9(7), 558-570.
• Felkins, S. (2022). Cripping sex work: disabled sex workers and racialized disgender in the online sex industry. Disability Studies Quarterly, 42(2).
• 🎞️Watch: The laws that sex workers really want | Juno Mac

Rationale

This module primarily focuses on the US context, exploring online sex work as both an aspirational and precarious form of labor, along with its potential for pleasure. Continuing my efforts to push the boundary of the "digital" in the module "Transformative Intimacy and Digital Worlding", this module includes explorations on pornography and documentaries of sex workers. In addition, Rodríguez's work prompts students to consider sex work from a wider perspective and explore various research approaches involving sex workers.