Sex Worker or Student? Legitimation and Master Status in Academia
Special Issue: Problematizing Prostitution: Critical Research and Scholarship
ISBN: 978-1-78635-040-4, eISBN: 978-1-78635-039-8
Publication date: 20 October 2016
Abstract
Victim narratives consistent with anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution rhetoric leave little room for understanding agential labor in the sex industry, which profoundly impacts sex workers’ experiences in other domains. One such domain – academia – is often understood as antithetical to the “body work” of sex work. It is, after all, the domain of the mind. Drawing from my experiences as an undergraduate and graduate student as well as from my work as a sex worker, I use auto-ethnography to demonstrate the lasting impact of (1) mind/body dualisms, (2) the virgin/whore dichotomy, and (3) narratives of sexual danger on perceptions of legitimation and status for sex workers in academia. I also discuss implications for broader social concerns like legal policy.
Keywords
Citation
Heineman, J. (2016), "Sex Worker or Student? Legitimation and Master Status in Academia", Special Issue: Problematizing Prostitution: Critical Research and Scholarship (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 71), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720160000071001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited