My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers in an Era of Change.

Sex work is often a topic of lively debate, both in academic and public settings, with discussions around morality, laws and exploitation often creating a noisy discursive space. What is often missing in these discussions is the voices of sex workers themselves, particularly such a diverse range of voices as those found in Caren Wilton’s collection, My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers in an Era of Change. This book is a collection of eleven life stories from current and former sex workers in New Zealand, based on a series of oral history interviews conducted by Wilton (an oral historian) between 2009 and 2018, framed by simple yet evocative photographs taken by Madeleine Slavick

Dick pics on blast: A woman's resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram

This article brings to attention and explores women’s use of non-traditional forms of resistance to online sexual harassment. In this piece we use Anna Gensler’s Instagram art project Instagranniepants to examine how women are appropriating the language and practices of the cyber realm to expose online sexual harassment and to engender a creative resistance which is critical, comedic and entertaining. Drawing from interdisciplinary literature on witnessing, satire and shaming, we explore the techniques Gensler uses to not only document harassment but also resist, engage and punish those who seek to perpetrate it. This article problematises the stereotype of women as passive victims of online public spaces, and is critical of popular discourses that portray online spaces as exclusively risky and that position women as the natural victims of online violence. It concludes that a more nuanced account of women’s negotiation of online spaces is necessary, particularly as an overarching narrative of risk and victimisation undermines the liberatory potential of the online realm

Anti-rape narratives and masculinity in online space: A case study of two young men's responses to the Steubenville rape case

On the 11th of August 2012, in Steubenville Ohio, two boys, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, sexually assaulted an intoxicated 16-year-old girl. Mays and Richmond were later convicted. Drawing from case studies of the vigilantism of Anonymous member Deric Lostutter and the online commentary of YouTube vlogger Philip De Franco, this chapter explores how these young men used online space to challenge and critique dominant rape narratives. This chapter explores the potential for networked community responses to function as online bystander engagement with gendered norms and rape narratives

'We all have one': Exit plans as a professional strategy in sex work

The idea of ‘exiting’ the sex industry plays a powerful symbolic role in the feminist debates around the morality, legitimacy and regulation of sex work. Drawing on interviews with 39 women sex workers in Australia and Canada, we explore three key contrasts between dominant narratives and interventions that frame ‘exiting’ as escape from trauma or exploitation, and sex workers’ assessments of ‘exiting’ as a personal or professional strategy. First, we explore sex workers’ perceptions of sex work as temporary work. Second, we analyse the symbiosis between exit plans and current work practices. Third, we examine workers’ assessment of the value of ‘exiting’ sex work in the context of changing market forces within the sex industry, the ‘square’ labour market (or non-sex work sectors) and exiting interventions (i.e. programs to assist workers in leaving sex work)