Radical Feminist Harms on Sex Workers

Sex work has long been a site for contesting womanhood, sexuality, race, and patriarchy. Its very existence forces us to examine how we think about two very dirty subjects-money and sex. The radical feminist literature highlights the problems with sex work and often describes it as a form of human trafficking and violence against women. This influential philosophy underlies much of the work in human trafficking courts, was evident in a letter signed by several Hollywood starlets in opposition to Amnesty International\u27s support for decriminalization, and is the premise of several movies and documentaries about sex slavery. Radical feminists aim to abolish sex work but argue that only sex work purchasers should be criminalized for engaging in it. They are concerned with the structural harms of sex work and have formed alliances with groups that oppose sex work due to moralistic reasons. Like radical feminism, this Article considers the structural harms of sex work in assessing whether it should be criminalized. However, this Article arrives at a very different conclusion and challenges the radical feminist approach to sex work, arguing that the harms of any form of criminalization, particularly to individuals with intersectional identities, are overlooked in much of the radical feminist literature on sex work. This Article incorporates empirical research from nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa, to illustrate the ways that criminalizing any aspect of the sex work transaction, including the demand-side, is problematic. By recognizing that some sex workers face the effects of multiple systems of oppression and that the criminal justice system has often been a source of oppression for these individuals, this Article argues that decriminalization should be the favored approach for those interested in improving the lives of sex workers. Moreover, the essentialist framing of the harms of sex work in the radical feminist literature is itself a reproduction of patriarchy and white supremacy, silencing the voices and experiences of sex workers themselves

On Beauty and Policing

“To protect and serve” is the motto of police departments from Los Angeles to Cape Town. When police officers deviate from the twin goals of protection and service, for example by using excessive force or by maintaining hostile relations with the community, scholars recommend more training, more oversight, or more resources in policing. However, police appear to be motivated by a superseding goal in the area of sex work policing. In some places, the policing of sex workers is connected to police officers’ perceptions of beauty, producing a hierarchy of desirable bodies as enforced by those sworn to protect and serve us all. This Article examines how police preserve racial and gender subordination in South Africa, an instructive analog for the United States because of both nations’ shared histories of racial apartheid and valorization of whiteness. Drawing from extensive original data from a multiyear study, this Article exposes how police officers’ perceptions about sex workers’ beauty influenced their policing of different classes of sex workers in Johannesburg, South Africa. Police valuations about sex workers’ beauty resulted in benevolent surveillance of sex workers who were higher on the social hierarchy and decreased police protection for sex workers whom they viewed as less beautiful in more dangerous areas of the community. If community protection and service were the primary motivators for police conduct, police officers should have focused on the spaces that were more dangerous, which were those with sex workers police deemed less professionalized and less beautiful. This act of assigning value to different bodies, through the subjective language of aesthetics and beauty, reinforced existing racial and sexual hierarchies. Beauty was a proxy for race. Police assigned higher values to whiter and more European bodies, and discounted blacker bodies as foreign and less beautiful. So blacker bodies, which were less valuable than whiter bodies in their eyes, were simultaneously neglected yet susceptible to more brutal forms of policing during their limited interactions with police. Whiter feminine bodies were both well-protected and subject to the constant gaze of the police. These whiter bodies were ignored when they challenged white masculinity, but prioritized over blacker bodies. Reinforcing the higher value of whiter bodies over blacker bodies took precedence over reducing crime, suggesting that police serve and protect racial hierarchies in countries that have a history of white supremacy before they serve and protect the people

Policing sex an ethnographic study of the policing of sex workers in Johannesburg

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2017 JohannesburgBy adopting a legal ethnographic methodology, this dissertation examines the everyday policing of sex work in Johannesburg, South Africa. Sex work is difficult to regulate and is at the literal and figurative margins of proper society, where legality and illegality often blur into one another. The policing of sex work in Johannesburg, South Africa, straddles the line between formal and informal. On the streets, police often appear to be acting in an informal and ad hoc manner. However, high-level organisational directives intended to regulate the police’s obligations and duties toward sex workers also influence police action, and tilt the exercise of discretion to the formal. These obligations themselves reflect the tension between the law and human rights: police must respect the human rights of sex workers, but they also must enforce the laws of the country. Sex work is illegal, but it is also time-consuming to regulate and difficult to prove that a sex work transaction has occurred. Sex work involves activity that occurs in private transactions in spaces that are ordinarily private in nature. But the illegality of sex work make it a matter of public concern. Meanwhile, discourses and attitudes about sex workers themselves inform how the law is interpreted and enforced, reflecting the fluidity between the formal and informal, and the legal and social. Popular discourses about sex workers’ hygiene, impact on public health, and proclivities to upset public order all inform how the police approach them. In this liminal space, this study considers how sex work is policed and how it should be policed. How do discourses about sexuality and gender informally police sex workers, and in turn inform how they are formally policed by the police organization? What is the current relationship between the police organization and sex workers in Johannesburg? These two ethnographic questions about the nature of sex work provide the foundation for determining how sex work should be policed. This study reveals that there is the possibility of negotiation between police and sex workers, which can provide provisional security for sex workers through police protection, and this relationship is often formulated in a human rights language, adopting legal language and terms. However, it is never a lasting security because it is unregulated, and police ‘greed,’ the structural effect of working for an institution that is perceived to be underfunded, can tilt things very quickly. Thus, the law is not the primary issue in the policing of sex workers; these other practices which remain despite changes in the law and are informed by popular discourses and competing rationales, constitute the everyday practices, norms, and understandings that influence the policing of sex workers.MT 201

Blue Lives & The Permanence of Racism

In true dystopian form, the killing of unarmed Black people by the police has sparked a national narrative about the suffering of police officers. “Blue Lives Matter” has become the rallying call for those offended by the suggestion that we should hold police officers accountable for killing unarmed Black people. According to a December 2016 poll, 61% of Americans believed that there was a “war on police,” and 68% of Whites had a favorable view of the police as compared to 40% of Blacks. Lawmakers around the country have been proposing Blue Lives Matter laws that make it a hate crime to kill or assault police officers. This strange twist of events is perverse given the social context. Why should the police be viewed as victims in need of additional protection at precisely the same moment that many have questioned their victimization of Black communities? This Essay considers this question and argues that “Blue Lives Matter” is evidence of the permanence of racism as a juridical and discursive matter in this country

Transforming The System

Our criminal justice system must keep all communities safe, foster prevention and rehabilitation, and ensure fair and equal justice. But in too many places, and in too many ways, our system is falling short of that mandate and with devastating consequences. The UnitedStates is saddled with an outdated, unfair, and bloated criminal justice system that drains resources and disrupts communities.The U.S. prison population has swelled to unprecedented levels,2  and unequal, unjustified treatment based on race and ethnicity is well documented.3  People of color, particularly Native American, African American, and Latino people, have felt the impact of discrimination within the criminal justice system. As of 2012, there were 2.2 million people incarcerated in the UnitedStates, costing our nation $80 billion—funds that could go to worthier options, such as education and community enrichment.4 In addition, many immigrants experience mandatory detention, racial profiling, and due process violations because of laws and policies that violate their human rights—and the principles of equal justice, fair treatment, and proportionality under our criminal justice system.The good news is that we as a nation are at a unique moment in which there is strong public, bipartisan support for criminal justice reform,5  positive policy developments in many parts of the country, and mass action and social movements for change, including the Movement for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter. More is needed, however, to move from positive trends to transformative, lasting change. There is a lack of positive solutions and alternatives in public discourse, and inadequate coordination among pro-reform advocates and commentators. Several interviewees for The Opportunity Agenda's Criminal Justice Report, including leadingcriminal justice and civil rights activists, scholars, and government officials, noted that they often work in silos on their discrete issues with limited collaboration among sectors. They identified a need for a more coordinated and sophisticated effort that would consolidate the gains that have been made and support sustained reform efforts going forward. This is doubly true at the intersection of criminal justice and immigration. While grassroots movements are increasingly working across these sectors, the issues are often disconnected in public discourse.

Harm, Sex, and Consequences

At a moment in history when this country incarcerates far too many people, criminal legal theory should set forth a framework for reexamining the current logic of the criminal legal system. This Article is the first to argue that distributive consequentialism, which centers the experiences of directly impacted communities, can address the harms of mass incarceration and mass criminalization. Distributive consequentialism is a framework for assessing whether criminalization is justified ft focuses on the outcomes of criminalization rather than relying on indeterminate moral judgments about blameworthiness, or desert, which are often infected by the judgers\u27 own implicit biases. Distributive consequentialism allows for consideration of both the harms of the conduct and the harms of criminalization itself It brings an intersectional approach to criminal legal theory by examining the distribution of harm, centering the experience of populations that face intersectional forms of subordination, and viewing the criminal legal system suspiciously. This Article adopts a distributive consequentialist analysis to examine the continued criminalization of sex work as just one example of how the theory can be applied This application demonstrates how engaging in a distributive consequentialist analysis is a step toward reining in a system that seems to be ever-expanding and reframing a criminal legal theory that has grown ambivalent about this expansion

Maybe She Is Relatable Increasing Women’s Awareness of Gender Bias Encourages Their Identification With Women Scientists

In the current research, we explored whether informing women about gender bias in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) would enhance their identification with a female scientist and whether this increased identification would in turn protect women from any adverse effects of gender bias information. We found that, relative to a control information condition, gender bias information promoted beliefs that a successful woman (but not a man) scientist had encountered bias and encouraged identification with that woman scientist. Feelings of empathic concern was an important mechanism underlying this increased identification (Experiments 2 and 3). Moreover, when presented with a man scientist, information about gender bias in STEM decreased female participants’ anticipated belonging and trust in a STEM environment, compared to participants in a control information condition (Experiment 1a and 1b). However, identifying with a woman scientist after learning about sexism in STEM fields alleviated this harmful effect. Finally, compared to those in the control condition, women college students who learned about gender bias reported greater interest in interacting with a woman STEM professor at their university (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that interventions that teach women about gender bias in STEM will help women identify with women scientists. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684317752643

Pensions and the health of older people in South Africa: Is there an effect?

This paper critically reviews evidence from low and middle income countries that pensions are associated with better health outcomes for older people. It draws on new, nationally representative survey data from South Africa to provide a systematic analysis of pension effects on health and quality of life. It reports significant associations with the frequency of health service utilisation, as well as with awareness and treatment of hypertension. There is, however, no association with actual control of hypertension, self-reported health or quality of life. The paper calls for a more balanced and integrated approach to social protection for older people

Modeling Psychrometric Data in Real-Time fruit Logistics Monitoring

Abstract Progress in fruit logistics requires an increasing number of measurements to be performed in refrigerated chambers and during transport

Origin of the Spin-Orbital Liquid State in a Nearly J=0 Iridate Ba3ZnIr2O9

We show using detailed magnetic and thermodynamic studies and theoretical calculations that the ground state of Ba3ZnIr2O9 is a realization of a novel spin-orbital liquid state. Our results reveal that Ba3ZnIr2O9 with Ir5+ (5d(4)) ions and strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) arrives very close to the elusive J = 0 state but each Ir ion still possesses a weak moment. Ab initio density functional calculations indicate that this moment is developed due to superexchange, mediated by a strong intradimer hopping mechanism. While the Ir spins within the structural Ir2O9 dimer are expected to form a spin-orbit singlet state (SOS) with no resultant moment, substantial frustration arising from interdimer exchange interactions induce quantum fluctuations in these possible SOS states favoring a spin-orbital liquid phase down to at least 100 mK