1 Regulating Sex Work Adrienne D. Davis VERY ROUGH DRAFT ...

struggles against the devaluation of women’s work and gender exploitation within
capitalism.” 52 Relatedly, others urge the term “sex worker” to call attention to the
multiplicity of people—men, women, heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, etc.—who
sell sex. 53 Thus some adopt the term sex worker to invoke identitarian or coalitional
discourses and critiques. Overwhelmingly, though, those who urge the sex worker rubric
do so to embrace a discourse of transactional sex as legitimate labor.
Conceptualizing commodified sex as work is urged as one way to combat the very
real ills experienced by many who transact sex—an alternative to both abolition and
ongoing criminalization. This argument emphasizes that sex work should be regarded and
regulated as no different from any other labor. For instance, the World Charter for
Prostitutes’ Rights calls for the “decriminaliz[ation of] all aspects of adult prostitution”
and the regulation of “third parties according to standard business codes.” 54 Indeed, the
legalization movement is a self-proclaimed labor movement. The website for the Live
Nude Girls Unite! documentary takes care to proclaim in its first sentence: “This site is
about a labor film.” 55 Similarly, Monica Moukalif concludes that “the issues that affect
sex work are essentially labor issues common to all marginalized workers.” 56 Proponents
invoke other comparisons to conventional labor as well. “Both the factory worker and
the prostitute survive hard physical labor by separating who they are from what they do.
Just as the person on the assembly line in a factory separates his personality from his
hands and feet and the part of the brain that makes them work, so the willing prostitute
separates her personality from her sexual equipment.” 57 Hence, Moukalif and others give
clear statements of the complete claim of commodified sex as labor.
Yet, within the professional sex as labor camp there is a deep split that has gone
largely unnoticed. Universally, the sex as labor camp urges decriminalization of
professional sex, contending that [check this quote] “criminalization results in
stigmatization, criminalization, and punishment.” 58 They observe that the long-standing
52
KEMPADOO, supra note [x], at 8. See also Tinsman, supra note [x], at [add pincite] (contending sex is
primary way women are exploited in all forms of work).
53
McKinstry, supra note [x], at 683; [check Cabezas at 81].
54
World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights; International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights February 1985,
Amsterdam, reprinted in 37 Social Text 183 [hereinafter World Charter fro Prostitutes’ Rights]. In fact,
Sylvia Law concludes, “With startling consistency, the prostitutes' rights movement calls for the
decriminalization of all aspects of prostitution.” Law, supra note [x], at 553 (footnote omitted).
55
[cite website].
56
Monica R. Moukalif, No Evil: Applying a Labor Lens to Prostitute Organizing, 20 HASTINGS WOMEN’S
L.J. 253, 258 (2009).
57
Michael Conant, Federalism, the Mann Act, and the Imperative to Decriminalize Prostitution, 5
CORNELL J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 99, 100 (noting differences between sex bargainers and other workers,
including substance abuse and psychological effects) [keep that parenthetical?]; see also Nussbaum, supra
note [x] (rehearsing arguments of how prostitution is similar to and different from other forms of labor).
58
[add check citation]. [decide whether here or in regulation description: Prabha Kotiswaran points out
how criminal, prohibitory laws have become fetishized by both sides of the decriminalization debate.
“While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates
alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal
laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex
workers.” Kotiswaran, supra note [x], at 579. In sum, contra Foucault’s injunctions against juridical
understandings of modern regulation, “Both camps thus view the criminal law as having a unidirectional
repressive effect on the sex industry.” Kotiswaran, supra note [x], at 613. See also Nussbaum, supra note
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