GWS 202 CC: SEX/WORK

Intimacy, Agency, and Exploitation: How and why is sex a site of conflict in so many workplaces? What if the work is sex? From debates about decriminalizing paid sex to the emergence of the #MeToo movement, we learn about how workers understand their experiences with sex and labor. We begin by examining the history of sexual harassment from the struggle to name abuse to changing laws and policies. From farmworkers to college students, waitresses to government lawyers, we ask what it is like to encounter sexual harassment and what the obstacles to justice are. As we learn about why sexual harassment continues to be an issue in our society, we build a foundation to study a range of work that has been deemed “intimate labor.” In reading about how sex workers experience migration and the varying reasons they pursue these jobs, we go beyond simple ideas about prostitutes as victims or deviants. Our exploration of the dominatrix offers insight into how explicit practices of power exchange become a service to be sold. As we conclude the semester, our class takes what we have learned and applies it to a range of jobs. We look at how these types of work are represented in media and read these images against what activists, scholars, and officials know about these jobs. Alongside our daily reading discussions and activities, our core assignments - the sex worker health project and the digital sex and work project - enable us to delve more deeply into facets of how sex work is researched and represented. By the end of the semester, we should have a more complex set of ideas about sex and work that is well-informed by the range of perspectives we have encountered.