Ethical Research with Sex Workers by Susan Dewey & Tiantian Zheng

Author:Susan Dewey & Tiantian Zheng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer New York, New York, NY

Ruby’s wholesale dismissal of what she perceives as the performance-like aspects of more lucrative types of sex work underscores that she has no illusions about her motivations for engaging in street-based exchanges. Her directness resembles arguments in support of envisioning sex work as a form of labor like any other, as she speaks to her refusal to engage in affective work with clients. However, a researcher would be remiss in failing to recognize that, for Ruby, all sex work-related earnings convert within a matter of minutes into crack cocaine and an overpriced, dilapidated motel room.

The wildly divergent experiences of dancers, who earn an income in a legal environment, and women like Ruby, who live in a world of illegal activities with a high risk of arrest, speak to the need for aspiring participatory researchers to think very critically about what “sex work” will mean in their research. In envisioning sex work as a continuum of behaviors and beliefs associated with the exchange of sex or sexualized intimacy for money or something of value, researchers must be careful to strive for participation that represents these very different sets of experiences and life practices, a topic discussed more fully later in this chapter.

Researchers must prepare themselves for the possibility that their perspectives on sex work may change in the course of their work. It became very difficult for Susan, in the course of her time with street-based sex workers, to understand how the lives of women struggling with addiction and homelessness might be improved if sex work were legal. For these women, sex work was just one aspect of a complex matrix that rendered them socially invisible through their addiction, lack of a permanent address, gender, and, for many, criminal record.

The more time that sex work researchers spend thinking about and developing participatory research, the more it can become very difficult to negotiate fraught ideological ground characterized by very rigid opinions which sometimes do not reflect human realities. In Ruby’s case, for instance, it is difficult to locate evidence in support of arguments that view sex work as a potentially empowering choice, just as it is hard to see how adopting an abolitionist perspective that opposes sex work as a form of violence against women might help to fully understand the complex behaviors and beliefs that inform her decision-making processes.

Sex work researchers bear near-constant witness to the inadequacies inherent in polarized ideological stances that do little more than simplify the nuanced lives of individuals involved in any form of sex work. Doing so forces researchers to constantly reassess where lines might be drawn between activism, scholarly inquiry, and the emotional allegiances inevitably developed in the field. This book’s introductory chapter opened with an ethnographic vignette regarding Susan’s own attempts to engage in “help” provision with Kristi, a woman who in every possible way self-identified as desperate and in need of assistance to find housing, addiction treatment, and perhaps above all, a place to feel safe.

Over time, Susan’s interactions with Kristi and many

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