Read more
This book considers sex worker representation in the news, where the public draws their understanding of the industry in the absence of lived interaction with it. Using New Zealand as a case study, the author encourages emerging acceptability based on neoliberal postfeminist discourses of choice, desire, authenticity, and personal responsibility.
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Sex and Work
Sex work in New Zealand
Sex work as work
Researcher positionality
Stigma and the Sex Industry
What is stigma?
How is stigma applied to sex work?
How does this stigma affect sex workers?
What approaches exist to resist this stigma?
Sex Work in the News Media
The role of the media
People don't know sex workers, but they watch TV
Media analysis and news media
New Zealand's media landscape
Chapter 2: Objects of Study
Existing Research into Media Representations
Naming the Sex Working Subject
Who Speaks and Who is Spoken About
Discursive Slippage and Questions of Voice
Images and Motifs of Sex Work
Chapter 3: Intertextuality and Responding to Stigma
In/Visibility as Acceptability
Normative Identity Categories and Community
The Sex Worker as Disease Vector
Sex Work and the Assumption of Violence
The Constrained Nature of Intertextual Narratives
Chapter 4: Comparative Acceptability
Cisgender and Transgender Sex Workers: Vu
About the author
Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith is a researcher, lecturer and commentator currently based in Wellington, New Zealand. They have most recently taught at Massey University. They were awarded a PhD in Media Studies from the Victoria University of Wellington in 2018. Their research deals primarily with media representations of the sex industry, with a particular interest in how these operate under New Zealand’s legal model of decriminalisation.
