Unionising sex workers and other feminists
- Social & Legal Studies
- 33(4), Aug, 2024: p.501-525
This paper examines the unionisation of strippers and sex workers through the Sex Workers’ Union (SWU), a branch of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union. SWU advances a counter-hegemonic perspective on law and society, challenging dominant assumptions that sex workers are either free enterprising subjects or unfree vulnerable victims requiring state protection. Instead, SWU posits that sex workers are unfree workers but free sexual subjects. This perspective is reflected in their feminist law work, which demands both decommodification and decriminalisation of sex work by engaging with, and resisting, official law. The paper concludes by presenting three reasons why feminists should support SWU, advocating for solidarity politics that centre on the conditions under which sex workers’ labour is commodified A minor movement of strippers and sex workers are unionising as the Sex Workers’ Union (SWU) branch of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union. SWU have produced a counter hegemonic perspective on law and society in the process of class struggle. This perspective demystifies the view that strippers and sex workers are free workers and enterprising subjects, or unfree vulnerable victims in need of state protection. SWU's counter hegemonic perspective inverts this common-sense assumption and posits that strippers and sex workers are unfree workers and free sexual subjects. This demystification is evident in SWU's ‘feminist law work’, which demands decommodification and decriminalisation for all sex workers by working within, and against, official law. In conclusion, I argue that there are at least three reasons why other feminists should support SWU by ceasing eradication of sex work via criminalisation and closure campaigns. This would open space for a politics of solidarity between sex workers and other feminists, centred on the conditions within which sex workers’ labour is commodified.- Reproduced
Sex work, Stripping, Labour, Employment, Class, Feminism. Labour Market, Sex Workers’ Union (SWU), Strippers, Class Struggle, Feminist Law Work, Decommodification, Decriminalisation, Counter-Hegemony, Workers’ Rights, Solidarity Politics, Trade Unionism, Women Studies, Human Rights