Violence and Sex Work in Britain

• NCJ Number: 227635
• Author(s): Hilary Kinnell
• Date Published: 2008
• Length: 312 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Overview Text; Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This book examines the prevalence of and factors related to violence and homicide against sex workers in Great Britain, with attention to any link between current British law and policing tactics and sex workers' risk for such victimization.

Abstract

The book opens with a re-examination of the case of Peter Sutcliffe - a lorry driver who attacked and murdered women between 1975 and 1980, some of whom were sex workers. The book focuses on this case partly because of its enduring influence on common beliefs about murderous violence toward sex workers and the nature of sex workers' vulnerability to violence. This case is also used to explore various manifestations of feminist activism at that time, assessing how far radical feminists identified themselves with sex workers or addressed their interests. The book then offers an alternative definition of violence that reflects the ways in which sex workers themselves define and experience it. This definition includes activities that cause fear, humiliation, abuse, or exposure to danger. This proposed perspective on violence against sex workers not only encompasses criminal violence committed by individuals, only some of whom may be "clients," but also legalized, institutional and societal violence. The remainder of the book examines the nature and extent of this violence, the circumstances that facilitate it, and the people responsible for it. The book challenges assumptions that violence toward sex workers only occurs in interactions with clients or is primarily perpetrated by pimps and traffickers. Further, it questions whether these assumptions divert attention from the fact that public abhorrence of sex workers gives tacit consent to and tolerance toward violence against sex workers. There are apparently powerful interest groups that desire to perpetuate punitive contexts of vulnerability to harm for sex workers, for whom the law offers no protection and little redress. Extensive tables and figures, 100 references, and a subject index