Hannah Thompson Stories of Resistance; an exploratory study of intersectionality in sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand
With the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003, Aotearoa New Zealand recognised that sex workers’ rights are human rights. Research over the last twenty years has highlighted the increased safety for sex workers; however, it has also outlined the persistence of discrimination. This is experienced through Section 19 excluding non-resident migrants from legal sex work, exposing them to exploitation, sexual violence, criminalisation, and deportation. Discrimination is also experienced by sex workers already marginalised by their personal characteristics, namely, ethnicity, gender, Indigeneity, and migrant status. While there is a complaints pathway available to sex workers via the Human Rights Commission, research has highlighted few successful cases. This is due to a sense that this is not a viable and available option because while sex work is legal, it is not necessarily considered to be legitimate. In short, while research on decriminalisation has outlined increased safety for sex workers, not all sex workers experience this safety equally. This paper focuses on this intersectionality of risk and safety in sex work under decriminalisation. It seeks to do this through reflecting on the early stages of conducting narrative and arts-based research, which will capture the experiences of migrant and gender-expansive sex workers.
Kit Cohen Neurodiversity and Sex Work in Aotearoa New Zealand
In Aotearoa New Zealand, sex work has been decriminalised for citizens and permanent residents since the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. While decriminalisation provides sex workers with legal pathways to assert their rights and seek safer, more supportive work environments, challenges persist in the extent to which sex workers feel able to enforce these rights (Hayden, 2023). There are also gaps in understanding how specific groups of sex workers experience their working conditions. Specifically, little academic attention has been given to the intersection of neurodiversity and sex work.
Addressing this important gap in the literature, this paper examines at the experiences of neurodiverse sex workers in Aotearoa New Zealand, with the aim of exploring the benefits and challenges they face in the workplace. Drawing on in-depth interviews with neurodiverse sex workers in New Zealand, this paper sheds light on how this population experience sex work and their working conditions. In doing so, the paper highlights the flexibility and autonomy that sex work afforded participants, while outlining tensions and challenges in this context.
Madi Hodgkinson ‘Does that mean we have to be disempowered for the rest of our [lives]? No, it doesn’t.’: Survivors’ Perceptions of Sex Work in Relation to Past Experiences of Sexual Trauma.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with nine sex workers who are survivors of sexual violence in their personal lives, this paper explores how participants experienced and perceived their work in relation to their past experiences of trauma. Sex work is a subject that is shrouded with misinformation, and the intersection between sex work and past experience of interpersonal trauma is a particularly fraught area. Specifically, it has been argued by some researchers and anti sex work campaigners that entry into sex work is frequently a consequence of sexual trauma. However, the voices of sex workers have been largely absent in literature on the intersection between interpersonal trauma and involvement in sex work, and thus very little is known about their perspectives.
In this paper, I foreground the voices of sex workers who have experienced sexual violence in their personal lives and argue that for several participants engagement in sex work was experienced as a form of healing. These accounts challenge stereotypes and harmful assumptions about sex workers who are survivors and provide insights that can support trauma informed, rights-based practice for those supporting survivors who are working in the sex industry.
