Mainstreaming the sex industry: Economic inclusion and social ambivalence

Journal of Law and Society

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 40-60

  Brents, Barbara G ^a   Sanders, Teela ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953224743     PISSN: 0263323X     EISSN: 14676478     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00494.x     Document Type: Note

References (83)

1. See S. Paasonen, K. Nikunen, and L. Saarenmaa, Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (2007).
2. 'Giving the Customer What He Wants' Economist, 14 February 1998.
3. P.G. Moffatt and S.A. Peters, 'Pricing Personal Services: An Empirical Study of Earnings in the UK Prostitution Industry' (2004) 51 Scottish J. of Political Economy 675-90.
4. P. Jones, P. Shears, and D. Hillier, 'Retailing and the Regulatory State: A Case Study of Lap Dancing Clubs in the UK' (2003) 31 International J. of Retail and Distribution Management 214-19, at 215.
5. M.L. Freridge, Adult Entertainment in America: A State of the Industry Report (2006).
6. 'More Women Working in Adult Entertainment' MSNBC, 30 March 2009, available at . The two companies are VCG Holding, owning more than twenty nightclubs, and also Rick's Cabaret.
7. B. McNair, Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratization of Desire (2002)
8. F. Attwood, 'Sexed Up: Theorizing the Sexualization of Culture' (2006) 9 Sexualities 77-94.
9. Note that throughout the paper we are referring to the adult female heterosexual sex industry unless otherwise stated.
10. 'The Business of Pornography' U.S. News & World Report, 10 February 1997; 'How Big Is Porn?' Forbes, 25 May 2001; McNair, op. cit., n. 7.
11. MSNBC, op. cit., n. 6. Jenna Jameson is an award-winning erotic film star, owns a multimedia adult entertainment company, and has also appeared on a number of mainstream American television sitcoms and other shows. Sasha Grey is an adult film star who appeared in a Spring 2009 mainstream film directed by Steven Soderbergh, The Girlfriend Experience.
12. Academic researcher Elizabeth Bernstein notes a specific trend of more middle-class women entering the sex industry to make a living, and selling sexual services to a mainly middle-class audience on the Internet. See E. Bernstein, Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (2007).
13. M. Storr, Latex and Lingerie: Shopping for Pleasure at Ann Summers (2003)
14. L. Cornelia, 'It's Sexy. It's Big Business. And It's Not Just for Men' (2003) 7 Contexts 61-3.
15. K. Hausbeck and B.G. Brents, 'Inside Nevada's Brothel Industry' in Sex for Sale, ed. R. Weitzer (2000); B.G. Brents and K. Hausbeck, 'Marketing Sex: U.S. Legal Brothels and Late Capitalist Consumption' (2007) 10 Sexualities 425-39. B.G. Brents, C. Jackson, and K. Hausbeck, The State of Sex (2010).
16. A. Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (1992)
17. McNair, op. cit., n. 7
18. S. Jackson and S. Scott, 'Sexual Antinomies in Late Modernity' (2004) 7 Sexualities 233-48
19. U. Beck and E. Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love (1995)
20. G. Hawkes, A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality (1996)
21. Z. Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (2003)
22. K. Plummer, Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues (2003).
23. McNair, op. cit., n. 7; Attwood, op. cit., n. 7; R. Gill, Gender and the Media (2007).
24. McNair, id.; Attwood id.; Gill, id.
25. J. Scott, 'Changing Attitudes to Sexual Morality: A Cross-National Comparison' (1998) 32 Sociology 815-45;
26. A.R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983)
27. L. Adkins and V. Merchant, Sexualizing the Social: Power and the Organization of Sexuality (1996)
28. E. Illouz, Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1997)
29. L. Adkins, Revisions: Gender and Sexuality in Late Modernity (2002)
30. V.A.R. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (2005).
31. P. Crang, 'It's Showtime: On the Workplace Geographies of Display in a Restaurant in Southern England' (1994) 12 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 675-704; L. Adkins, Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market (1995); M. Tyler and P. Abbott, 'Chocs Away: Weight Watching in the Contemporary Airline Industry' (1998) 32 Sociology 433-50
32. P. Black, The Beauty Industry: Gender, Culture, Pleasure (2004).
33. L. Adkins, Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market (1995) 158.
34. B.G. Brents and K. Hausbeck, 'Sex Work Now: What the Blurring Boundaries around the Sex Industry Means for Sex Work, Research and Activism' in Beyond Divides: Exploring Money, Power and Intimacy in the Sex Industry, eds. M. Ditmore, A. Levy, and A. Willman (2010).
35. For an account, see M. Padilla, Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (2007).
36. C. Seib et al., 'Commercial Sexual Practices Before and After Legalization in Australia' (2008) Archives of Sexual Behavior, published online 30 December 2008 at .
37. T. Sanders, M. O'Neill, and J. Pitcher, Sex Work, Policy and Practice (2009)
38. P. Jenkins, Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet (2001).
39. G. Hawkes, A Sociology of Sex and Sexuality (1996)
40. M. Prasad, 'The Morality of Market Exchange: Love, Money, and Contractual Justice' (1999) 42 Sociological Perspectives 181-214.
41. Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity (2000).
42. L. Duggan and N.D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (1995)
43. R. Weitzer, 'Deficiencies in the Sociology of Sex Work' (2000) 2 Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance 2
44. R. Weitzer, 'The Politics of Prostitution in America' in Sex for Sale, ed. R. Weitzer (2000) 159-80.
45. Jackson and Scott, op. cit., n. 14.
46. P. Johnson, 'Ordinary Folk and Cottaging: Law, Morality, and Public Sex' (2007) 34 J. of Law and Society 520-43.
47. Direct sexual services sell sexual intercourse and related contact, such as prostitution. Indirect sexual services sell sexual interactions or images not involving genital contact with customers, including bondage and discipline, lap dancing, massage, adult film or magazines.
48. P.I.O. US Census Bureau, 'U.S. Census Bureau News Press Release: Nevada in Focus: Census Bureau Pre-Caucus Snapshot' 16 January 2008.
49. M. Gottdiener, C.C. Collins, and D.R. Dickens, Las Vegas: The Social Production of an Ail-American City (1999)
50. H. Rothman, Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century (2002).
51. Gottdiener et al., id.
52. C. Bremner, 'Top 150 City Destinations: London Leads the Way' (2007), available at: .
53. K. Hausbeck, B.G. Brents, and C. Jackson, 'Sex Industry and Sex Workers in Nevada' (2006), available at .
54. T. Sanders, Sex Work: A Risky Business (2005)
55. T. Sanders, 'Controlling the Anti-Sexual City: Sexual Citizenship and the Disciplining of Female Sex Workers' (2009) 9 Criminology and Criminal Justice 507-25.
56. For a review of the consequences of the law, see P. Hadfield, Bar Wars: Contesting the Night in Contemporary British Cities (2006).
57. 'Vice Enforcement's Top Offenders: Police Are Taking Unprecedented Steps to Keep Prostitution Offenders Off the Streets' Las Vegas Rev. J., 15 February 2009.
58. Hausbeck et al., op. cit., n. 35.
59. A brief description of the investigation, 'Political Corruption: The Galardi Investigation', and an archive of all relevant news stories is at Las Vegas Rev. J. website: .
60. 'Sin City Chamber of Commerce' at .
61. T. Sanders, 'Selling Sex in the Shadow Economy' (2008) 35 International J. of Social Economics 704-16
62. T. Sanders, 'Male Sexual Scripts: Intimacy, Sexuality and Pleasure in the Purchase of Commercial Sex' (2008) 42 Sociology 400-17.
63. Illouz, op. cit., n. 18.
64. C. Harcourt and B. Donovan, 'The Many Faces of Sex Work' (2005) 81 Brit. Medical J. 201-6.
65. H. Ward et al., 'Who Pays for Sex? An Analysis of the Increasing Prevalence of Female Commercial Sex Contacts among Men in Britain' (2005) 81 Sexually Transmitted Infections 467-71.
66. T. Sanders, Paying for Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex (2008).
67. Bernstein, op. cit., n. 11; A.K. Murphy and S.A. Venkatesh, 'Vice Careers: The Changing Contours of Sex Work in New York City' (2006) 29 Qualitative Sociology 129-54.
68. DWP Consultation, 'Accepting and Advertising Employer Vacancies from Within the Adult Entertainment Industry by JobCentre Plus' (2008).
69. Bernstein, op. cit., n. 11.
70. T. Sanders, '"It's Just Acting": Sex Workers' Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality' (2005) 12 Gender, Work and Organization 319-42; Sanders, op. cit., n. 36.
71. R. Roberts, T. Sanders, E. Myers, and D. Smith, 'Participant in Sex Work: Students' Views' (2010) 9 Sex Education (forthcoming); R. Roberts, S. Bergstrom, and D. La Rooy, 'U.K. Students and Sex Work: Current Knowledge and Research Issues' (2007) 17 J. of Community & Applied Social Psychology 141-6.
72. L.M. Agustín, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007).
73. M.S. Bradley, 'Girlfriends, Wives, and Strippers: Managing Stigma in Exotic Dancer Romantic Relationships' (2007) 28 Deviant Behavior 379-406.
74. Hausbeck and Brents, op. cit., n. 13; B.G. Brents and K. Hausbeck, 'Violence and Legalized Brothel Prostitution in Nevada: Examining Safety, Risk and Prostitution Policy' (2005) 20 J. of Interpersonal Violence 270-95.
75. G. Gall, 'Sex Worker Unionisation: An Exploratory Study of Emerging Collective Organisation' (2007) 38 Industrial Relations J. 70-88
76. T. Sanders and S. Lopez-Embury, 'Sex Worker Organisation and Unionisation' in Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics, eds. T. Sanders, M. O'Neill, and J. Pitcher (2009)
77. J. West, 'Prostitution: Collectives and the Politics of Regulation' (2000) 7 Gender, Work & Organization 106-18.
78. S. Jeffreys, The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (2008)
79. R. Weitzer, 'The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade' (2007) 35 Politics and Society 447-75.
80. Sanders, op. cit., n. 46; J. Scoular
81. 'Criminalising Punters: Evaluating the Swedish Position on Prostitution' (2004) 26 J. of Social Welfare and Family Law 195-210
82. B. Brooks-Gordon, 'Clients and Commercial Sex: Reflections on Paying the Price: A Consultation Paper on Prostitution' (2005) Crim. Law Rev. 425-43
83. E. Bernstein, 'The Meaning of the Purchase: Desire, Demand and the Commerce of Sex' (2001) 2 Ethnography 389-420.