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Sexual politics, in other terms, affecting sexuality to a political attribution can be traced back to the rise of class society. Politics may be defined as the methods, tactics, and strategies applied to maintain the continuity of a system. When sexual politics are handled in the context of the subject of this work, the relationship between the sexes manifests itself as the domination of one gender (masculine) on the other (feminine). The patriarchal ideology, which determines the relationship between women and men, has also a deeply rooted sexual culture on how the sexual relationship between two people (hetero or homosexual) should be interpreted. In this work, the sociological meaning of offering sexuality against money or any other benefit will be questioned. In this study, a total of 44 women have been interviewed in depth, 31 of whom work in brothels, and 13 on the street. In this perspective, the working conditions of the women in the prostitution market have been considered on the bases of pimp-woman, lover (dost)-woman, and client-woman relations. Based on the study findings, the assumption that the exploiting of women will be eliminated by improving the working conditions in the prostitution market means not only normalising the public thought which will expose the women to all kinds of use, but also disregarding the mechanisms that force women to practice prostitution and remain helpless, and creating gender inequality.

Radical feminists position any forms of sex work as gender violence against individuals and more broadly for all women in society. I argue against the ideological stance that sex work is inherently violent and as a result should be outlawed, setting out how this ideology and dogma has allowed structural factors to persist. In this paper, I argue that despite the unacceptable high levels of violence against sex workers across the globe, violence in sex work is not inevitable. Through a review of the literature as well as drawing on research from the United Kingdom, I deconstruct the myth of inevitable violence. In turn I argue that violence is dependent on three dynamics. First, environment: spaces in which sex work happens has an intrinsic bearing on the safety of those who work there. Second, the relationship to the state: how prostitution is governed in any one jurisdiction and the treatment of violence against sex workers by the police and judicial system dictates the very organization of the sex industry and the regulation, health and safety of the sex work communities. Third, I argue that social status and stigma have significant effects on societal attitudes toward sex workers and how they are treated. It is because of these interlocking structural, cultural, legal, and social dynamics that violence exists and therefore it is these exact dynamics that hold the solutions to preventing violence against sex workers. Toward the end of the paper, I examine the UK’s “Merseyside model” whereby police treat violence against sex workers as a hate crime. It is in these examples of innovative practice despite a national and international criminalization agenda against sex workers, that human rights against a sexual minority group can be upheld.

Routine activity theory suggests the crime will happen when a willing offender encounters a vulnerable victim in the absence of a guardian (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Such guardians can be actual individuals, but are more often the internal or external static factors associated with the environment. Sex work research has focused considerably on the role of such ecological factors in mitigating client-initiated violence among types of indoor sex work. Yet distinctions between outdoor sex markets, or “strolls,” have been underdeveloped. This paper is divided into two parts. In Part I, I identify three types of street-based prostitution strolls: identity-associated, drug-associated, and high track, using a combination of previous literature and observational data. In Part II, I examine how these stroll-level factors impact the demographics and acts committed by violent clients against Washington, DC street-based sex workers. Stroll-level factors do not impact client demographics, but are correlated with differences in types of violence and client action.

Measures to tackle anti-social behaviour and nuisance to residents, particularly in urban areas, have been a major focus of UK Government policies over recent years. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and subsequent legislation such as the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 introduced stricter powers, particularly through the use of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), as a means of addressing problems in residential neighbourhoods. While there is clearly a need to tackle problem behaviour that impacts seriously on the quality of life of community members, evidence also suggests that behaviour previously tolerated by many is now targeted through enforcement measures, leading to increased polarisation and stigmatisation of some groups (Rowlands, 2005). At the same time, national agendas around Neighbourhood and Civic Renewal¹ aim to minimise conflicts in neighbourhood renewal areas through fostering understanding and building bridges between different groups within diverse communities. There is thus some tension between the different agendas which impacts on how such issues are addressed within localities.

Purpose – Exploration of the methodological aspects of male sex work is rather limited. Without a strong methodological toolkit to draw from, research in male sex work will not be able to accurately capture changes in the dynamic sex work environment. Thus, the author provides a comprehensive review of methods in male sex work along with a broad spectrum of methodological insights through which future research can be advanced.

Methodology/approach – Drawing from two studies that the author conducted in the male independent escorting space, this chapter provides a range of methodological insights and offers avenues for future research.

Findings – This chapter reviews the methods used in male sex work research over the years and details the lack of research on methodological inquiry in the field.

Originality/value – With the increasing normalization and dynamism of male sex work, it is necessary for the research to provide methodological guidance for the next wave of studies in the field. The recommendations and research directions proposed herein are hoped to have implications for research in the larger sex work context.

This chapter juxtaposes human trafficking of children by their families with structural disadvantage characterizing cycles of violence to suggest that carceral approaches alone cannot break trajectories of crime. It highlights contexts where familial violence is culturally normalized and where the victim–offender binary is challenged. The devadasi system in a district in the Northern region of the State of Karnataka, India, and stories of women and communities in urban India provide a context for the discussion. This chapter posits the need to explore community corrections, restorative and transitional justice, and social justice in criminal justice administration to build safe families and communities for children.

The key purpose of this chapter is to identify some ways of enhancing feminist conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work on violence against women. Much attention is given to addressing the harms caused by new electronic forms of woman abuse, including the role of adult Internet pornography and sex robots. This chapter also emphasises the importance of revisiting some major feminist contributions from the past.

This chapter develops analytical and comparative approaches on the advance of the sexual exploitation industry in Eurozone countries, addressing specific regulations and norms on what is called sex work (when regulated by the state) or prostitution (countries with abolitionist normative frameworks). Indeed, in scenarios of economic and health recession due to Covid-19, this issue is controversial and of urgency in the public agenda due to the scarcity of statistical records that can account for the impact of the sexual exploitation market on women and feminized bodies and in relation to gender equality and equity indexes, as well as public policies. As a working assumption, it is proposed that there is a “sociological erasure” on the impact of the sexual exploitation industry on populations of high social vulnerability. Methodologically, on the one hand, a comparative analysis of indicators relevant to gender equality and human rights is developed, using second-order data to compare European countries with antagonistic legal regulations on the sex market. On the other hand, the perceptions, discourses and representations of experts in the field and key informants related to the sex market are analyzed. Finally, it is concluded that coercive prostitution affects feminized corporalities, especially migrant and poor women. Therefore, prostitution should be considered a violation of human rights and should be evidenced as an emergent of gender violence. Information and analysis regarding this industry are required to know how to intervene and contribute to reach new levels of gender equality, and to provide timely assistance to those who need it, according to the objectives for the Eurozone established in agreement with UNICEF’s global Goal 5.

Historically, sex, tourism, and the labor market have long been inextricably linked, but media concerns about sex as the main purpose of tourism, and its effects on the host group and its sex workers, date from the mid-1990s, in the wake of the spread of HIV, the collapse of communism, the rise of the Internet, and the increasing influence of NGOs concerned with women's and children's welfare. This chapter argues that in order to understand fully the relationship between tourism, sex, and the labor market, we need to adopt a broader perspective and look at the various intersections between the three factors, and how they blend into and influence each other. It conceptualizes the three domains of tourism, sex, and work as intersecting circles and analyzes the forms of activity typical of each. “Sex tourism,” as popularly defined, is the space where all three overlap, but there are significant areas of sexual activity associated with tourism that are not commercial, and yet that generate significant and increasing business activity in some destinations. There is also a tendency for partners in commercial sex to define their relationships in terms of other sectors, as “love” or “romance.” The chapter concludes that with economic development, there is a tendency for roles in the sex industry to become increasingly professionalized and differentiated, and that as the industry is unlikely to disappear, regulation should focus on the empowerment and welfare of sex workers rather than abolition and suppression.

In recent years, the issue of human trafficking has become a key component of a growing number of corporate social responsibility initiatives, in which multinational corporations have furthered the pursuit of “market based solutions” to contemporary social concerns. This essay draws upon in-depth interviews with and ethnographic observations of corporate actors involved in contemporary anti-trafficking campaigns to describe a new domain of sexual politics that feminist social theorists have barely begun to consider. Using trafficking as a case study, I argue that these new forms of sexual politics have served to bind together unlikely sets of social actors – including secular feminists, evangelical Christians, bipartisan state officials, and multinational corporations – who have historically subscribed to very different ideals about the beneficence of markets, criminal justice, and the role of the state.