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Disability Studies Quarterly
Number of Followers: 40  Open Access journalISSN (Print) 1041-5718 - ISSN (Online) 2159-8371 Published by Ohio State University  [3 journals]
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- Sex Work and Disability: Introduction To The Special Issue
Authors: Lindsay Blewett, Angela Jones, Milo Osbourn
Abstract: No abstract available.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9121
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- Disabled Sex Workers’ Fight for Digital Rights, Platform
Accessibility, and Design Justice
Authors: Emily Coombes, Ariel Wolf, Danielle Blunt, Kassandra Sparks
Abstract: Internet technologies are an increasingly necessary tool for sex working people, disabled people, and people who hold both identities to access resources, community, and income, as well as make claims to rights and fight for social justice. However, ongoing community research suggests that the failures of online platforms to address accessibility needs have had grave effects on sex workers, particularly those with disabilities. This article examines how normative whorephobic, racist, ableist user experience (UX) social media design intersects with punitive virtual content moderation systems to negatively impact disabled sex workers. To better understand how, we focus on unique problems faced by disabled people on the internet and how disability intersects with the sex trade and sexualization more broadly. We draw on data from our previous community research, Erased: The Impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the Removal of Backpage, in addition to Posting into the Void, to share experiences of sex workers navigating disability and discriminatory online systems. We highlight how whorephobic content moderation and punitive platform policing, exacerbated by FOSTA-SESTA, uniquely impact disabled sex workers, particularly those who depend on visual or aural aids to engage with social media. In doing so, we highlight critical intersections between disability justice, sex worker justice, and design justice to advocate for the importance of collaboration between movements.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9097
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- Disabled Trans Sex Working College Students: Results from the 2015 U.S.
Trans Survey
Authors: B. Ethan Coston, Tyler Gaedecke, Kristian Robinson
Abstract: Using data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, this paper explores disabled transgender sex working college students’ experiences within sex work economies and within other paid labor force economies, experiences while in/at college, and self-reported health outcomes. Findings indicate that disabled transgender college students experience far-reaching discrimination, harassment, violence, and economic precarity while in school. At least 11% have engaged in sex work economies, and this may partly be explained by their labor force and educational experiences. The discussion highlights specific implications for and suggestions about how to improve Identity-Based services (e.g., LGBTQ Centers, Race/Ethnicity-Based Centers, Religious Centers, Student Disability Services, Financial Aid, etc.), Health-Based services (e.g., Student Health, Counseling Services, Wellness Center, etc.), and Administrative and Policy-Based services (e.g., Dean of Students, Student Conduct, Career Service, etc.) on college campuses. We conclude that our work sheds light on how all students, but particularly disabled trans sex working students, would benefit from being better economically resourced, with stronger administrative support via cross-collaborative partnerships and programming, and informed and competent service providers, who work together—and not in isolation—to provide education to the broader campus community and outreach directly for sex positive student sexual health.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9134
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- Cripping Sex Work: Disabled Sex Workers and Racialized Disgender in the
Online Sex Industry
Authors: Shawna Felkins
Abstract: This paper explores how disabled online sex workers experience “racialized disgendering” in social media spaces and content platforms and introduces a new framework for “cripping sex work.” After discussing how disabled sex workers experience crip time and their bodyminds while navigating labor demands in the online industry, this paper argues for a shift away from the neoliberal “empowerment” discourse in much research and activism related to sex work. And demonstrates how white and otherwise privileged sex workers benefit from and uphold systems of power that financially benefit them through sexual gentrification, while multiply marginalized sex workers experience cyberviolence and microaggressions at the hands of other sex workers. My analysis uncovers specific ways that racialized disgendering impacts sex workers with disabilities and argues for the importance of mutual aid and paying sex workers for their labor, culminating in a list of tangible action steps for privileged sex workers.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9175
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- “I Can't Really Work Any ‘Normal’ Job:” Disability, Sexual
Ableism, and Sex Work
Authors: Angela Jones
Abstract: Scholars studying sex work are often guided by compulsory able-bodiedness, asking sex workers for demographic information such as race, gender, and socio-economic position but not about disabilities. In addressing sexual ableism and the reproduction of compulsory able-bodiedness in studies of sex work, I demonstrate how disability is both a factor determining sex work participation and how sex work is a vehicle for disabled workers to explore their sexuality and disrupt tired stereotypes regarding disability and sexuality. In this article, I draw from data from two different studies 1) a five-year mixed-methods study on the erotic webcam industry and 2) an interview-based study on the workplace experiences of transmasculine and non-binary escorts. I use these data to demonstrate the role of disability, especially chronic illness, in individual motivations for entry into sex work. Research on sex work generally relies upon and proffers economically deterministic theories that show how whether, by choice or circumstance, people look to sex work for the same reasons they look for any job in a capitalist system—wages. However, the use of an intersectional frame yields richer results. Here, I also explore the convergence of cissexism and ableism in the lives of disabled trans sex workers, demonstrating how, for the most marginal, sex work is often a lifeline. Further, I examine the implications of these findings for thinking about disability justice movements and pushing back on capitalist, white supremacist, and ableist notions of productivity that have come to govern our lives.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9094
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- The Experiences of a Disabled Dominatrix
Authors: Ness Cooper
Abstract: This paper uses autoethnographic data to examine how sex work and disability converge within commercial female domination and BDSM realms. It explores the nuances around access to healthcare and even internal sex work support when disability is involved. There are few accounts of disability and professional dominatrix work and how it can affect being a successful entrepreneur. This autoethnographic account explores common questions people have regarding BDSM and being a disabled working professional. Exploring the relationships between mobility aids and sex tech, access to medical support, and giving, receiving, and mediating different forms of pain and its influence on sex work, and in particular professional dominatrix work. This paper investigates the importance of fluidity in human sexuality and how ableism can shape sexuality, including within both lifestyle and professional lives of sex workers. There’s a glimpse into how disability can affect orgasm, but also how ableism and the whorearchy can dictate that those who identify as professional domme’s should be anorgasmic and aren’t entitled to consensual sexual gratification. When exploring sex and disability, adaptive equipment needs highlighting more. Within this paper, I highlight not only purpose-built devices but sexual aids available within the BDSMsphere that can allow access to pleasure in ways that are rarely spoken about. And most importantly, I explore how navigating the healthcare system as a sex worker and pro-domme isn’t as straight cut as it should be, how activists’ messages from previous years are still being echoed, and how many sex workers, allies, and myself are still chanting the mantra for equity in healthcare for sex workers and those who practice kink. It is a much-needed look into queer crip theory and the world of professional dominatrix sex work that hasn’t been platformed before.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9127
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- Putas y Discas: Sex Work Activism and Disability Justice in Argentina
Authors: Leyla Savloff
Abstract: This article examines how mutual aid efforts between sex work activists and disability activists straddled the tension between respectability politics and subversive work to invigorate feminist disability justice in Argentina. I specifically focus on a 2021 Instagram Live conversation titled "Putas y Discas" to elucidate how public debates during a pandemic and in the digital age contribute to the conceptualization of 'access intimacy,' a term introduced by disability activist Mia Mingus. I attended the event as a user taking notes and paying attention to how labor rights, disability justice, and online censorship converge in the Global South to strengthen the solidarity between sex work and disability activists, featuring digital platforms as a potential arena to uphold access intimacy. The juncture of sex work and disability activisms in Argentina informs notions of interdependency more broadly and reconfigures the relationships between vulnerability and resistance, especially in the pandemic context. "Putas y Discas" invites us to include sex as integral to health demands and recognize sexual assistance as part of a bundle of disability policies covered by healthcare. A more inclusive politics of desire can also identify the labor of sex workers as communal care and consider how the more revolutionary aspects of sex work can inform the broader politics of labor. In the form of access intimacy, sex work activism and disability activists contest the malfunctioning healthcare system that bypasses sexuality as integral health, displaying the vitality of collectives and the possibilities for digital activism.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9111
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
- Sex Work as resistance to marginalization– Lessons from Black Feminist
Theory, Disability Justice, and Black-led sex worker organizing.
Authors: Zee Xaymaca
Abstract: This autoethnography seeks to add to the growing body of sex worker focused literature by shedding light on the intersections between race, gender, and disability status in sex workers’ experience. I examine my experiences with educational, social, and medical institutions in Germany and the US through a Black Feminist and Disability Justice frame in order to illustrate the insidious nature of racism, sexism, and ableism in the daily experiences of Black bodies with disabilities. Drawing on existing disability justice frameworks, such as Puar’s concept of debility, I connect my experience with entering and surviving in the sex trade to my ability to understand and survive society’s hostility. I examine instances from my life where the intersections I occupy have worked to both propel and restrain my ability to attain in societies that are decidedly anti-sex-work, ableist, and misguided on issues of race and sex. I highlight the lessons learned from sex work to connect these institutions to the unique set of challenges racialized sex workers with disability face both on and off the job. This paper provides observations on the ways that community mitigates these harms and forms a safe space for those living in society’s margins to reassert their agency. Finally, I propose means of incorporating the philosophies and methods of radical Black sex worker community organizing into a mainstreamed agenda for equity.
PubDate: 2022-10-31
DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9116
Issue No: Vol. 42, No. 2 (2022)
