This thesis uses the four principles of biomedical ethics as put forth by Beauchamp and Childress to address the issue of the criminalization of sex work in contemporary national and international settings. Though a controversial subject, the existence of sex work has been a constant for centuries worldwide. However, the criminalization of sex work in contemporary society has been largely predicated on the conflation of sex work and a number of social ills, particularly human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This uncritical and inappropriate conflation of terms has enabled discourse, legislation, and even health care policy that is unethical, ineffective, and explicitly harmful to both sex workers and victims of human trafficking alike.Medical professionals have a unique set of moral obligations to which they must hold themselves in their practice of medicine, both with their individual patients as well as with the society in which they live. This thesis argues that the criminalization of sex work is fundamentally incompatible with contemporary health care ethics, reviewing each of the four fundamental pillars of biomedical ethics as it applies to policies that criminalize sex work. Each chapter will outline the many ways in which criminalization violates each of these fundamental principles, causing immense and largely preventable harm in the form of human rights violations and poor public health outcomes. At the same time, this thesis will introduce the alternative policy of decriminalization, discussing its features and implications for public health, and highlighting the ways in which the decriminalization of sex work results in improved health, safety, and human rights outcomes for both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, exemplifying a viable, ethical, and evidenced-based alternative to criminalization. Given the gross bioethical and humans rights violations associated with the criminalization of sex work, this thesis concludes that there exists evidence of a substantial ethical imperative on the part of the medical community and its constituent professional societies to formally condemn policies that criminalize any and all aspects of sex work and issue formal recommendations for its urgent decriminalization, as both a public health issue and an issue of human and patients’ rights. / Urban Bioethics

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This study investigates how two museums in Europe embody and portray prostitution and sex work. This paper is based on a comparison between the Red Light Secrets Museum in Amsterdam and the walk out tour We have always been everywhere in Berlin. The purpose of this essay is to discuss and analyse how, within various museum activities and dimensions, prostitution can be described and portrayed based on different contexts. The method used to conduct the investigation is based on observations and a thick description of the audio guides found in the museums. This will be examined through theories based on the view of prostitution and visitor behaviours. This paper will also include an analyse of spaces and places.    This study concludes that the two museums are similar in how to display the different dimensions of their exhibitions. Both museums discussed how prostitution is described, portrayed the sex buyer, the visitor’s integration with the museum, how to handle control and the shape of the environment. But they had different approaches to the material. The walk out tour approaches prostitution from an Empowerment paradigm. The Red Light Secrets Museum is more ambiguous in its material and can to some extent be connected to an Empowerment paradigm. However, since it also includes other views than the conventional ones, the material should be considered more from the perspective of the Polymorphous paradigm. To inform the visitor of their information the audio guide and the environment in its in-situ settings came to be an important tool for both museums approaches to portray prostitution. The previous research that has been done on prostitution, from this papers view, is very lean. It´s therefore problematic to draw conclusions about the material based on earlier research and theoretical approaches.

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictors of violent sexual ideology among a sample of clients of street prostitutes. Despite the abundance of feminist theory and research on prostitution and sexual violence, very little research examines clients of prostitutes, who have many opportunities to perpetrate sexual violence against women who engage in prostitution (Davis 1993). Because street prostitutes are structurally vulnerable to male violence due to the low respectability of their occupation, clients are especially important to study. Because violence against women and sex work has both been studied in relationship to masculinities, this study examined the relationship between marginalized masculinities and violent sexual ideology among 423 clients of street prostitutes. The sample studied was derived from the National Institute of Justice Clients of Street Prostitutes 1996-1999. Using OLS regressions, I determined the significant predictors of violent sexual ideology among these clients. I found that rape myth acceptance, frequency of pornography use, frequency of sex, age, frequency of thinking about sex, lower levels of sexual conservatism and lower levels of perceived attractiveness were significantly related to violent sexual ideology. / Master of Science

The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how the social services in the municipality of Falun is managing social work related to prostitution. It is a qualitative study based on three focus group interviews conducted in parts of the social services organization in the municipality of Falun. The empirical data collected was analyzed from an intersectional perspective. Several distinct findings emerged from the study. Social work against prostitution does not exist in the social services organization in the municipality of Falun. The organization possesses no procedures or guidelines for this kind of work, and no preventive work or cooperation with other organizations is carried out. It also emerged, that several social work officers had a stereotype image of who a potential sex- seller could be. This fact may influence who would be able to get any support from social services regarding to this social problem. / Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka om och hur Falu kommuns socialtjänst arbetar gällande prostitution. Studien är en kvalitativ studie som baseras på tre fokusgruppsintervjuer utförda på delar av Falu kommuns socialtjänst. Den insamlade empirin har analyserats utifrån ett intersektionalitetsperspektiv. Resultatet av studien var entydigt, arbete riktat mot prostitution förekommer inte på socialtjänsten i Falu kommun. Verksamheten besitter inga rutiner eller riktlinjer för detta arbete, och inget förebyggande arbete eller något samarbete med andra organisationer eller myndigheter utförs. Det framkom även att handläggarna hade en stereotyp bild av vem som är en potentiell sexsäljare, något som kan komma att påverka vem som skulle kunna få ett eventuellt stöd från socialtjänsten gällande denna problematik.

This exploratory study will examine how the Internet is used by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) youth to cope with homelessness. It will also examine what the potential risks and benefits of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness using the Internet for support. Many marginalized groups, including homeless people, use the Internet as a resource, as well as a means of finding social acceptance (Berg 2012, ASA 2012). LGBTQ youth also use the Internet to connect with peers (Lever, Grove, Royce and Gillespie 2008). Using an extended case study research design, this work examines how homelessness is navigated by LGBTQ youth, primarily through the Internet, and how traditional means of support (i.e. shelters) can better meet the special needs of this population.

This thesis deals with part of the current research about prostitution/ sex work in Sweden and Germany. While prostitution/ sex work is partly criminalized in Sweden, the German law is currently designed to improve the legal situation of prostitutes/ sex worker. Both countries offer a different range of research on the topic with Sweden having several scholars who focused their research on the field compared to rather little research in Germany. Assistant Professor at the Social Work Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Lara Gerassi, argues that besides the general lack of research on the field of prostitution/ sex work, the research that exists focuses more on the macro level perspectives and leaves the micro level with not a lot of research. Existing research, she claims, then shows little empirical support. The thesis will conclude that there is indeed too little research in both countries, especially within the micro level perspective and that the field needs an increased amount of research to help understand the field better and to be able to adapt the laws and regulations according to the needs.

This dissertation argues that the material conditions of many street sex workers--the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers' bodies, identities, and spirits--are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. My research is an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, while situating sex work and the industry as rhetorical constructions. My research offers an example of how an examination of the signs and symbols that comprise "material conditions" can be rhetorically analyzed in order to better understand how goals, agendas, interests, and ideologies are represented and implemented through language.Located central to my analysis are the street sex workers' voices. I use an ideological rhetorical analysis, or rhetorically--the study of how language shapes and is shaped by cultures, institutions, and the individuals within them, and ideologically--the identification and examination of the underlying assumptions of communicative interactions. I delineate how these material conditions are reproduced and, at times, subverted, and I offer an outline for modifying the discourse used in policy in ways that are more empowering and authentic to sex workers' lives.Policy makers, activists, and academics, among others, wrestle with complicated issues to analyze and write laws and policies and to design social services. Discourse is always at the center of these struggles. Because my study investigates the language of policy-making and the people who forge it, it has implications for ethics and policy in relation to gender studies, cultural studies, and ethnographic research.Examining the rhetorical constructions and interactions and their related effects on policy elucidates the discursive complexity that exists in meaning-making systems. This analysis also offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.

Robert Agnew’s general strain theory (1992, 2001, 2006a) proposes that strain leads to crime and deviance. Substance use is a specific type of criminal behaviour that the theory attempts to explain. This thesis uses general strain theory to examine how a number of specific types of strain – homelessness, childhood abuse, criminal victimisation, and sex work – are related to substance use. In addition, the relationships between strain and negative emotions are examined. This thesis also examines how the relationships between strain and substance use are conditioned by negative emotionality/low constraint, deviant peers, deviant values, coping skills, self-esteem, and emotional support. Finally, the role of gender in all of the above-mentioned relationships is explored. In short, this thesis represents a fairly comprehensive test of general strain theory as it applies to substance use. In order to conduct this test, data was obtained between May 2009 and August 2010 by administering a survey to 400 homeless street youth in Toronto, Ontario. The results yield substantial support for some of GST’s main propositions. In particular, support is found for hypothesized relationships between strain and substance use as well as strain and negative emotions. Additionally, certain factors are found to condition the relationships between strain and substance use. Finally, gender differences in the relationships between strain and substance use are observed. These supportive results suggest that general strain theory is a novel way of explaining substance use by homeless street youth in Canada. Consequently, suggestions for future research and social policy are offered. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 02:09:39.94

This ethnography explores the practice of sex tourism in Negril, Jamaica, and its sociocultural, economic, and health impacts on the popular tourist destination. Transactional sex with female tourists has become a popular income generator for some young Caribbean males who are excluded from formal employment in the region's leading industry. Like other resort locales, Negril draws both men and women from various parts of the country who choose to engage in sex work in order to benefit from the tourist dollars spent in Jamaica's third most popular resort area. Through the analysis of observations, interviews with residents, tourists, government officials, and health practitioners, as well as life histories of men involved in sex tourism, this study seeks to contribute to current literature on the practice and reveal its impact on the people of this particular locale. Additionally, relevant health data is utilized to examine the connection between sexual health and sex tourism locally, and to offer recommendations for effectively targeting male sex workers through risk reduction programs. This research takes a political economy perspective and applies relevant theoretical contributions from the anthropology of tourism, Caribbean gender theory, and gender performativity.