Melissa Ditmore
Biographic Data
| ID | 376409 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melissa Ditmore |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melissa |
| FAMILY NAME | Ditmore |
| SIGNATURE | DITMORE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Independent Researcher, New York, NY 10009, USA |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1579-5235 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Demanding solidarity, not salvation: Sex work and global health
There is increasing attention paid to solidarity in global health, but its substance and definitions remain contested. We explore the tensions between global health institutions’ historic approaches to sex work, their commitment to health and human rights and how these are connected to or disconnected from solidarity. We foreground the protracted and incomplete evolution from international health approaches to sex workers as spreaders of pathogen…
Sex Workers, Online Platforms, and Deplatforming
Online platforms exert significant power: While offering users opportunities to earn income, they may easily deplatform them by removing their accounts for breaking platform rules. Policy feedback literature and analyses of survey and in-depth interview data about US-based sex workers’ online platform experiences illuminates how users may respond to this platform policy. Sex workers offer a particularly instructive case because, while all workers…
Sex Workers Cannot Be Wrong: Engaging and Negotiating Online Platform Power
Online platforms shape and facilitate our social, economic, and political activities. Sex workers have long pioneered their use for advertising, providing services, screening clients, collecting payments, and peer-interaction, among other activities. To learn more about the platforms sex workers use and how they engage and resist platforms' power, we consider the following questions: How and to what extent do sex workers engage with online platfo…
Re-thinking vulnerability: Research fraud and bureaucratic harm in community-engaged online research
Vulnerability - understood broadly as susceptibility to harm - factors into many social science research projects, including those that are qualitative, involve collaborations between scholars and members of the group under study, and engage with online research techniques and technologies. However, guidance for how researchers and communities may understand, navigate, and mitigate vulnerability in such projects is often scattered across discipli…
Unbroken Chains: The Hidden Role of Human Trafficking in the American Economy
In Calcutta, Sex Workers Organize
Introduction to the Culture, Health & Sexuality Virtual Special Issue on sex, sexuality and sex work
This article provides an editorial introduction to a virtual special issue on sex work and prostitution. It offers a brief history of sex work studies as published in the journal Culture, Health & Sexuality; reflects on the breadth and scope of papers the journal has published; considers the contribution of the journal's papers to the wellbeing and sexuality of people who sell sex; and envisions future areas of inquiry for sex work studies. As au…
To Live Freely in this World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa, by Chi Adanna Mgbako
Mgbako’s book opens and closes with the story of ongoing, uninvestigated murders of sex workers in Kenya. This violence highlights the urgency of sex workers’ activism. While the examples are from
What Kinds of Workshops do Internet-Based Male Escorts Want? Implications for Prevention and Health Promotion
Caught Between the Tiger and the Crocodile: Cambodian Sex Workers' Experiences of Structural and Physical Violence
Thirty-four sex workers across Cambodia, a small, postconflict country in Southeast Asia, were interviewed about violence including rape that they have experienced as well as life experiences that led them to become sex workers. Poverty and loss of family land were frequent contributing factors to undertaking sex work; sex workers experience high rates of violence including rape and policy abuse. Poverty, displacement, and violence including rape…
Accountability and the Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking
Accountability in anti-trafficking efforts is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of deciding whether such efforts are truly rooted in a human rights framework. In a rush to help, and inspired by sensationalised views of what human trafficking is, many campaigns actually harm the very people they are supposed to assist. Law enforcement raids are one such effort, as they do not take into account the very different power dynamics between the acto…
Prostitution and Sex Work
A fascinating overview of prostitution and sex work in the United States, from the Colonial era to today, examines the issue as it affects men, women, and transgender individuals of all races and classes. Prostitution and Sex Work is the first book since 1921 to offer a historic overview of this controversial topic—and what our views on it say about American society. Exploring key people, places, and events, the guide includes descriptions of the…
In Calcutta, Sex Workers Organize
Sex Workers Organize
Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work: [2 Volumes]
The cliche is that prostitution is the oldest profession. Isn't it time that the subject received a full reference treatment? This major 2-volume set is the first to treat in an inclusive reference what is usually considered a societal failing and the underside of sexuality and economic survival. The A-to-Z encyclopedia offers wide-ranging entries related to prostitution and the sex industry, past and present, both worldwide (mostly in the West) …
Unsafe Condoms and Other Unsafe Sex Accessories
Condoms remain the sole effective method of prevention of HIV. However, in some places – including Cambodia and China – condoms have been modified to add so-called pearls, hard rubber studs or even bristles that are painful and dangerous to the receptive partner, causing injury to the vagina and anus. Such injuries contribute to the transmission of disease, so these condoms are not useful for prevention of STIs or HIV. In addition to unsafe condo…
What Kinds of Workshops do Internet-Based Male Escorts Want? Implications for Prevention and Health Promotion
Accountability and the Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking
Accountability in anti-trafficking efforts is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of deciding whether such efforts are truly rooted in a human rights framework. In a rush to help, and inspired by sensationalised views of what human trafficking is, many campaigns actually harm the very people they are supposed to assist. Law enforcement raids are one such effort, as they do not take into account the very different power dynamics between the acto…
Sex Workers Cannot Be Wrong: Engaging and Negotiating Online Platform Power
Online platforms shape and facilitate our social, economic, and political activities. Sex workers have long pioneered their use for advertising, providing services, screening clients, collecting payments, and peer-interaction, among other activities. To learn more about the platforms sex workers use and how they engage and resist platforms' power, we consider the following questions: How and to what extent do sex workers engage with online platfo…
Caught Between the Tiger and the Crocodile: Cambodian Sex Workers' Experiences of Structural and Physical Violence
Thirty-four sex workers across Cambodia, a small, postconflict country in Southeast Asia, were interviewed about violence including rape that they have experienced as well as life experiences that led them to become sex workers. Poverty and loss of family land were frequent contributing factors to undertaking sex work; sex workers experience high rates of violence including rape and policy abuse. Poverty, displacement, and violence including rape…
Unsafe Condoms and Other Unsafe Sex Accessories
Condoms remain the sole effective method of prevention of HIV. However, in some places – including Cambodia and China – condoms have been modified to add so-called pearls, hard rubber studs or even bristles that are painful and dangerous to the receptive partner, causing injury to the vagina and anus. Such injuries contribute to the transmission of disease, so these condoms are not useful for prevention of STIs or HIV. In addition to unsafe condo…
Re-thinking vulnerability: Research fraud and bureaucratic harm in community-engaged online research
Vulnerability - understood broadly as susceptibility to harm - factors into many social science research projects, including those that are qualitative, involve collaborations between scholars and members of the group under study, and engage with online research techniques and technologies. However, guidance for how researchers and communities may understand, navigate, and mitigate vulnerability in such projects is often scattered across discipli…
Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work: [2 Volumes]
The cliche is that prostitution is the oldest profession. Isn't it time that the subject received a full reference treatment? This major 2-volume set is the first to treat in an inclusive reference what is usually considered a societal failing and the underside of sexuality and economic survival. The A-to-Z encyclopedia offers wide-ranging entries related to prostitution and the sex industry, past and present, both worldwide (mostly in the West) …
Unsafe Condoms and Other Unsafe Sex Accessories
Condoms remain the sole effective method of prevention of HIV. However, in some places – including Cambodia and China – condoms have been modified to add so-called pearls, hard rubber studs or even bristles that are painful and dangerous to the receptive partner, causing injury to the vagina and anus. Such injuries contribute to the transmission of disease, so these condoms are not useful for prevention of STIs or HIV. In addition to unsafe condo…
In Calcutta, Sex Workers Organize
Sex Workers Organize
Prostitution and Sex Work
A fascinating overview of prostitution and sex work in the United States, from the Colonial era to today, examines the issue as it affects men, women, and transgender individuals of all races and classes. Prostitution and Sex Work is the first book since 1921 to offer a historic overview of this controversial topic—and what our views on it say about American society. Exploring key people, places, and events, the guide includes descriptions of the…
Accountability and the Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking
Accountability in anti-trafficking efforts is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of deciding whether such efforts are truly rooted in a human rights framework. In a rush to help, and inspired by sensationalised views of what human trafficking is, many campaigns actually harm the very people they are supposed to assist. Law enforcement raids are one such effort, as they do not take into account the very different power dynamics between the acto…
What Kinds of Workshops do Internet-Based Male Escorts Want? Implications for Prevention and Health Promotion
Caught Between the Tiger and the Crocodile: Cambodian Sex Workers' Experiences of Structural and Physical Violence
Thirty-four sex workers across Cambodia, a small, postconflict country in Southeast Asia, were interviewed about violence including rape that they have experienced as well as life experiences that led them to become sex workers. Poverty and loss of family land were frequent contributing factors to undertaking sex work; sex workers experience high rates of violence including rape and policy abuse. Poverty, displacement, and violence including rape…
Introduction to the Culture, Health & Sexuality Virtual Special Issue on sex, sexuality and sex work
This article provides an editorial introduction to a virtual special issue on sex work and prostitution. It offers a brief history of sex work studies as published in the journal Culture, Health & Sexuality; reflects on the breadth and scope of papers the journal has published; considers the contribution of the journal's papers to the wellbeing and sexuality of people who sell sex; and envisions future areas of inquiry for sex work studies. As au…
To Live Freely in this World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa, by Chi Adanna Mgbako
Mgbako’s book opens and closes with the story of ongoing, uninvestigated murders of sex workers in Kenya. This violence highlights the urgency of sex workers’ activism. While the examples are from
In Calcutta, Sex Workers Organize
Unbroken Chains: The Hidden Role of Human Trafficking in the American Economy
Sex Workers Cannot Be Wrong: Engaging and Negotiating Online Platform Power
Online platforms shape and facilitate our social, economic, and political activities. Sex workers have long pioneered their use for advertising, providing services, screening clients, collecting payments, and peer-interaction, among other activities. To learn more about the platforms sex workers use and how they engage and resist platforms' power, we consider the following questions: How and to what extent do sex workers engage with online platfo…
Re-thinking vulnerability: Research fraud and bureaucratic harm in community-engaged online research
Vulnerability - understood broadly as susceptibility to harm - factors into many social science research projects, including those that are qualitative, involve collaborations between scholars and members of the group under study, and engage with online research techniques and technologies. However, guidance for how researchers and communities may understand, navigate, and mitigate vulnerability in such projects is often scattered across discipli…
Demanding solidarity, not salvation: Sex work and global health
There is increasing attention paid to solidarity in global health, but its substance and definitions remain contested. We explore the tensions between global health institutions’ historic approaches to sex work, their commitment to health and human rights and how these are connected to or disconnected from solidarity. We foreground the protracted and incomplete evolution from international health approaches to sex workers as spreaders of pathogen…
Sex Workers, Online Platforms, and Deplatforming
Online platforms exert significant power: While offering users opportunities to earn income, they may easily deplatform them by removing their accounts for breaking platform rules. Policy feedback literature and analyses of survey and in-depth interview data about US-based sex workers’ online platform experiences illuminates how users may respond to this platform policy. Sex workers offer a particularly instructive case because, while all workers…
Sex work and related issues (14 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Sex work (8 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Sex workers (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Demography (5 works) · Engineering (4 works)