Sex Work, HIV and the State

Nel Druce: We are now over a decade into the HIV epidemic. What's your view about the changes that have occurred in state responses to prostitution since HIV was first perceived as a threat? Cheryl Overs: There's always been a close relationship between government and prostitution. Of course prostitution is illegal and sex workers penalized in some form or other in most countries, but it's often tolerated and permitted to continue in a controlled fashion. Agencies of the state benefit from the sex industw in many ways. For example, police and court of ficials extract protection money, and income is generated through state-run brothels, or taxing sex-worker earnings. Since HIV was first perceived as a threat to heterosexuals (the so-called general public) in the mid 1980s, we've started to see some major changes in this relationship. Politicians and public health experts assumed from the start that prostitutes are 'vectors of transmission', acting as a core group from which infection spreads to endanger the lives of good, clean-living men. This is in spite of evidence showing that sex-workers especially in countries where health care and condoms are easily available, and where the law defends prostitute rights have practised safer sex to avoid sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) for decades, and are often more likely than other citizens to perceive the risks and adopt safer behaviours. The stereotype of the free-living amoral prostitute has been strengthened by fears of AIDS. Not only does she have sex for money rather than love, but she has become deadly as well. It is the sex worker who is blamed, and who is therefore the target for education and further restriction. Predictably, a number of repressive policies have been adopted in an attempt to control prostitution. HIV-positive sex workers are particularly vulnerable to horrific human rights abuses, even execution. In April 1992, human rights groups reported that in Myanmar at least twenty-five women had been

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• Women as 'sex workers,' men as 'boyfriends

  Eric A Ratliff•Anthropology and Medicine•1999

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