Rethinking the Boundaries
Towards a Butlerian Ethics of Vulnerability in Sex Trafficking Debates
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4843825 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna Szörényi (0000-0002-2092-5970, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 20-36 |
| Publication date | 2014-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/fr.2014.3 |
| OpenAlex | W2036238365 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 31 |
Feminist debates on sex trafficking have become entrenched and polarised, with abolitionists producing images of helpless abused victims, while sex worker advocates work hard to achieve some recognition of the agency of migrant sex workers. This article explores constructions of embodiment, subjectivity and agency in the debate, showing how abolitionist views, in spite of their efforts to challenge liberal pro-sex perspectives, rely on a familiar vision of the body as a singular, bounded and sovereign entity whose borders must be secured against invasion. The result is a vision in which victimisation is taken to epistemically compromise the subjectivities of sex workers, forcing them and their advocates to argue for recognition of their agency according to familiar liberal models of consent in order to be able to enter the debate. Drawing on the recent work of Judith Butler on consent and vulnerability, this article argues that what is needed is a rethinking of bodily ontology so that the vulnerability of sex workers is not opposed to their agency, but rather seen as an inevitable aspect of embodied sociality, constituting a call to ethical engagement and a recognition of the inequitable global distributions of precarity that produce sex trafficking as part of contemporary geopolitics. From this perspective, the alignment between radical feminist efforts to secure women's bodily borders and global efforts to secure national borders no longer appears as coincidence
Agency (philosophy) · Criminology · Epistemology · Political science · Pornography · Precarity · Sex work · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Vulnerability (computing) · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Deconstructing the vulnerable Global South subject in the discourse of women trafficking in Brazil
No country for sex workers, then or now
I Offered What I Have for What I Want’
Surviving While Female in Barbados
Saving virgins, saving the USA
A Managed Approach to On-Street Sex Working
Theorising human trafficking through slow violence
Invoking vulnerability
On Institutionalized Sexual Economies
Cosmopolitan Sex Workers
Migration, Agency and Citizenship in Sex Trafficking
On the Move for Love
Feminism without Borders
Giving an Account of Oneself
Prostitution, Power and Freedom
Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters
The Sexual Contract
Global Sex Workers
Sex at the Margins
Giving an Account of Oneself
Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid
Women are Victims, Men Make Choices
Shades of grey’
Order at the border
Streetwalkers Show the Way’
Sex Work in Cambodia
Between Minor and Errant Mobility
Will the Real Sex Slave Please Stand Up
Searching for Justice for Body and Self in a Coercive Environment
Ouch
Beautiful Dead Bodies
Reproachable Victims'? Representations and Self-representations of Russian Women Involved in Transnational Prostitution
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2026 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |