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Sex Work and Sexual Violence: Exchange of Body-Characteristics

HOTTA Yoshitaro
Abstract:
One of the most important issues on "sex work" is to eliminate of violence (especially of "sexual violence") against sex workers in the sex work. Most academicians and activists argue that violence is not an essential element of the sex work. But it is not collect. Rather, this type of the argument seems to be derived from the standpoint of them who advocate sex workers' rights of sexual self determination. However, in terms of the elimination of violence against sex workers, we must have clear recognition on the factors of the possibilities of violence. Certainly in sex work, the violence on sex worker is not inevitable. But we have to say that the "possibilities" of violence are intrinsic in the structure of the sex work.

In this article, I examine the factors of violence against sex workers. The most important factor of violence is the gap between the sex workers and the customers on the "sexual commodities." This gap derives from the uniqueness of sexual interaction. And the uniqueness of sexual interaction is the ground of the value of the "sexual commodities." The uniqueness of the sexual interaction has two characters. The first, sexual interaction raise the passive sensations on the body of the agents of interacts. And the second, the appropriateness or the rightness of the contents of the sexual interacts do not have the "objective" or "public" standard but hand to the "subjective" feelings. That is, the rightness of the contents of sexual interactions ground only on the consent -- often of "implicit" consent -- of the actors themselves. In other words, sexual interaction can be the violence without the consent by the agents at every moment. The possibility of violence in sex work is caused from these characters. That is, "the sex worker is selling the consent on the sexual interaction itself." I propose that the most effective means for the eliminate violence against sex workers is to control and constrain the physical acts of buyers.