Sexualpolitik als Experimentierfeld neuer Politikmodi – Zur Generalisierung von Viktimisierungsnarrativen im pandemischen Sexarbeitsdiskurs
DOI: 10.61387/S.2021.2.20
Autoren
Jenny Künkel
Abstract
The pandemic enhanced both visibility and contestation of precarity and informality. A first phase of heightened atten- tion and a state-of-emergency rhetoric enabled shifts from public order to social policies, from which marginalized sex workers benefited (e.g. hotel rooms for the homeless, heroin substitution without insurance and easier access to social ser- vices, including for migrants). Business shut downs and work bans intensified, however, also carceral feminist prohibition demands, which, starting in summer 2020 were supported by guilt-attributing public health discourses (keyword: „super spreaders“). The loss of earnings and the forced reflection time have recently fostered debates about internal lines of conflict in the industry. The article analyzes on the basis of a secondary and media analysis the three discursive shifts that are each founded upon crisis-specific windows of opportunity. It shows how, on the one hand, social struggles of „pro sex work“ actors are normalized by increasingly discussing the profession in terms of „normal“ categories of labor struggle and marginalization. On the other hand, „anti-prostitution“ discourse is emotionalized beyond carceral feminism and moral conservatism by reactivating traditional disease vector discourses. In the conclusion, the article locates the discur- sive change in broader shifts in the political field. In the long time moralized and increasingly neoliberalized political field of sexuality it is particularly evident that discourses of victimiza- tion, which invoke structural power foremost as a backdrop, become key drivers of political change across actors.
Keywords
Sex work, Covid, Emotional politics, Vulnerability, Structure
Metadaten
Veröffentlicht in: Sexuologie. Zeitschrift für Sexualmedizin, Sexualtherapie und Sexualwissenschaft. Band 28 • Jahr 2021 • Heft 2, Seiten 107-114