Making links between sex work, gender and victimisation: the politics and pedagogies of John Schools

Abstract

This article will explore the links between sex work, gender and victimisation. It will draw on the literature on victims and victimology, as well as the literature on sex work, to explore the ways in which sex work, gender and victimisation are presented at John Schools. These are court diversion educational programmes that teach those arrested for soliciting for the purposes of buying sex the negative consequences of their actions and are currently operating in parts of the USA, Canada, the UK and South Korea. Focusing on a case study of a John School in England, it shows how the pedagogies of the John School are inherently political and structured by the local and extra-local contexts in which it is situated. It also demonstrates the small but significant influence of radical feminist ideas and tropes in the John School and the ways in which the John School presents victimisation relationally as male clients causing hidden harms to victims, most notably residents and female sex workers. Here, the active construction of both the victim and offender identity is critically reflected on.