Sex work and prostitution third sector organizations in the Americas

Abstract

Following a review of prostitution legislation and the contexts in which sex work and prostitution third sector organizations (TSOs) operate in the Americas, this chapter utilizes a fourfold typological framework to analyze how TSOs in the Americas engage with people in the sex industry. First, it discusses how funders manage activism through alignment with professionally structured TSOs in conjunction with state devolution of essential services for people facing social vulnerabilities to TSOs. It then uses the examples of peer-to-peer mutual support, microenterprise, and arts-based organizing to illustrate how TSOs politically mobilize shared cultural values of individualism, self-help, and self-actualization. Next, it examines the ways that TSOs lobby for legislative reform, provide legal and peer-to-peer support for those criminally charged, and lead trainings for and/or cooperate with police. Finally, it explores how outlaw politics, defined as political mobilization around a shared outsider identity righteous in its opposition to dominant cultural norms, inform tactics designed to achieve TSOs’ respective visions of freedom from oppression.