SEX WORKERS AS FREE AGENTS AND AS VICTIMS: ELUCIDATING THE LIFE WORLDS OF FEMALE SEX WORKERS AND THE DISCURSIVE PATTERNS THAT SHAPE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR WORK by Khonzanani Mbatha submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject of PSYCHOLOGY at the University of South Africa Supervisor: Prof. M. J Terre Blanche January 2019 i Declaration I declare that “Sex workers as free agents and as victims: Elucidating the life worlds of female sex workers and the discursive patterns that shape public understanding of their work” is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. 31 January 2019 SIGNATURE DATE ii AcknowLedgements I would like to thank the many people who have provided me with support and encouragement to be able to complete this project: • My sincerest thanks and gratitude to my supervisor and mentor, Professor Martin Terre Blanche for lending me his ear and guidance when this idea felt like a pipe dream. Thank you so much for your unwavering support, willingness to share your expert knowledge throughout this journey and for taking responsibility to see that this project is actualized. • To my wife, Mmathapelo for her support, patience and valuable insight throughout this journey. Thank you for providing a safe space where I could bounce off ideas, be critiqued appreciatively and mostly for showing genuine interest in my topic. • To my colleagues at Unisa who contributed one way or another to this project. A big shout out to Mapula, Boshadi, Eduard, Puleng, Errolyn, Mbongiseni, Ndumiso, Terblanche, Melusi, Sbu, and Angelo. • To Professor Juan Nel for introducing me to the sexuality studies. • To sex workers who shared their life stories with me. • The financial assistance of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the South African Humanities Deans Association towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NIHSS and SAHUDA. • To the University of California, Los Angeles, specifically Prof Wyatt and Prof Milburn. Thank you for providing me with financial support at the beginning of this journey and for hosting me in the United States. Your knowledge of implemetantion research is indispensable. • A special mention to Prof Makhado who listened to my nonsescial arguments during our drinking sessions. I further want to extend my deepest gratitude to my grandmother for her unconditional love, guidance and encourauragement. You truly are one in a million. iii Abstract In South Africa and many other countries worldwide, sex work is criminalised. This invariably seems to lead to back-door prostitution - an unregulated industry where sex workers are vulnerable to being exploited by pimps, brothel owners and law enforcement officers. In discussions about sex work and sex workers, two dominant views are evident: a) Sex workers freely choose to sell sex as a good way of earning an income; or b) sex workers are victims of their circumstances who are driven into the industry through direct coercion or as a result of dire poverty. Together, these views lead to an ideological trap in terms of which sex workers have to be perceived either as having agency and free will or as being helpless victims in need of rescue. My aim in this thesis was to problematise, deconstruct and reconstruct the discursive field within which sex work is embedded, in order to move beyond agency-victimhood and similar binaries, and in the hope of developing new ways of talking about prostitution that acknowledge the complexity of the sex industry rather than shoehorning it into preconceived categories. Social constructionism (epistemology), critical social theory (ontology) and discourse analysis (methodology) were interwoven in order to provide a broad, critical understanding of prostitution. Two data sources were used to gain access to and unpack the life worlds of sex workers: Semi-structured interviews with five sex workers in Johannesburg and the “Project 107” report on adult prostitution in South Africa. Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to make sense of the data, including an analysis of how concepts such as governmentality, power, confession, surveillance and technologies of the self can be applied to contemporary texts about prostitution. The “Project 107” report recommended that prostitution should not be decriminalised, and that sex work should in fact not be classified as work; instead, it proposed a ‘diversion programme’ to help sex workers exit the industry. I show how, in doing this, the report appears to hijack feminist discourses about sex workers as victims in order to further a conservative moral agenda. The sex workers I spoke to, on the other hand, demonstrated an ability to take on board, and to challenge, a variety of different discourses in order to talk about themselves as simultaneously agentic and constrained in what they can do by unjust social structures. I show how, from a Foucauldian perspective, sex workers can be seen not as pinned down at iv the bottom of a pyramid of power, but immersed in a network of power and knowledge, enabled and constrained by ‘technologies of the self’ to assist in policing themselves through self-discipline and self-surveillance to become suitably docile bodies within the greater public order. Keywords: confession, critical social theory, decriminalisation, discourse analysis, Foucault, governmentality, power, prostitution, prostitutes, sex work, sex workers, surveillance, SWEAT. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1: SPEAKING FREELY? PROSTITUTION AS LIVED 1 REALITY AND AS AN OBJECT OF STUDY 1.1. Introduction 1 1.2. Theoretical framework 4 1.3. Some terminological matters 4 1.4. Outline of the thesis 5 CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF 7 PROSTITUTION: FOUR SNAPSHOTS 2.1. Introduction 7 2.2. The Convict Era (1788-1868) in Australia 8 2.3. Victorian Britain (1837-1901) 13 2.3.1. The policing of prostitution 14 2.3.2. Prostitution as a form of work 15 2.3.3. Class and gender binaries in the construction of prostitution 16 2.3.4. The Venereal Diseases Act 19 2.4. Prostitution in Africa 20 2.4.1. Prostitution in Nigeria 22 vi 2.4.2. Prostitution in Ghana 24 2.4.3. Prostitution in Kenya 25 2.4.4. Prostitution in Ethiopia 27 2.4.5. Prostitution in Morocco 28 2.4.6. Prostitution in Egypt 29 2.4.7. Prostitution in Botswana 30 2.5. Prostitution in South Africa 30 2.5.1. The rise of harbours 30 2.5.2. The discovery of diamonds and gold 32 2.6. Prostitution in present-day South Africa 33 2.6.1. The constitution 34 2.6.2. Migration and sex work 34 2.7. Sex workers’ resistance and unification 36 2.7.1. The globalisation of the sex work movement 36 2.7.2. The local story: SWEAT and Sisonke 39 2.8. Conclusion 40 CHAPTER 3: THE IDEA OF PROSTITUTION 42 3.1. Introduction 42 3.2. Mapping prostitution in South Africa 42 3.3. Truths, myths and (mis)conceptions about prostitution 47 3.4. Theorising prostitution 52 3.4.1. The functionalist idea of prostitution 52 vii 3.4.2. Social constructionist idea of prostitution 55 3.4.2.1. Relativity of prostitution 56 3.4.2.2. The significance of social control 59 3.4.2.3. The significance of classification 60 3.4.2.4. Prostitution as a career 63 3.4.3. Feminist approaches to prostitution 67 3.5. Legal responses to sex work 69 3.5.1. Criminalisation 70 3.5.2. Legalisation 72 3.5.3. Decriminalisation 73 3.6. The ‘danger’ of prostitution 75 3.6.1. Respectability: “There goes the neighbourhood” 75 3.6.2. Dilapidation 76 3.6.3. Infiltration 77 3.6.4. ‘Risk’ 79 3.7. The prostitute as a victim 80 3.8. The prostitute as sick and promiscuous druggie 82 3.9. Towards a non-binary discourse of prostitution 83 CHAPTER FOUR: FEMINISM AND PROSTITUTION: THE 87 STRUGGLE CONTINUES 4.1. Introduction 87 4.2. The feminist dilemma 88 viii 4.3. Feminism as an ideology 90 4.3.1. The economic and political emancipation of women 91 4.3.2. Eradication of patriarchy 93 4.3.3. Voice of the voiceless 94 4.4. Feminism as an epistemology 95 4.4.1. Creeping essentialism 99 4.4.2. Postcolonialism and feminism 101 4.5. Feminism as research praxis 106 4.5.1. Research that concerns women 106 4.5.2. (Male) researchers as suspicious characters 107 4.5.3. Participatory Action Research, feminism and prostitution 108 4.6. Feminism, prostitution and sex 109 4.6.1. The radical feminist perspective 110 4.6.2. The liberal feminist perspective 114 4.6.3. The Marxist feminist perspective 116 4.6.4. Critical race theory and Black feminism 118 4.7. The cry to be heard – “I can talk for myself” 121 4.8. Conclusion 122 CHAPTER FIVE: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 124 5.1. Introduction 124 5.2. Social constructionism 125 5.2.1. Research, social constructionism and sex work 130 ix 5.3. Critical Social Theory 132 5.3.1. From Horkheimer to Honneth 133 5.4. Discourse theory 138 5.4.1. What is discourse analysis? 140 5.4.2. Discourse analysis confronting mainstream psychology 141 5.4.3. Foucault and discourse analysis 144 5.4.4. Discursive psychology 147 5.5. Conclusion 149 CHAPTER SIX: AN ENCOUNTER WITH DATA 151 6.1. Introduction 151 6.2. My purpose in approaching the materials 151 6.3.