Hatanaka, Ayami 2018 Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Thesis Title: Carceral Feminism at Home in the United States: Sex Wo
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Hatanaka, Ayami 2018 Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Thesis Title: Carceral Feminism at Home in the United States: Sex Work, Legislative Influence, and Anti-Trafficking Discourse Advisor: Gregory Mitchell Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Anne Valk Released: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No Carceral Feminism at Home in the United States Sex Work, Legislative Influence, and Anti-Trafficking Discourse Ayami Hatanaka Advisors: Professor Gregory Mitchell and Professor Anne Valk A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts May 12, 2018 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….… 3 Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………...… 5 Chapter One – “Introduction: Listening to the World Between Carceral Feminism, Legislation, Anti-Trafficking Activists, and Sex Workers” …………………………………………… 7 Chapter Two – “Understanding Carceral Feminism in the Anti-Trafficking Context” ……..… 38 Chapter Three – “Grounding Carceral Feminist Theory: Sex Working in Real Life” ……...… 60 Chapter Four – “Epilogue: Carceral Feminism Today with FOSTA-SESTA Signed Into Law” …………………………………………………………………………………… 73 Appendices …………………………………………………………………………………...… 86 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………… 93 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, thank you to Carol Leigh and BAYSWAN for their partnership, mentorship, and encouragement. Without their trust and belief in me, this thesis would not have been possible. Each oral history interviewee entrusted me with their stories, experiences, and words, and I will never be able to fully express my appreciation and thanks. Edith, Mariko, Cinnamon, Victoria, Kristen, Shawnie, and Carol, thank you for your time, your space, your care, and your passion. I cannot say thank you enough to my patient, kind, and understanding advisors, Professor Annie Valk and Professor Gregory Mitchell, for guiding me through this process, reading draft after draft, and offering me wisdom. I deeply appreciate the time and energy of those whom I spoke with about my ideas, including Alix Lutnick and Cris Sardina. I extend a huge, heartful thank you to Emery Shriver and Rebecca Ohm, both of whom were invaluable in this process and walked me through countless resources and searches. It is uncertain to me whether I would have written a thesis and become interested in research if it was not for the Allison Davis Research Fellowship. Thank you to Molly Magavern, Bob Blay, Professor Sara Dubow, and my entire cohort who were instrumental in making my experience within the fellowship a positive one, supported me through various moments, and introduced me to a whole new world of knowledge. My oral history interviews would have never happened without the generous support of the Collin and Lili Roche 1993 Student Research Program, and the wonderful people who make such opportunities available to students. Thank you very much for the belief in my project! 4 Thank you to my many friends who supported me endlessly and tirelessly through the process of research and writing. I am forever grateful for your open hearts, thoughtul minds, and affirming words. There are many people I could name here, but I would certainly miss someone. Please know that if I consider you a friend, you are among the most wonderful people whom I thank here. Claudia and Rachel, you made my senior year one I could never forget – thank you for showing me that friendships can be full of sparkling empathy and magic. My caring and loving family, despite never fully understanding exactly what I was doing, have loved me and cheered me on from afar. Thank you very much for your love and care. Thank you to Justinas, for the endless support, bouncing of ideas, late night teas and coffees, use of earplugs, fixing of diagrams, difficult conversations, and warm, enveloping love. Lastly, thank you to my brilliant, amazing mother, who has sacrificed so much for me to be where I am today. She has only ever loved, cared for, and protected me. I will never be able to thank her enough. 5 Preface I am deeply proud of the work I have done for this thesis, and I strongly and firmly believe that the topic of carceral feminism within anti-trafficking discourse and sex work is one of the most challenging topics I could have chosen to tackle for this year. However, this thesis is incomplete without my acknowledging that my thesis project would look entirely different if I had the opportunity to engage in Asian American Studies during my time at Williams, either as a concentration or a major. In fact, an Asian American Studies lens through which to study carceral feminism and anti-trafficking discourse would have been a significant, important, and much needed contribution, given the ways in which Asian/American bodies are utilized by the ideology of carceral feminism and perverse humanitarianism within anti-trafficking discourse. At one point, I had hoped to write an excavation of the experiences of queer women in Japanese-American internment during World War II, but the lack of classes on Asian American subjects and an Asian American Studies program led me to believe that the topic was not one the academy would find important or engaging. Although the topic itself possibly may not have been feasible (which I do not know because those resources within Asian American Studies have not been available to me), I also did not have a pathway to understand how I might change or adapt the topic. I now understand that this thought process was a result of the way in which I myself have been told, explicitly and implicitly, that my histories are not worth studying. The lack of Asian American Studies at Williams College has resulted in my lacking resources to feel seen, heard, and understood within the community. It has also taken me far too long to recognize the anti-blackness within Asian/American communities, dialogues, and narratives, as well as the fact that the model minority myth is rooted in anti-blackness. I wonder about the many other aspects and critiques of Asian/America in which I have not yet engaged. 6 The condition of students of color at Williams is one of constant erasure, demand for unacknowledged labor, and delegitimized pain. Not only would growing close to or even just having access to several Asian Americanist professors mean I would be able to see individuals like myself doing work I admire and contemplate pursuing, but it would also have been a chance to delve deeper into questions that have been brewing within me and have become articulated more clearly over the past four years. I do hope that Asian American Sudies will be established at Williams in the coming years, perhaps even within five or ten years. I am optimistic about this possibility, and I sincerely do hope that students following me at Williams will explore some of the personally intellectual questions I continue to ask every day. This is not to devalue the work in the following thesis project, but rather to muse on the possibilities of what could have been. Thank you for reading. 7 Chapter One Introduction: Listening to the World Between Carceral Feminism, Legislation, Anti-Trafficking Activists, and Sex Workers […T]rafficking and a lot of this discourse is really, really nerdy. I mean it's really heady. It's really hard. You really do need some kind of a degree to get through a lot of it. I actually consider myself pretty educated, but it was too hard for me. Honestly. Like it was over my head so, I remember going to a conference with Carol [Leigh] and going, 'Oh my god, this is so heady. I'm totally lost in this discussion.' […] It's really academic. It's really hard to understand. And, um. The people who are at this conference, […] Um, they were like the major players in all of the global trafficking discourse. People, blah blah blah, right? And I just felt lost, you know? Like I just felt overwhelmed and lost. And just like I was just not qualified to be there. Or something.1 When Mariko, my last interviewee, stated that she thought she “was just not qualified” to fully understand, participate in, and contribute to critiques and analyses of anti-trafficking discourse, I felt partially responsible for the jargon-heavy inaccessibility of academia. Of course, the notion that I am responsible for academia’s inaccessibility to most sex workers is preposterous, as this thesis is the first academic piece of writing of mine regarding anti-trafficking discourse that will be read by individuals who are not just my advisors.2 However, it is true that academic research and writing on the topic of conflating trafficking and sex work has largely excluded sex workers. Such studies are much more removed in nature and exclude the thoughts and words of the sex workers who are often conflated as trafficking victims or traffickers and thereby further criminalized. When beginning to formulate the idea for this thesis project, I recalled mentors who encouraged me to find what was missing in the existing literature – what were the gaps that existed, and could I fill them? But as I wrestled with the question, I instead found myself asking who was missing in the existing scholarly works. The obvious answer was sex workers themselves. 1 Mariko Passion, interview by Ayami Hatanaka, Skype, February 12, 2018. 2 I do think it is important to note, however, that through my own writing I am complicit in this inaccessibility, and this is something I hold as I continue my work as a part of the elite institution that is Williams College. 8 Hearing Mariko discuss how she felt unable to comprehend the hyper-intellectualized works critiquing anti-trafficking discourse (despite her Bachelor’s Degree from UC Berkeley and her Master’s Degree in Education from UCLA) reminded me of the original goals of my thesis project.