Abstract
Sex workers around the world are producing cultural outputs for sex worker audiences and others. This essay explores examples of contemporary sex worker theatre, protest, installation, performance art and more. Sex worker artists challenge stigma, pathologisation and racist anti-immigration trafficking policy, ultimately pushing for the decriminalisation of sex work. Performance has played a role in how sex workers have responded to HIV both politically and culturally in this century.
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Sisonke and SWEAT (two South African sex worker organisations) protested against this systematic marginalisation at the opening session of the Twenty-First International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016) in Durban, South Africa. A large digital counter was high above the heads of the audience, facing towards the main conference stage, indicating how many minutes the speaker had been talking ‘without a mention of sex work’ (Personal Communication with Authors, Tori True-Story, International Spokesperson, Scarlet Alliance, 2016).
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Jeffreys, E., Fawkes, J. (2018). Staging Decriminalisation: Sex Worker Performance and HIV. In: Campbell, A., Gindt, D. (eds) Viral Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70317-6_3
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