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The Difference Sameness Makes: Objectification, Sex Work, and Queerness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ann J. Cahill
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Abstract

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical concern, must be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice.

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Open Issue Content
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Hypatia , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Fall 2014 , pp. 840 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the anonymous Hypatia reviewers for their insightful responses to earlier drafts of this article.

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