Race, Sex, Class, & the Sex Trades
This course was created by moses moon (aka @thotscholar on Twitter). I use any/all pronouns but favor she/her for consistency and to be clear about my racial-sexual location. I grew up working class in the Midwest in a racially segregated mid-size city and am black (both parents) and I am poor. I identify as a prostitute, though many prefer the term "sex worker." I do not distinguish between current and former because my participation is mostly arbitrary and informal. I also no longer disclose my activities in the sex trade because I am a parent.
"Woman" as a category of gender, is discussed as a "class" in some circles. When people discuss "sex work," it is presumed that the client is male (sex), while the sex worker is female (sex), irrespective to race. Another common pairing is white/male (client and masculine and cisgender) and black/male (prostitute and feminine and often transgender). This course deliberately focuses on black/male MEN who are masculine in expression and gender identity in order to illuminate contradictions in the discussion of power differentials in sex worker discourses.
Sexism, a concept which built upon the civil rights scholar-activist concept of racism put forth during the 1940s, is re-defined here as the disdain for and/or the prejudicial treatment of males, females, or intersex persons. For the purposes of this course, sex will be separated from gender (identity), albeit incompletely, and will be accorded more similarity to race, as in it will refer to the presumed physical or material body, while gender will refer to the assumptions made on top of presumed sex--aesthetics, expression, and masculine attributes according to today's expectations, which is entangled with the commonly privileged visual sense. We will examine what is revealed when we focus briefly on black poor males figured as men and their interactions with white men and women. We will focus on social location and power differentials, using the materials in this e-learning course to help us complicate the common gendered narrative of sexual conquest, trade, and active masculine/passive feminine dynamic that is everpresent in sex work political discourses.
This e-learning course is part of Spokes Hub. Upon completing and submitting this form, a coordinator from Spokes Hub will receive a copy of your response. In the event that your responses indicate a need for dialog and further education, the coordinator will reach out. Once satisfied, the coordinator will mark your module as "passed" and you will receive credit for their e-learning module. If you have questions, reach out to contact@spokeshub.org 