Local Revelations, Academic Interests and Teamwork Lead to Award Winning Book
Sarah Blithe is no stranger to inequality and disparity in the workplace. As an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Reno since 2012, her studies often involve how people’s identities can affect how they’re treated by their employer. A major and recent focus of her studies resulted in the release of Sex and Stigma: Stories of Everyday Life in Nevada’s Legal Brothels, which keeps winning her awards and also helps in court cases.
“I thought [brothels] would be a fascinating place to study,” Blithe said in a recent Our Town Reno interview, looking back on her work’s trajectory. “So we called the brothels and did participant observation in many brothels across the state. We did interviews with sex workers, brothel owners and other people who were involved like bartenders and security people. That led us to just this really fascinatingly rich study that has carried on for a few years now.”
Published in January 2019, Sex and Stigma has since received five national and academic book awards. Blithe’s book, co-authored with Anna Wiederhold and Breanna Mohr, was the culmination of a research project that began in 2013.
The idea for the project started when Blithe attended camel races in Virginia City with her children in 2012. While her kids were up front looking at the camels, Blithe saw a work email with a call for articles on hidden organizations by the Management Communication Quarterly journal.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that's so cool, I wish I had something to study,’” Blithe said. “The announcer was also making really lewd comments about the women riding the camels and I realized that that particular race was sponsored by one of the brothels. I was new to Reno at this point and I thought, ‘Gosh, this is really interesting and maybe I should study the brothels. It fits in with my interest in organizations and gender inequalities.”
Blithe then paired up with Wiederhold, an expert in community organizing who was also at UNR at the time. They started their data collection efforts in 2013 and after a full year of research, an interesting development occurred with the project.
“I was working with one of my undergraduate students at the time and I asked her if she would be my research assistant because she was just a standout student and a remarkable writer,” Blithe said of when she offered a list of research projects she was looking for help on. “She then said, ‘Well, I really want to work on the brothel one, but you should know that I worked there.’”
Although the first round of data collection happened before the student came on, she was then included as a full co-author on the project.
“After our student came in, she decided she wanted to do some additional interviews with people who had left the brothels,” Blithe said. “She then facilitated a second round of data collection where we spoke with women who worked [in the brothels], but then left and were doing something else for whatever reason.” An auto ethnographic chapter written by the student was also included in the published book.
Book Makes Appearances in Recent Court Cases
Since publication, Blithe has been impressed by the different ways her research has been used within the legal sex work industry.
“Since publication, our book has been used in some of the court hearings about whether or not brothels should have a ‘lock-down’ policy,” Blithe said, referring to the practice of women being unable to leave brothel grounds while under contract. “In the book we argue pretty strongly that lockdown is illegal and a discriminatory practice that some of the brothels do. I feel the best outcome of the book is that now in almost all of the brothels, there is no lockdown policy anymore.”
A key point in disputing traditional lockdown policies is that legal sex workers are independent contractors, not employees.
“This means that whoever is contracting their services, doesn't get to tell them when or how many hours they work,” Blithe said. “[Workers] can't leave at all for the time that you're on contract, which might be two weeks and for one woman I met, it was three years. They can go outside, they could be on the brothel ground, but they have these rules that restrict their movement and their mobility.”
Another outcome from the book’s publishing was its use as evidence to support that human or sex trafficking isn’t happening in the brothels.
“Nevada is the only place with legal brothels so this is not just a local concern, but I would say there's a [national] concern that there's trafficking happening in the brothels,” Blithe said. “But our research did not find any evidence of trafficking. It's certainly not widespread or rampant as people who are anti-brothel would suggest.”
Blithe does point out that sex trafficking is a significant problem in our society, but reaffirms that it’s not as prevalent in legal sex work, as opposed to illegal sex work.
“There’s a bit of a moral panic going on about sex trafficking and it is a real problem,” Blithe said. “But it's just not as associated with legal sex work as it is with illegal sex work. In the illegal [sex work] context, it's a different version of the same occupation, so I would say that was one myth that our research dispelled a bit.”
Long Term Stigma and Complexities
A main finding of the book was revealing the stigma long attached to the women who work in the brothel, while brothel owners are elevated as quasi-mythical figures.
“There are businesses who won't work with [female sex workers], they sometimes have a hard time getting car loans, housing applications approved, that sort of thing,” Blithe said. “At the same time, the brothel owners are kind of like celebrities, they actually enjoy a positive status associated with their role. One of our main findings was looking at the way that stigma isn't applied equally across all people who are associated with brothels.”
Another thing that stood out to Blithe was the variety of transferable skills utilized by the women involved in legal sex work, yet the stigma from their occupation is a barrier if they try to exit the industry.
“Many of the women that have built these incredible skill sets: sales, negotiation and communication,” Blithe said. “They have all kinds of really amazing skills and sometimes that doesn't translate if they want to exit the industry, they find it hard because of the stigma associated with their occupation to describe what they can do in terms of getting another job.”
Another aspect of her research for the book covered the work-life balance of the women.
“Many of the women who work [at brothels] are moms and many of them said that work-life balance is one of the reasons why they've picked this particular occupation,” Blithe said. “So maybe they work a month out of the year and then they don't work for 11 months, which for some of the women really helped them achieve work-life balance and in ways that are kind of creative and outside of the traditional box about work-life balance.”
For Blithe, who did not have much exposure to brothels prior to her research, she found a wide variety and diversity in both the women who worked there, as well as their reasons for working in brothels.
“You see people who are completely outside of what you would have expected in terms of a wide range of ages, all different types of races and ethnicities, different ways that women choose to present their identities,” Blithe said. “There's a lot more diversity in different reasons why women work there. Many of the women who work there are really satisfied with [legal sex work] as a career, they’re doing it as a sales career or because it is satisfying something personal about them and their sexual desires.”
A More Nuanced Picture
Blithe said for many legal sex work is a chosen career women take pride in.
“It's not all just about survival, for many people this is a chosen or selected career that they take great pride in and don't want to bear the stigma of people looking down on them for something as if they were forced to do it when this is, in fact, a career that they enjoy and they're excelling,” Blithe said.
Blithe suggests that the book has been well received by the community since its release due to its balanced approach to the legal sex work industry.
“What we're trying to do in the book is paint a more nuanced picture [of the legal sex work industry],” Blithe said. “We try to provide a variety of evidence and to create a well-rounded picture of what's going on in the brothels rather than a book that was coming out trying to persuade people to go one way or the other. So I think that's why it's been pretty well received by people on all sides of this issue.”
Challenges and Risks of the Pandemic
Blithe also mentioned that women who work at the brothels, much like many workers across the country, have been particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That already has been really problematic,” Blithe said of brothels being forced to shut down, mentioning the legal challenges of collecting small business unemployment for many of the women who may not have created an LLC for their contracted services. “I think there are definitely women who have been turning back to illegal sex work, while others are riding it out on their savings and those who are trying to find different occupations and use this as a turning point in their careers, which is also something that the brothel owners are concerned about,” Blithe said.
Blithe is particularly concerned for the women who may have turned to non-sanctioned sex work during the pandemic.
“It's much more dangerous to perform sex work in hotels or on streets than it is in brothels,” Blithe said. “So that's a concern, not having any income at all is a concern. This pandemic has been very hard on this particular industry because the brothels really see themselves as providing a service to the community. So they have been pushing to try to reopen, without much success right now.”
All things considered, Blithe and her coauthors believe Sex and Stigma is just one step forward in addressing the stereotypes placed on legal sex workers.
“People tend to get hung up on stereotypes and stigma and there are so many accusations and ugly words that people associate with women who work in the brothels,” Blithe said. “If we could help somehow reduce the stigma and misperceptions that people put out into the world, it would help make this particular occupation less oppressive. Whether you like it or not, this is a legal occupation and it deserves to have the same rights that other occupations are afforded in the state.”