ABSTRACT
Sex work has long sparked debates among feminists, from the sex wars of the 1980s to their reinvigoration in the early 2000s when public and political attention to sex trafficking escalated in the United States and internationally. The bulk of published research focuses on sex trafficking, due in part to anti-prostitution advocates’ access to policymakers through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As standpoint theory indicates, starting research from the lives of marginalized people will generate illuminating insights and questions that are less likely to arise from the lives and experiences of those in dominant positions. Critical trafficking scholars include researchers who study sex work and sex trafficking through the lens of particular social problems or through different identity positions. In the research process, persons who trade sex can help shape study questions and designs in ways helpful for more people rather than in ways that create other forms of exploitation.
