Sexual labor in the mark: polemics and stereotypes

The rigid norms assigned to gender roles sanction some behaviors by women as deviant and punish them with stigmatization. The worst stigmatization falls on sexual laborers. Religious, ethnic and class prejudices converge in this situation. The stigmatizing discourse is shared by political sectors from both right and left. It is even supported by some feminist sectors and this generated an important polemic between abolitionists and defenders of the prostitutes' human rights. Although international laws on the matter are becoming more nuanced, the matter is not resolved and discrimination furnishes the bases for the exercise of symbolic and material violence against these women.

Sexual Labor; Stigma; Feminisms; International Laws; Migration