title: 'Whore stigma' as a transformative experience: altered cognitive expectations among Jewish-Israeli street-based sex workers.
abstract: While the scholarship on sex work is substantial, it neglects to explore whether sex work and associated stigma affect sex workers' cognitive expectations. Drawing on observations of street-based sex work as well as in-depth interviews with Jewish-Israeli sex workers, this study suggests that because stigma is a moral experience that threatens and often destroys what really matters to stigmatised individuals, it leads to recurrent disappointments, which, in turn, may alter sex workers' cognitive expectations. Sex workers learn to see certain life goals, including maintaining healthy social relationships and a workspace free of violence and humiliation, as unobtainable. However, they also begin to see other aspects of their lives, such as economic autonomy, as achievable through sex work. Tracing how whore stigma becomes a transformative experience allows us to add another layer to the heretofore suggested link between the structural, cultural and individual aspects of stigmatisation.
authors.affiliation: a Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Faculty of Law , Tel Aviv University , Tel Aviv , Israel.|b Department of Sociology , Brandeis University , Waltham , USA.
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zarhin
authors.affiliation: c Department of Sociology , University of New Hampshire , Durham , NH , USA.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Fox
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007557:Israel; D007585:Jews / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D036301:Qualitative Research; D060386:Sex Workers / Q000523:psychology*; D057545:Social Stigma; D014754:Violence / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Cognitive expectations; Israel; moral experience; sex work; stigma