Claudia Torres obtained her law degree in Mexico City, where she is originally from. She is a Harvard SJD student committed to improve the living conditions of sex workers and change the way law is taught in Mexico.
Sex work was officially decriminalized in Mexico City on May 21, Before then, sex work on the streets was considered a minor offense carrying a fine or arrest. A group of neighbors could complain to the police to ask for the workers to be brought before a judge, taking them off the streets. Today, procuring and sex trafficking are the only aspects of sexual work punishable by law.
The first crime punishes those who benefit from the prostitution of others, without taking into account whether the activity is voluntary or not. The second crime is different because, in theory, it refers only to forced prostitution when the person has been tricked, forced, threatened, or manipulated through an abuse of power or taking advantage of vulnerability. Both my academic training and feminism led me to this debate about sex work, perhaps because it permitted me to sublimateβto use the psychoanalytic termβmy own experience of sexual abuse.
In studying the sex trade, I found a space to think about the productive dimension of sexuality which, doubtlessly, has been bound up with structures of inequalityβsexual inequality, for sure, but also the inequities of race and class. In , my interest in the subject led me to Harvard Law School.
During the interviews, I noticed that the sex workers used legal norms in ways that, many times, deviated from the original intentions of the legislators. I also realized that police played a fundamental role in the lives of these women. They are the first point of contact between the sex workers, clients and neighbors, on one hand, and the state apparatus including the justice system on the other. In my doctorate, I decided to delve deeper into the informal use of law by street sex workers and the police, as well as to examine the affective relations between these two groups.
