Episode Description
Dr. TJ Stewart talks about his groundbreaking new book, “Sex Work on Campus” – recently recognized as the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Outstanding Book of the Year. Drawing on a study involving seven college student sex workers, Dr. Stewart delves into the experiences, motivations, and the impact of social identity on their engagement in college and university contexts. This previously absent conversation also unveils the complex intersections of education, equity, and justice, providing suggestions of what educators and university leaders can do to better support students engaged in erotic labor.
Suggested APA Citation
Shea. H (Host). (2024, Jan 3). Sex Work on Campus (No. 185) [Audio podcast episode]. In Student Affairs NOW. https://studentaffairsnow.com/sex-work-on-campus/
Episode Transcript
TJ StewartOkay, people are entitled to their perceptions of virtually anything, then the question becomes is, why does your opinion of the thing mean that you get to develop law policy and discourse around it, in the sense that it would then impact that person's or that things in life experience existence. And so what I kept coming back to is this notion that people are uncomfortable, broadly, generally, with sex work, because they think it's unsafe. And there's this prevalent frame that they are selling their body, right, one of the things I push back on in the book is that they don't, you know, sell their body, particularly those that engage in direct forms of sex work or direct services, they sell a service.
Heather SheaWelcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I'm your host, Heather Shea. Today on the podcast. I'm sitting down with an author, scholar, faculty member, and also a colleague and friend from ACPA. Dr. TJ Stewart. We're talking about his new book Sex Work on Campus, which happened to be the Association for the Study of Higher Education outstanding book of the year. I got to hear TJ talk about his book at ASHE last month, and I cannot wait to get into this topic this complex, nuanced and before now, I think absent conversation today on the podcast. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcast. This episode would not be possible without the support of our new sponsor, Routledge, Taylor and Francis publishers happens to be the same publisher of this book. And you can view their complete catalogue of authoritative education titles@www.routledge.com/education As I mentioned, my name is Heather Shea, my pronouns are she and her and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the Nish Novick, three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University where I work in our gender equity center. So let's get to the conversation. TJ, thank you so much for being here today. Welcome back to Student Affairs NOW. You were on a previous conversation about labor relations, which I think like dovetail to the today's call. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you are currently assistant professor of higher ed and Student Affairs at Iowa State University. I, as I as I said, as we were prepping today, I just finished reading your book on my Kindle. I brought it today as a little visual aid downloaded from for free. So thank you to that as well. But I'd love to just begin with a bit of your journey that brought you to your current role, and then how you're entering the conversation today.
TJ StewartYeah so thanks so much for that, Heather.