Papers by Lauren Levitt

Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2023
Drawing on queer of color critique, this paper uses mixed methods including participant observati... more Drawing on queer of color critique, this paper uses mixed methods including participant observation, interviews, visual and textual analysis, and photovoice to interrogate sex workers’ queer creative practices. Building upon the larger oeuvre of sex working artists, contemporary sex working artists in Los Angeles utilizes queer creativity to thwart hegemonic readings of sex work. Performances at two activist fundraisers drew on the themes and esthetics of sex work to counter mainstream nar- ratives about sex work and workers, and to interrupt their objectification. The cover and graphics of a sex worker zine push back against dominant narratives about sex workers and the power structures that suppress sex worker self-representa- tion. Photovoice methodology allowed sex workers to counter- act objectification by telling their own stories. In their creative products, sex workers show how “queer” is a praxis of sex and gender disruption, rather than a simple identity category sig- naling non-heterosexuality, challenging homonormativity in addition to heteronormativity.

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2025
Introduction Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal ec... more Introduction Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal economies due to their marginalized identities. Although policies increasing the criminalization of sex work are not regarded as hate politics, we argue that these policies are de facto hate policies against LGBTQ + communities and other marginalized groups. Methods We utilize a literature review of nine empirical studies (2018-2023) on the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a sex worker hate policy, as well as 25 interviews from a 2022 community-based study on the effects of California Senate Bill 233 (SB233), which decriminalized condom possession. Results SESTA/FOSTA harmed sex workers by reducing their income, restricting access to safety and screening resources, increasing the risk of exploitation and violence, and removing online spaces for community building and political organizing. Moreover, marginalized sex workers felt these effects most keenly. The SB233 interviews further revealed that condom possession was utilized as a means for law enforcement to harass trans women through pervasive harassment, deadnaming, and forcing sexual encounters with the threat of violence and jail time. Conclusions SESTA/FOSTA reveals how policies increasing the criminalization of sex workers also hate policies against marginalized groups. However, policies reducing the criminalization of sex workers, such as SB233, may be ineffective without community involvement. For this reason, we recommend community-based policies like SB357, which repealed loitering with intent. Policy Implications Hate politics increase carceral investments, leading to police harassment and surveillance of marginalized groups. We recommend community-led policy suggestions as an alternative.

Springer, 2025
Introduction Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal ec... more Introduction Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal economies due to their marginalized identities. Although policies increasing the criminalization of sex work are not regarded as hate politics, we argue that these policies are de facto hate policies against LGBTQ + communities and other marginalized groups. Methods We utilize a literature review of nine empirical studies (2018-2023) on the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a sex worker hate policy, as well as 25 interviews from a 2022 community-based study on the effects of California Senate Bill 233 (SB233), which decriminalized condom possession. Results SESTA/FOSTA harmed sex workers by reducing their income, restricting access to safety and screening resources, increasing the risk of exploitation and violence, and removing online spaces for community building and political organizing. Moreover, marginalized sex workers felt these effects most keenly. The SB233 interviews further revealed that condom possession was utilized as a means for law enforcement to harass trans women through pervasive harassment, deadnaming, and forcing sexual encounters with the threat of violence and jail time. Conclusions SESTA/FOSTA reveals how policies increasing the criminalization of sex workers also hate policies against marginalized groups. However, policies reducing the criminalization of sex workers, such as SB233, may be ineffective without community involvement. For this reason, we recommend community-based policies like SB357, which repealed loitering with intent. Policy Implications Hate politics increase carceral investments, leading to police harassment and surveillance of marginalized groups. We recommend community-led policy suggestions as an alternative.

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2025
Introduction
Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal ec... more Introduction
Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal economies due to their marginalized identities. Although policies increasing the criminalization of sex work are not regarded as hate politics, we argue that these policies are de facto hate policies against LGBTQ + communities and other marginalized groups.
Methods
We utilize a literature review of nine empirical studies (2018–2023) on the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a sex worker hate policy, as well as 25 interviews from a 2022 community-based study on the effects of California Senate Bill 233 (SB233), which decriminalized condom possession.
Results
SESTA/FOSTA harmed sex workers by reducing their income, restricting access to safety and screening resources, increasing the risk of exploitation and violence, and removing online spaces for community building and political organizing. Moreover, marginalized sex workers felt these effects most keenly. The SB233 interviews further revealed that condom possession was utilized as a means for law enforcement to harass trans women through pervasive harassment, deadnaming, and forcing sexual encounters with the threat of violence and jail time.
Conclusions
SESTA/FOSTA reveals how policies increasing the criminalization of sex workers also hate policies against marginalized groups. However, policies reducing the criminalization of sex workers, such as SB233, may be ineffective without community involvement. For this reason, we recommend community-based policies like SB357, which repealed loitering with intent.
Policy Implications
Hate politics increase carceral investments, leading to police harassment and surveillance of marginalized groups. We recommend community-led policy suggestions as an alternative.
Journal of Lesbian Studies, Dec 21, 2023
New York University Press eBooks, Feb 4, 2020

Media and Communication, Mar 29, 2022
This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two D... more This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two Divergent fan forums, one on Divergent Fans and another on Divergent Wiki, to determine whether these forums raise political consciousness, especially among young people. As scholars of civic imagination show, popular culture narratives may lead to the ability to imagine a better future. Utopian narratives in particular facilitate this process in a dialectical way by presenting us with an impossible world, and dystopian narratives may operate in a similarly dialectical fashion by offering a negative example or warning. Analysis of posts related to utopia and dystopia, the story world versus the real world, historical and contemporary parallels, governmental reform, and non-normative sexuality reveals that participants on Divergent fan forums discuss real-world issues and sometimes imagine a better world, but this does not conclusively raise political consciousness. We can account for these civic successes and failures by considering Dahlgren's (2009) six elements of civic cultures: knowledge, values, trust, spaces, practices/skills, and identities. While fan knowledge, trust, and spaces are strong, and fan identities can be experienced as relatively static, values and practices/skills are important areas for intervention to cultivate political consciousness among young people. Critical civic education at the secondary school level could foster democratic values, and teaching media literacy and political discussion skills could improve students' ability to think critically about entertainment narratives. Keywords civic cultures; civic imagination; dystopian narrative; fandom; political consciousness Issue This article is part of the issue "Digital Child-and Adulthood: Risks, Opportunities, and Challenges" edited by Claudia Riesmeyer (LMU Munich), Arne Freya Zillich (Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF), and Thorsten Naab (German Youth Institute).

Spectator, 2021
According to Yochai Benkler, information is different from other types of goods because it does n... more According to Yochai Benkler, information is different from other types of goods because it does not get used up by its consumption. For this reason, we might expect information to be shared more freely than material goods among sex workers, but this is not always the case. As scholars studying the media practices of marginalized groups suggest, information sharing practices are governed by cultural contexts, and there are important reasons for restricting access. Through in-depth interviews with twenty-four current or former sex industry workers living in a large city in the Northeastern United States, this article asks: when is information is shared freely with few limits to access; when are resources are limited to members of a particular group; and why? The unrestricted sharing of safety information, training, and intimate personal information is necessitated by unsafe working conditions and the failure to recognize reproductive labor as skilled work, and it is encouraged by the homosocial work environment and a mutual experience of stigma. However, exploitative managerial practices including hiring and scheduling too many workers, the resulting competition among them, as well as the criminalization and stigma of sex work, restrict the flow of personally identifying information and training.

The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence, 2021
Sex work operates according to the logics of the gig economy, demanding multiple sources of incom... more Sex work operates according to the logics of the gig economy, demanding multiple sources of income, independent contractor status, low wages, flexibility, and a premium on creativity. Ethnographic methods, including in-depth interviews, have proven especially productive for feminist scholars studying sex work. Miller-Young, for example, used ethnographic interviews and participant observation in conversation with textual analysis in her study of black women in pornography because, as a feminist, she wanted to understand the experiences of black women in mainstream pornography, an industry geared toward straight, white, male desire. Sex work shares many characteristics of the gig economy and, in doing so, highlights the exploitative nature of all labor under capitalism. Scholarship on the gig economy identifies misclassifying employees as independent contractors as one of the defining features of the gig economy. The lack of paid leave also poses problems, especially for those with chronic health conditions.
Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change, 2020

Media and Communication, 2022
This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two D... more This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two Divergent fan forums, one on Divergent Fans and another on Divergent Wiki, to determine whether these forums raise political consciousness, especially among young people. As scholars of civic imagination show, popular culture narratives may lead to the ability to imagine a better future. Utopian narratives in particular facilitate this process in a dialectical way by presenting us with an impossible world, and dystopian narratives may operate in a similarly dialectical fashion by offering a negative example or warning. Analysis of posts related to utopia and dystopia, the story world versus the real world, historical and contemporary parallels, governmental reform, and non-normative sexuality reveals that participants on Divergent fan forums discuss real-world issues and sometimes imagine a better world, but this does not conclusively raise political consciousness. We can account for thes...

Media and Communication, 2022
This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two D... more This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two Divergent fan forums, one on Divergent Fans and another on Divergent Wiki, to determine whether these forums raise political consciousness, especially among young people. As scholars of civic imagination show, popular culture narratives may lead to the ability to imagine a better future. Utopian narratives in particular facilitate this process in a dialectical way by presenting us with an impossible world, and dystopian narratives may operate in a similarly dialectical fashion by offering a negative example or warning. Analysis of posts related to utopia and dystopia, the story world versus the real world, historical and contemporary parallels, governmental reform, and non-normative sexuality reveals that participants on Divergent fan forums discuss real-world issues and sometimes imagine a better world, but this does not conclusively raise political consciousness. We can account for these civic successes and failures by considering Dahlgren's (2009) six elements of civic cultures: knowledge, values, trust, spaces, practices/skills, and identities. While fan knowledge, trust, and spaces are strong, and fan identities can be experienced as relatively static, values and practices/skills are important areas for intervention to cultivate political consciousness among young people. Critical civic education at the secondary school level could foster democratic values, and teaching media literacy and political discussion skills could improve students' ability to think critically about entertainment narratives.

As Susan Murray argues in “I Think We Need a New Name for It,” documentary is often celebrated fo... more As Susan Murray argues in “I Think We Need a New Name for It,” documentary is often celebrated for exploring social issues, while reality TV is dismissed as mindless entertainment. However, despite the popular and critical success of Jennie Livingston’s 1990 film Paris Is Burning, many academics, notably bell hooks, claim that the film exploits and spectacularizes its subjects. Moreover, even though RuPaul’s Drag Race clearly fits within the formal and production models of reality TV, it also explores contemporary social issues. This paper begins by showing the ways in which RuPaul’s Drag Race has been influenced by Paris is Burning by pointing out allusions to the documentary in the show. Next, it compares the way in which the two works address important social issues such as the construction of identity, alternative kinship formations and social injustice. Finally, it confronts the implications of Paris is Burning’s ethnographic mode of address, questioning whether the film is as celebratory of hegemonic whiteness or as uncritically self-reflexive as writers such as hooks suggest, and it explores how RuPaul’s Drag Race might also be accused of exoticizing difference. The ambivalence of both Paris Is Burning and RuPaul’s Drag Race suggests that rather than judging works based on the cultural hierarchy of their generic classification alone it is important to consider their unique content.
Book Reviews by Lauren Levitt
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Papers by Lauren Levitt
Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal economies due to their marginalized identities. Although policies increasing the criminalization of sex work are not regarded as hate politics, we argue that these policies are de facto hate policies against LGBTQ + communities and other marginalized groups.
Methods
We utilize a literature review of nine empirical studies (2018–2023) on the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a sex worker hate policy, as well as 25 interviews from a 2022 community-based study on the effects of California Senate Bill 233 (SB233), which decriminalized condom possession.
Results
SESTA/FOSTA harmed sex workers by reducing their income, restricting access to safety and screening resources, increasing the risk of exploitation and violence, and removing online spaces for community building and political organizing. Moreover, marginalized sex workers felt these effects most keenly. The SB233 interviews further revealed that condom possession was utilized as a means for law enforcement to harass trans women through pervasive harassment, deadnaming, and forcing sexual encounters with the threat of violence and jail time.
Conclusions
SESTA/FOSTA reveals how policies increasing the criminalization of sex workers also hate policies against marginalized groups. However, policies reducing the criminalization of sex workers, such as SB233, may be ineffective without community involvement. For this reason, we recommend community-based policies like SB357, which repealed loitering with intent.
Policy Implications
Hate politics increase carceral investments, leading to police harassment and surveillance of marginalized groups. We recommend community-led policy suggestions as an alternative.
Book Reviews by Lauren Levitt
Sex workers overlap demographically with individuals who are pushed into informal economies due to their marginalized identities. Although policies increasing the criminalization of sex work are not regarded as hate politics, we argue that these policies are de facto hate policies against LGBTQ + communities and other marginalized groups.
Methods
We utilize a literature review of nine empirical studies (2018–2023) on the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a sex worker hate policy, as well as 25 interviews from a 2022 community-based study on the effects of California Senate Bill 233 (SB233), which decriminalized condom possession.
Results
SESTA/FOSTA harmed sex workers by reducing their income, restricting access to safety and screening resources, increasing the risk of exploitation and violence, and removing online spaces for community building and political organizing. Moreover, marginalized sex workers felt these effects most keenly. The SB233 interviews further revealed that condom possession was utilized as a means for law enforcement to harass trans women through pervasive harassment, deadnaming, and forcing sexual encounters with the threat of violence and jail time.
Conclusions
SESTA/FOSTA reveals how policies increasing the criminalization of sex workers also hate policies against marginalized groups. However, policies reducing the criminalization of sex workers, such as SB233, may be ineffective without community involvement. For this reason, we recommend community-based policies like SB357, which repealed loitering with intent.
Policy Implications
Hate politics increase carceral investments, leading to police harassment and surveillance of marginalized groups. We recommend community-led policy suggestions as an alternative.