pornai<\/em>, with an autonomous, witty independent woman who benefits from her sexual labour at one end of the spectrum and an enslaved person at the other end,\u201d Glazebrook says.<\/p>\nHer previous work on sexual labour in ancient Greece has explored its diversity, organization and social history. For this book, she wanted to look at how sexual labour was represented in Athenian law courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe law courts are a specific context, where the orator is trying to persuade people to his cause or position,\u201d says Glazebrook. \u201cSexual labour appears in law speeches in the context of dealing with children, marriage and inheritance.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the representation of sexual labour in the legal speeches was based in fact, it also problematized issues connected with family, city, citizenship, sexuality, gender and the body. The speeches often emphasized issues of payment for sex labour and slavery.<\/p>\n
Athenian citizenship came with a lot of rights, and Athenians were very protective of that. While sexual labour wasn\u2019t illegal, citizens who engaged in it could expect some restrictions on their citizen privileges, such as being discouraged from speaking in the assembly or marrying.<\/p>\n
Glazebrook\u2019s research found that discussion of sexual labour in the law court speeches was associated with various anxieties around social institutions, particularly around citizenship.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnxiety about women, enslaved people and non-Athenians all come together in the sex labourer, who could belong to all three identities,\u201d she says. \u201cIn talking about the sex labourer, the orators could draw on discourses and highlight concerns with these other groups in the household, family and city and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glazebrook\u2019s research found the orators were exploiting their society\u2019s anxieties about children\u2019s legitimacy for citizenship and inheritance. One\u2019s legitimacy as an Athenian citizen depended on the fulfilment of particular obligations and the witness of other citizens. Orators take this anxiety and put it on a particular group, says Glazebrook.<\/p>\n
\u201cSex labourers are seen as creating a risk for the Athenian household,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can see parallels between how it works in the orators and how we see sex labour work in any society. We take a particular group in a society and put our anxieties and tensions on them to create unity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brock Professor Allison Glazebrook\u2019s latest book explores the marginalization of sex labourers in the ancient Greek world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":76743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,37,1,5],"tags":[4190,1583,30,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76744,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76742\/revisions\/76744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}