A Critique of the Legal Strategies deployed by Transactional Sex Civil Soicety Organisations

A huge number of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have mobilised around the idea that transactional
sex currently poses problems which the activities of CSOs may remedy/alleviate. These activities
prominently feature the law, including litigation and advocacy for legislative change, and envision that
they achieve a particular end.
This thesis reviews and provides a critique of these legal strategies. It uses post-structuralist thought and
specific tools, such as governmentality, to suggest that the legal strategies being deploying by
transactional sex CSOs play a wider role in supporting particular forms of power relations and
government. This consideration does not feature in the dominant and conventional discourses, which are
almost entirely dedicated to proponents attributing positive and negative impacts to a particular form of
legislation.
The implications of this analysis highlights the ways the very problemisation of transactional sex plays a
role in supporting forms of government. It demonstrates why law features so prominently in the way we
think about achieving change and the shortcomings of such an approach.