Sending a Dear John Letter: Public Information Campaigns and the Movement to “End Demand” for Prostitution in Atlanta, GA

Samantha Majic
Additional contact information
Samantha Majic: Department of Political Science, John Jay College—CUNY, 524 W 59th St, New York, NY 10019, USA

Social Sciences, 2017, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: This paper examines “Dear John”, a public information campaign that ran from 2006–2008 in Atlanta, GA, to ask what narrative it conveys about commercial sex and those who engage in it, in order to understand the gendered (and other) discursive constructions it produces, reflects, and complicates about these activities and subjects. Drawing from both policy and sex work/trafficking scholarship, this paper argues that Dear John used symbolic images and direct and consequential text to convey a “male demand” narrative, which holds that men’s demand for sexual services harms girls and young women and will not be tolerated. Yet, in so doing, Dear John also reinforced particularly gendered characterizations of individuals who trade sex, while de-emphasizing other factors that increase young peoples’ vulnerabilities to and within sex work. The paper concludes by discussing Dear John’s outcomes and significance for scholars concerned with sex work, policy, and social change.

Keywords: public information campaigns; sex trafficking; sex work; narratives; gender; interpretive methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/4/138/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/4/138/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:6:y:2017:i:4:p:138-:d:118345

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().