title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In response to concerns from Sony on the growing number of indie game titles that were receiving physical releases alongside retail ones, the ESRB began instituting new rules around August 2017 that any retail product was mandated to undergo the standard Long Form review for the game, disallowing the use of the Short Form for such titles. Alongside this, ESRB introduced a "value tier" for the Long Form review process for games developed at lower budgets (under $1 million), with a cost of $3000 for obtaining the retail rating. This decision has impacted the choice of several boutique indie game publishers, who have either cancelled plans for retail versions or had to stop selling retail versions to comply with the new ESRB rules.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: ESRB ratings are primarily identified through icons, which are displayed on the packaging and promotional materials for a game. Each icon contains a stylized alphabetical letter representing the rating. A full label, containing both "content descriptors" and rating, are typically displayed on the back of a game's packaging. Since 2011, the label may also include a third section related to Interactive Elements, including whether the game allows the player to play with others online or has optional post-release purchases.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: Games that provide post-release downloadable content must ensure that the new content remains consistent with the original ESRB rating; otherwise the ESRB requires that the original game be re-evaluated and remarked with the more appropriate rating in considering this new content. Ratings information also disclaims if a game offers online communications, or digital goods or other premiums (including downloadable content, microtransactions, and "loot boxes") that require payment of real money to obtain.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The appearance of the ratings icons themselves have been updated several times; originally carrying a stylized, pixelated look, they were first updated in late 1999 to carry a cleaner appearance. In August 2013, the rating icons were streamlined again; the textual name of the rating became black text on white, the "content rated by" tagline was removed, and registered trademark symbols were moved to the bottom-right corner. The changes were intended to increase the icons' clarity at smaller sizes (such as on mobile devices), reflecting the growth in the digital distribution of video games.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In addition to the main age-based, ratings, ESRB ratings also incorporate one or more of 30 "content descriptors", which provide detailed information about the specific types and levels of objectionable content contained in a game, including categories covering different levels of violence, language, sexual content, nudity, use of alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and drugs, crude and mature humor, or gambling.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The ESRB rating system is primarily enforced on a self-regulatory basis by the video game and retail industries; in markets where it is used, retailers typically enforce the "Mature" rating using photo identification, and refuse to stock video games that have not been rated by the organization, or are rated "Adults Only". Modern video game consoles include parental controls that can be configured to restrict games played by specific users, using factors such as their ESRB rating. The ESRB has also taken action against video game distributors who use the ratings icons in advertising without authorization or having actually been issued the rating by the board.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: Steam, the largest digital distribution storefront for personal computers, does display ratings when available, and allows games to be categorized and filtered based on categories and the extent of potentially objectionable content, but an ESRB rating is not mandatory. As of June 2018, following complaints regarding inconsistent enforcement of its previous guidelines, Steam stated that it would only ban the sale of games that contain blatantly illegal content, or games that it classifies as being "straight up trolling". However, in March 2019, it was revealed that there are still undisclosed limitations to this policy based on "costs and risks" associated with Steam's ability to distribute specific games.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In the United States, there have been attempts at the state and federal level to introduce laws requiring retailers to enforce the ESRB ratings system. In 2004, California Assemblyman Leland Yee sponsored a state bill requiring retailers to stock M-rated games on separate shelves that are at least from the ground. The bill was passed, after it was modified to only require that retailers promote awareness of the ESRB ratings system to their customers.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The following year, California passed AB 1179, a second bill sponsored by Yee, which banned the sale of "violent video games" to minors. The term was defined using a variation of the Miller test (originally created to judge whether a work is obscene), separate from any rating the game may have received. In a landmark ruling, the law was struck down by the Supreme Court in "Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association", which ruled that AB 1179 was unconstitutional because video games are a protected form of expression.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In Canada, ESRB ratings are enforced under provincial laws by film ratings boards in Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. As in the U.S., most retailers voluntarily enforce the ratings regardless. Prior to the implementation of the Film Classification Act, 2005, which gave it the power to enforce ESRB ratings, the Ontario Film Review Board had used its own powers to classify the M-rated "Manhunt" as a film and give it a "Restricted" rating, legally barring its sale to those under 18. By contrast, the British Columbia Film Classification Office considered the ESRB rating to be appropriate.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The ESRB enforces guidelines that have been adopted by the video game industry in order to ensure responsible advertising and marketing practices. These include ensuring that game packaging, advertisements, and trailers properly display rating information, restricting where advertising materials for games rated "Teen" or higher can appear, forbidding publishers from "glamoriz[ing] or exploiting" a game's rating in advertising, and requiring online marketing of games rated "Mature" or higher to be restricted to users who are appropriately aged. This allows the ESRB to restrict video game advertising "to consumers for whom the product is not rated as appropriate." The board also forbids ratings from other organizations from being shown alongside ESRB ratings on publishers' websites or social media outlets. A group of online gaming publications known as the ESRB Website Council operates under a similar code of conduct, which requires them to display ESRB ratings information for games that they cover, and implement systems to restrict access to audiovisual content depicting M or AO-rated games to users who are appropriately aged.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In March 2013, the ESRB eased certain restrictions on the promotion of M-rated games. Firstly, trailers for games that are or are anticipated to be rated "Mature" can be cleared by the ESRB as being appropriate for "general" audiences—similarly to the "green band" ratings issued by the MPAA for film trailers. Secondly, the board began to allow, on a case-by-case basis depending on the target demographic of the game, M-rated games to be cross-promoted in the marketing materials of games with lower ratings.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In addition to its video game ratings operation, the ESRB also offers an online privacy program which helps websites adopt privacy policies and data usage practices which comply with relevant laws and best practices for the collection and use of personal information, and provides "Privacy Certified" seals indicating certification under the ESRB's privacy guidelines. In June 2013, the service was extended to mobile apps, with a particular emphasis on helping application developers comply with the then-upcoming changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The ESRB has considered its system to be effective, due in part to initiatives by the Board to promote enforcement and consumer awareness of the system, and efforts by retailers to prevent the sale of M-rated games to minors.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In the year following its 1994 launch, the ESRB rating system had achieved widespread usage across the console game industry, although adoption was not yet as high within the PC gaming industry. Lieberman and Kohl also reported that some retailers were reluctant to the idea of removing older, non-rated games from their shelves, and that some retail employees lacked knowledge of the new system. By 2008, the Federal Trade Commission reported 20% of underaged mystery shoppers were able to successfully purchase an M-rated video game from a selection of retailers—a 22 percent reduction from 2007. By 2011, these numbers had dropped further to 13%. In its 2009 Report to Congress, the FTC recognized the ESRB for having "the strongest self-regulatory code" of all entertainment sectors because of its enforcement of advertising and marketing guidelines.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The ESRB has often been accused of not rating certain games, such as "Manhunt" and the "Grand Theft Auto" series, harshly enough for violence and other related themes, and for lacking transparency in certain aspects of the ratings process. Critics have argued that some games only received the M rating rather than the stricter AO rating because of the commercial effects of such a rating; console manufacturers and most retailers refuse to distribute AO-rated games, dramatically affecting their commercial availability. An ESRB representative stated that the Board uses the AO rating when warranted, even due to violence, and that in most occasions, publishers would edit the game to meet the M rating to ensure wide commercial availability instead of keeping the AO rating. The film classification boards of the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario respectively classified the M-rated games "Soldier of Fortune" and "Manhunt" as films due to concerns over the nature of their content, and gave them "Restricted" ratings, legally restricting their sale to adults.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: There has been a correlation between the M rating and sales; a 2007 study by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research found that M-rated games "have both the highest average Metacritic scores and the highest average gross sales in the United States", and NPD Group found that 7 of the top 20 video games of 2010 (including the #1 game, "") were M-rated, even though only 5% of games released that year carried the rating.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In 2005, the National Institute on Media and the Family criticized the ESRB for seldom-using the Adults Only rating, arguing that because it has a vested interest in the video game industry, it did not want to perform actions that would affect their commercial availability. The organization stated that "study after study shows that ratings would be stricter if parents were doing the job. It took explicit porn to get "" an AO rating, even though the original version, still rated M, rewards players whose on-screen persona had sex with prostitutes and then killed them. We have been calling for AO ratings for the "Grand Theft Auto" series for years—now it is clear why the ESRB has ignored our request." The ESRB disputed these claims, arguing that the organization "relies on flawed research and ignores any and all conflicting evidence", was "imposing its own narrow values and morality on the rest of the country, regardless that it has little evidence to show that parents agree with their point of view", and did not reply to the ESRB's request for comments following its report card in 2004. The board also pointed out that the NIMF's study and "report card" used data from PSVRatings, a for-profit competitor to the ESRB.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: On the other hand, some have felt that the "Mature" rating is too broad; video game journalist Ben Kuchera noted that "Halo 3"—a sci-fi first-person shooter whose level of violence was, in his opinion, comparable to a "Star Wars" film, had received an M rating for "Blood and Gore," "Mild Language" and "Violence". He argued that "having a game like "Halo 3" share the same rating as "Saints Row IV", which carries the 'Blood,' Intense Violence,' 'Partial Nudity,' 'Sexual Content,' 'Strong Language' and 'Use of Drugs' descriptors was always silly, and it weakened the thrust of the ratings system." Likewise, he felt that the tone and content of the PG-13 rated film "The Dark Knight" was relatively harsher to children than that of the "Saints Row" series due to the latter's light-hearted tone, but still noted that "as parents we know what's right and what isn't for our kids, and being aware of the content they consume is a large part of our job as parents." "", the most recent installment in the franchise, received a "Teen" rating instead of "Mature". Microsoft Xbox division executive Aaron Greenberg argued that consumers had been "surprised" by the M rating on previous installments "given the style of the game and the lack of real graphic violence and things like that", but that the "Teen" rating would theoretically enable the game to reach a broader audience of younger players.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The "Adults Only" (AO) rating has attracted a negative stigma among the video game industry—one which has been criticized for stifling the ability for developers to have creative freedom in their portrayal of certain themes in a game, at the risk of being commercially unviable due to publishers' objections to AO-rated content. AO-rated games cannot be published for major video game console platforms, and most retailers do not stock AO-rated games. ESRB President Patricia Vance argued that applying self-censorship to ensure marketability was a compromise that is "true in every entertainment medium", but still believed that the idea of the AO rating eventually becoming acceptable would be a good thing for the ESRB system. The stigma is primarily affected by a perception by the industry and other activists that video games are generally considered children's products; for example, the availability of a Wii version of "Manhunt 2" was condemned by Senator Hillary Clinton over fears that children could use the game's motion controls to act out the game's "many graphic torture scenes and murders".


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: Attitudes towards AO-rated games have also been influenced by the types of games that have received the rating; Peter Payne, head of Peach Princess, a publisher of English translations of Japanese eroge visual novels, believed that the "Adults Only" rating had acquired a "smutty" and "tasteless" reputation since the majority of AO-rated titles were either niche pornographic titles such as eroge games, or immature titles such as "Riana Rouge" (which "Polygon" described as a game which had the quality of an adult movie, and "[aimed] to do nothing more than tell low-brow jokes and show nude women prancing around") and "Lula 3D" (whose packaging advertised the inclusion of "Bouncin' Boobs Technology").


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: By contrast, the ESRB has only officially issued the AO rating for extreme violence three times: "Thrill Kill", a fighting game with heavy sexual overtones, received an AO rating with content descriptors for "Animated Violence" and "Animated Blood and Gore". Due to objections over the game's content, "Thrill Kill" was canceled by Electronic Arts after it acquired the North American operations of the game's publisher, Virgin Interactive. "Manhunt 2" also received an AO rating for its extreme violence; while the uncut version would be released exclusively for PCs, the console versions were edited to meet the M rating criteria. In January 2015, "Hatred", a controversial game whose plot centers around a character indiscriminately murdering everyone he encounters, received the rating for its extreme violence and harsh language; one of the game's developers disputed the rating, arguing that "its violence isn't really that bad and this harsh language isn't overused", but also acknowledged the rarity of their situation.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In 2005, members of the mod community discovered that the PC version of "" could be modified to unlock an incomplete sex minigame known as "Hot Coffee", which Rockstar North had decided to leave out of the final game. The discovery of the minigame caused California State Assemblyman Leland Yee to rebuke both Rockstar and the ESRB, arguing that the ESRB was not doing its job properly. US Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman also expressed their disapproval. Rockstar initially claimed that the minigame was created by the mod community and was not a part of the original game. This was disproven when it was discovered that a third-party cheat device could be used to unlock the "Hot Coffee" scenes in console versions of the game. Following an investigation, the ESRB changed its rating from M to AO, setting a precedent that games can be re-rated due to the presence of pertinent content that exists on the game's disc, even if that content is programmed to not be playable without modification or unauthorized use of a third-party cheat device. Following the release of a version excluding the content, the rating was reverted to M.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In May 2006, "" had its rating changed from T to M due to "more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating", along with a third-party mod for the PC version allowing the use of topless female characters. The game's publisher, Bethesda Softworks, decided not to re-edit the game or contest the new rating, but noted that "Oblivion"s content was "not typical" of games with the M rating, and that the game "does not present the central themes of violence that are common to those products."


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In the wake of these two incidents, the ESRB changed its policies in June 2006 to account for hidden content; publishers must disclose information surrounding all unlockable or otherwise "hidden" content in the game as part of the ratings process, and publishers can be fined up to US$1 million if they are found to have misrepresented the content of their game after further reviews. In response to the aftermath of Hot Coffee and the resulting policy changes, ESRB President Patricia Vance stated that in her opinion, "there is no other industry self-regulatory system willing or capable of imposing such swift and sweeping sanctions on its own members, which in this particular case resulted in the removal of a top-selling product from the market and a major loss of sales." However, several U.S. politicians, including Senator Sam Brownback, California State Senator Leland Yee, and Michigan Congressman Fred Upton (who was a major critic against Rockstar during the controversy), still felt that the ESRB had "lost" its trust of consumers, believing that video game developers were taking advantage of the board's conflict of interest with the industry to incorporate objectionable content into their products without the ESRB's full knowledge.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In late 2006, both Upton and Brownback tabled bills to place governmental oversight on aspects of the ESRB rating process, and make it illegal for publishers to misrepresent the playable content of a video game to a ratings board; Upton proposed a bill known as the Video Game Decency Act, explaining that developers had "done an end-run around the process to deliver violent and pornographic material to our kids", and that the bill would "[go] hand in hand with the mission of the industry’s own ratings system." Brownback proposed a bill known as the Truth in Video Game Rating Act, which would have also forced the ESRB to have full, hands-on access to games instead of just video footage, and have initiated a government study on the "effectiveness" of the organization and the possibility of forming a ratings organization independent from the video game industry.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: In October 2017, in response to growing criticism of the loot box model for video game microtransactions (which grant chances at earning randomized items of various rarities, typically cosmetic in nature, in exchange for payment), the ESRB stated their opinion that they were not a form of gambling. They described them as a voluntary and optional aspect of a video game, and comparable to booster packs for collectible card games because their purchase guarantees that a user will receive items, but not necessarily high-value items all the time. The ESRB added that games that contain actual wagering of real money would hold the Adults Only rating.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: On February 14, 2018, U.S. senator Maggie Hassan asked the ESRB to examine if games with loot box microtransactions were being marketed in an "ethical and transparent way" that "adequately protects the developing minds of young children from predatory practices." The ESRB subsequently announced on February 27, 2018, that it would introduce a new label for any games that contain "the ability to purchase digital goods or premiums with real world currency". The announcement was criticized for being overreaching and ambiguous, as it applies to not only microtransactions, but any purchases of digital goods in relation to a game (which includes downloadable content), and would thus apply to almost all modern video games. Patrica Vance stated that the ESRB avoided references to specific types of microtransactions, so that the advisory label could be understood by parents unaware of specific details. Vance added that the ESRB was "unable to find any evidence that children specifically have been [psychologically] impacted by loot boxes" or that they caused children to develop "some sort of tendency towards gambling." The new label "in-game purchases" was added to ESRB's standards by April 2018.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: On April 13, 2020, the ESRB announced on their official blog that they are introducing a new interactive elements: "in-game purchases (includes random items)". This notice will specifically apply to "all games that include purchases with any randomized elements", which includes, but is not limited to, loot boxes, gacha games, item or card packs, prize wheels, and treasure chests. The original label will still apply for "other type purchases", such as additional levels, cosmetics, DLC, expansions, and other downloadable contents.


title: Entertainment Software Rating Board

text: The ESRB is officially recognized, implemented and used in the three major countries of North America: Canada, Mexico and the United States.


title: Sex work

text: Sex work is "the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation". Sex work only refers to voluntary sexual transactions; thus the term does not refer to human trafficking and other coerced or nonconsensual sexual transactions such as child prostitution. The transaction must take place between consenting adults who are of the legal age and mental capacity to consent and must take place without any methods of coercion, other than payment. The term emphasizes the labor and economic implications of this type of work. Furthermore, some prefer the use of the term because it grants more agency to the sellers of these services.


title: Sex work

text: Due to the legal status of some forms of sex work and the stigma associated with sex work, the population is difficult to access; thus there has been relatively little academic research done on the topic. Furthermore, the vast majority of academic literature on sex work focuses on prostitution, and to a lesser extent, exotic dancing; there is little research on other forms of sex work. These findings cannot necessarily be generalized to other forms of sex work. Nonetheless, there is a long documented history of sex work and its personal and economic nature.


title: Sex work

text: In 2004, a Medline search and review of 681 "prostitution" articles was conducted in order to create a global typology of types of sex work using arbitrary categories. 25 types of sex work were identified in order to create a more systematic understanding of sex work as a whole. Prostitution varies by forms and social contexts including different types of direct and indirect prostitution. This study as conducted in order to work towards improving the health and safety of sex workers.


title: Sex work

text: Types of sex work include various consensual sexual services or erotic performances, involving varying degrees of physical contact with clients:


title: Sex work

text: Full criminalization of sex work is the most widely practiced legal strategy for regulating transactional sex. Full criminalization is practiced in China, Russia, and the majority of countries in Africa. In the United States, in which each state has its own criminal code, full contact sex work is illegal everywhere, sex work using a condom is legal only in parts of Nevada; non-contact sex work is a gray and confused area. Under full criminalization the seller, buyer, and any third party involved is subject to criminal penalties. This includes anyone who profits from commercial sex in any location or physical setting. Criminalization has been linked to higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, partner violence, and police harassment. Fear of legal ramifications can deter sex workers from seeking proper sexual health care services, and discourage them from reporting crimes of which they were the victim. According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, criminalization makes sex workers more vulnerable to rape, murder, and discrimination due to their marginalized position and ability to be prosecuted by the police even if they come forward as a victim.


title: Sex work

text: Partial criminalization allows for the legalization of both the buying and selling of sex between two consenting parties but prohibits the commercial selling of sex within brothels or public settings such as street solicitation. This has the unintended consequence that it criminalizes the coalition of sex workers, forcing them to work alone and in less safe conditions. Partial criminalization ranges from a variety of legal models such as abolitionism, neo-abolitionism and the Swedish-Nordic Model.


title: Sex work

text: Legalization is currently practiced in parts of South America, Australia, Europe, and in certain counties in the U.S. state of Nevada. The Red Light District in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is an example of full legalization, where all aspects of sex work are allowed as long as they are registered with the government. Since the registration process is often expensive and time-consuming, requires legal residence, and may involve regular medical exams, the most marginalized sex workers have to remain illegal, and usually charge less, because they cannot comply with the regulations. This is most common among minority groups, immigrants, and low-income workers.


title: Sex work

text: Decriminalization is the most supported solution by sex workers themselves. Decriminalization is the only legal solution that offers no criminalization of any party involved in the sex work industry and additionally has no restrictions on who can legally participate in sex work. The decriminalization of sex work would not remove any legal penalties condemning human trafficking. There is no reliable evidence to suggest that decriminalization of sex work would encourage human trafficking. New Zealand was the first country to decriminalize sex work in 2003, with the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act. This is the most advocated for by sex workers because it allows them the most negotiating power with their clients. With full protection under the law they have the ability to determine their wages, method of protection, and protect themselves from violent offenders. Sex work is one of the oldest professions in existence and even though sex work is criminalized in most places in order to regulate it, the profession has hardly changed at all over time. Those who work in sex trade are more likely to be exploited, trafficked, and victims of assault when sex work is criminalized. Starting in August 2015, Amnesty International, a global movement free of political, religious, or economic interests to protect people from abuse, introduced a policy that requested that all countries decriminalized sex work. Amnesty International stated in this policy that decriminalizing sex work would decrease human trafficking through promotion of the health and safety of sex workers by allowing them to be autonomous with protection of the government. This policy gained a large amount of support worldwide from the WHO, UNAIDS, GAATW, and several others, but has not been adopted universally yet.


title: Sex work

text: Sex work, in many different forms, has been practiced since ancient times. It is reported that even in the most primitive societies, there was transactional sex. Prostitution was widespread in ancient Egypt and Greece, where it was practiced at various socioeconomic levels. Hetaera in Greece and geisha in Japan were seen as prestigious members of society for their high level of training in companionship. Attitudes towards prostitution have shifted through history.


title: Sex work

text: During the Middle Ages prostitution was tolerated but not celebrated. It was not until the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century that attitudes turned against prostitution on a large scale and bodies began to be regulated more heavily. These moral reforms were to a large extent directed towards the restriction of women's autonomy. Furthermore, enforcement of regulations regarding prostitution disproportionately impacted the poor.


title: Sex work

text: Sex work has a long history in the United States, yet laws regulating the sale of sex are relatively new. In the 18th century, prostitution was deeply rooted from Louisiana to San Francisco. Despite its prevalence, attitudes towards prostitutes were negative and many times hostile. Although the law did not directly address prostitution at this time, law enforcement often targeted prostitutes. Laws against lewdness and sodomy were used in an attempt to regulate sex work. Red-light districts formed in the 19th century in major cities across the country in an attempt by sex workers to find spaces where they could work, isolated from outside society and corresponding stigma.


title: Sex work

text: Ambiguity in the law allowed for prostitutes to challenge imprisonment in the courts. Through these cases prostitutes forced a popular recognition of their profession and defended their rights and property. Despite sex workers' efforts, social reformers looking to abolish prostitution outright began to gain traction in the early 20th century. New laws focused on the third-party businesses where prostitution took place, such as saloons and brothels, holding the owners culpable for the activities that happened within their premises. Red-light districts began to close. Finally, in 1910 the Mann Act, or "White Slave Traffic Act" made illegal the act of coercing a person into prostitution or other immoral activity, the first federal law addressing prostitution. This act was created to address the trafficking of young, European girls who were thought to have been kidnapped and transported to the United States to work in brothels, but criminalized those participating in consensual sex work. Subsequently, at the start of the First World War, a Navy decree forced the closure of sex-related businesses in close proximity to military bases. Restrictions and outright violence led to the loss of the little control workers had over their work. In addition to this, in 1918, the Chamberlain-Kahn Act made it so that any woman found to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) would be quarantined by the government. The original purpose of this act was to stop the spread of venereal diseases among U.S. soldiers. By 1915 under this act, prostitutes, or those perceived to be prostitutes could be stopped, inspected, and detained or sent to a rehabilitation facility if they were found to test positive for any venereal disease. During World War I, an estimated 3,000 women were detained and examined. The state had made sex workers into legal outcasts. During the Great Depression, black women in New York City accounted for more than 50% of arrests for prostitution.


title: Sex work

text: Types of sex work expanded in the 21st century. Film and later the Internet provided new opportunities for sex work. In 1978, Carol Leigh, a sex worker and activist, coined the term "sex work" as it is now used. She looked to combat the anti-porn movement by coining a term that reflected the labor and economic implications of the work. The term came into popular use in the 1980s. (bayswan). COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) and other similar groups formed in the 1970s and 80s to push for women's sexual freedom and sex workers' rights. A rift formed within feminism that continues today, with some arguing for the abolishment of sex work and others working for acceptance and rights for sex works.


title: Sex work

text: Stigmas are negative and often derogatory ideas and labels that are placed on one or more members of a community. A prevalent stigma of sex workers that is circulated through various media platforms is the "whore" stigma in which sex workers are labelled as "whores" due to the nature and abundance of client relationships.


title: Sex work

text: A history of media narratives of sex workers was studied to yield the top three most common storylines shown in media about sex works. First, sex workers are shown as carriers and sources of disease. Second, sex work is shown as a social problem that varies in severity. And third, sex work is almost always portrayed in media to occur outdoors, which adds to negative social perceptions that associate sex work to be dirty or public. Across all of these narratives, we typically see a gendered hierarchy in which women of various ages are shown as the sex workers and men are portrayed as the authoritative role of pimps, clients, and law enforcers.


title: Sex work

text: A study in 2006 from the University of Victoria found that when compared to media representations of sex work, first hand experiences of sex workers were far from similar. It was found that even though inaccurate, media portrayals of sex work are formed from rigid social and cultural scripts that perpetuate stigma and provide influence to news coverage and negative perceptions of sex work.


title: Sex work

text: The HIV/AIDS epidemic presented a new challenge to sex workers. The criminalization of exposing others to HIV/AIDS significantly impacted sex workers. Harm reduction strategies were organized providing testing, counseling, and supplies to stop the spread of the disease. This experience organizing helped facilitate future action for social justice. The threat of violence persists in many types of sex work. Unionization of legal types of sex work such as exotic dancers, lobbying of public health officials and labor officials, and human rights agencies has improved conditions for many sex workers. Nonetheless, the political ramifications of supporting a stigmatized population make organizing around sex work difficult. Despite these difficulties, actions against violence and for increased visibility and rights persist drawing hundreds of thousands of participants. Women in the sex trade are more susceptible to experiencing more stigma and discrimination than men. This stigma and discrimination is attributed to the negative social connotation of the job title "sex worker" and social perspective that sex workers have closer exposure to sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS. These stigmas influence how society interacts with sex workers. In 2011, many sex workers in Hong Kong reported having a verbally or physically abusive interaction with a police officer or healthcare official, which prompted a negative impact on overall health and unequal access to healthcare.


title: Sex work

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, contact professions (which includes many forms of sex work, amongst others) had been banned (temporarily) in some countries. This has resulted in a reduction in Europe of certain forms of sex work. In addition, there has been a greater adoption of forms of sex work which do not require physical contact (virtual sexual services). Examples of sex work that do not require physical contact include webcam modelling and adult content-subscription services (e.g. OnlyFans).


title: Sex work

text: Some sex workers have carried on regardless however, also because some virtual sexual services may require an official bank account (or other means of receiving money digitally) and an own private room. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened pre-existing marginalization, inequality, and criminalization of sex workers. With increased global health risks associated with the pandemic, sex workers' in-person services were suspended, posing more financial stressors to an already poverty-stricken population. COVID-19 regulations have specifically posed more threats to the physical and financial safety of socially-disadvantaged sex workers who are undocumented, transgender, and of color.


title: Sex work

text: Dr. Annie Sprinkle and the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA first observed the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17, 2003, and has been continuously recognized for the last 17 years. Sprinkle and the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA first observed this day in memory of victims of the Green River Killer in Seattle Washington and has since evolved into an annual, international recognition for other cities who have lost many lives of sex workers, those who experience and have experienced violence, and to empower sex workers. During the week of December 17, the International Day to End Violence Against Sex workers calls attention to hate crimes around the world and social justice organizations work side-by-side with sex worker communities to hold memorials and stage actions to raise awareness of violence by focusing on condemnation of transphobia, xenophobia, racism, criminalization of drug use as well as stigma of sex work in order for sex work to be a safe, non criminalized practice.


title: Sex work

text: In adult content-subscription services (e.g. OnlyFans) social media creators can be paid for their content. This content can include selfies, tips, information, tutorials, as well as sex work. OnlyFans creators make a lucrative profit from subscribers who purchase access to their exclusive account every month. The experience is curated for each individual subscriber versus a broad audience like the content provided by Pornhub, brazzers, xxxvideos, etc. OnlyFans has changed sex work in a way that has made it more powerful for the creator, and safer for them to control how they perform their sex work. Many OnlyFans creators that focus on sex work have reported that they receive more subscribers as they post more frequently. It is irrelevant if the posts are "explicit" or not. Several of the women who perform sex work on OnlyFans have regulars that they know everything about from their job description, to family member names, to when their surgical procedures are. Although these creators are often paid for and may assist in their subscribers orgasms, this act is not considered prostitution. Subscribers to OnlyFans sex work accounts have stated that they can get porn for free anywhere, and that they are paying for a service catered to their personal needs. These subscribers are paying for people to be an online significant other who occasionally helps them achieve an orgasm.


title: Sex work

text: Emotional labor is an essential part of many service jobs, including many types of sex work. Through emotional labor sex workers engage in different levels of acting known as surface acting and deep acting. These levels reflect a sex worker's engagement with the emotional labor. Surface acting occurs when the sex worker is aware of the dissonance between their authentic experience of emotion and their managed emotional display. In contrast deep acting occurs when the sex worker can no longer differentiate between what is authentic and what is acting; acting becomes authentic.


title: Sex work

text: Sex workers engage in emotional labor for many different reasons. First, sex workers often engage in emotional labor to construct performances of gender and sexuality. These performances frequently reflect the desires of a clientele which is mostly composed of heterosexual men. In the majority of cases, clients value women who they perceive as normatively feminine. For women sex workers, achieving this perception necessitates a performance of gender and sexuality that involves deference to clients and affirmation of their masculinity, as well as physical embodiment of traditional femininity. The emotional labor involved in sex work may be of a greater significance when race differences are involved. For instance Mistress Velvet, a black, femme dominatrix, advertises herself using her most fetishized attributes. She makes her clients, who are mostly white heterosexual men, read Black feminist theory before their sessions. This allows the clients to see why their participation, as white heterosexual men, contributes to the fetishization of black women.


title: Sex work

text: Both within sex work and in other types of work, emotional labor is gendered in that women are expected to use it to construct performances of normative femininity, whereas men are expected to use it to construct performances of normative masculinity. In both cases, these expectations are often met because this labor is necessary to maximizing monetary gain and potentially to job retention. Indeed, emotional labor is often used as a means to maximize income. It fosters a better experience for the client and protects the worker thus enabling the worker to make the most profit.


title: Sex work

text: In addition, sex workers often engage in emotional labor as a self-protection strategy, distancing themselves from the sometimes emotionally volatile work. Finally, clients often value perceived authenticity in their transactions with sex workers; thus, sex workers may attempt to foster a sense of authentic intimacy.


title: Sex work

text: Traumatic sexual events and violence put sex workers at a higher risk for mental health disorders. Women in sex work have a higher chance of suffering mental health disorders, and the chance is even greater for those who are women in minority groups including the LGBTQ+ community. A study performed in 2010 concluded that women in sex work were more likely to exhibit signs of PTSD (13%), anxiety (33.7%), and depression (24.4%). Women in sex work experience more obstacles and barriers to gaining mental health care despite their increased risk due to stigma, lack of access to insurance, lack of trust from health care professionals and misogyny. A study examining the institutionalized barriers to healthcare faced by female sex workers was conducted in Canada in 2016. The study yielded the finding that about 70% of female sex workers experience one or more institutional barriers to healthcare. These institutional barriers included long wait times, limited hours of operation, and biased treatment or discrimination on behalf of health care providers.


title: Sex work

text: Sex workers are less likely to seek health care or be eligible to seek health care due to negative stigma. Women in sex work are disproportionally treated worse in health care settings. It is a minimal necessity that women in sex work have access to frequent STD/STI testing and treatment, but it is essential that sex workers have the equal access for regular primary care for other ailments as non-sexworkers. UNAIDS researched the percentage rates of accessible prevention services for sex workers in 2010 around the world and concluded that 51% did not have access. Another obstacle for sex workers to gain health care services is that many are unable to, or unwilling to disclose their profession on required medical paperwork making them ineligible to receive medical care.


title: Sex work

text: The population of sex workers has been targeted by the public health industry as a population that has a high risk of HIV infection. This concept is used to strategize marketing materials to sex workers about health resources, but it has been found to actually add to stigma and discrimination of sex workers, further delegitimize prostitution as a source of income, hinder effective health interventions, and perpetuate the idea that being a sex worker is a risk factor for disease. Public health care initiatives that prioritize HIV prevention among sex workers and portray sex workers as a vulnerable population overshadow the rights of sex workers and the legitimacy of sex work as a functional occupation. The title "sex worker" itself was introduced in an attempt to break the association by healthcare industries that links female prostitutes with dirty, immoral, and diseased identities.


title: Sex work

text: A study in Melbourne, Australia, found that sex workers typically experience relationship difficulties as a result of their line of work. This primarily stems from the issue of disclosure of their work in personal relationships. Some sex workers noted that dating ex-clients is helpful as they have had contact with sex workers and they are aware of their employment.


title: Sex work

text: Although a majority of women in sex work reported that their profession negatively affected them, those that stated a positive effects reported that they had increases sexual self esteem and confidence. There is very little empirical evidence characterizing clients of sex workers, but they may share an analogous problem. A "Scientific American" article on sex buyers summarizes a limited field of research which indicates that Johns have a normal psychological profile matching the makeup of the wider male population but view themselves as mentally unwell.


title: Sex work

text: In clients' encounters with prostitutes or exotic dancers (and potentially other sex workers as well), many seek more than sexual satisfaction. They often seek, via their interactions with sex workers, an affirmation of their masculinity, which they may feel is lacking in other aspects of their lives. This affirmation comes in the form of (a simulation of) affection and sexual desire, and "smooth, intimate, affective space, wherein the way that time is managed is governed only by mutual desire and enjoyment." Partly because they are engaged in work during these interactions, prostitutes' experience and interpretation of time tends to be structured instead by desires to maximize income, avoid boredom, and/or avoid detriment to self-esteem.


title: Sex work

text: For sex workers, commodified intimacy provides different benefits. In Brazil, sex workers prioritize foreign men over local men in terms of forming intimate relationships with sex workers. This is a result of local men regarding sex workers as having no worth beyond their occupation. In contrast, foreign men are often accompanied by wealth and status, which are factors that can help a sex worker become independent. Hence sex workers in Brazil are more likely to seek out "ambiguous entanglements" with the foreign men they provide services for, rather than the local men.


title: Sex work

text: Interviews with men and women escorts illuminate gender differences in these escorts' experiences. On average, women escorts charged much more than men. Compared to traditional women escorts, women in niche markets charged lower rates. However, this disparity in rates did not exist for men escorts. Men escorts reported widespread acceptance in the gay community; they were much more likely than women to disclose their occupation. This community acceptance is fairly unusual to the gay community and not the experience of many women sex workers. Also, heterosexual men prostitutes are much more likely than heterosexual women prostitutes to entertain same-gender clients out of necessity, because the vast majority of clients are men. In general, there is a greater social expectation for women to engage in emotional labor than there is for men; there are also greater consequences if they do not.


title: Sex work

text: The potential risks sex work poses to the worker vary greatly depending on the specific job they occupy. Compared to outdoor or street-based sex workers, indoor workers are less likely to face violence. Street sex workers may also more likely to use addictive drugs, to have unprotected sex, and to be the victim of sexual assault. HIV affects large numbers of sex workers, of all genders, who engage in prostitution globally. Rape and violence, poverty, stigma, and social exclusion are all common risks faced by sex workers in many different occupations. A study of violence against women engaged in street prostitution found that 68% reported having been raped. Sex workers are also at a high risk of murder. According to Salfati's study, sex workers are 60 to 120 times more likely to be murdered than nonprostitute females. Although these features tend to apply more to sex workers who engage in full service sex work, stigma and safety risks are pervasive for all types of sex work, albeit to different extents. Because of the varied legal status of some forms of sex work, sex workers in some countries also face the risk of incarceration, flogging and even the death penalty.


title: Sex work

text: Feminist debates on sex work focus primarily on pornography and prostitution. Feminist arguments against these occupations tend to be founded in the notion that these types of work are inherently degrading to women, perpetuate the sexual objectification of women, and/or perpetuate male supremacy. In response, proponents of sex work argue that these claims deny women sex workers' agency, and that choosing to engage in this work can be empowering. They contend that the perspectives of anti-sex work feminists are based on notions of sexuality constructed by the patriarchy to regulate women's expressions sexuality. In fact, many feminists who support the sex industry claim that criminalizing sex work causes more harm to women and their sexual autonomy. An article in the Touro Law Review 2014, focuses on the challenges faced by prostitutes in the U.S and the need for prostitution reform: "[By criminalizing prostitution] women lose the choice to get paid for having consensual sex. A woman may have sex for free, but once she receives something of value for her services, the act becomes illegal". Those who see this as an attack on a women's sexual autonomy also worry about the recent attacks on liberal social policy, such as same sex marriage and abortion on demand, in the U.S. Some liberals also argue that since a disproportionate share of those who choose sex work as a means of income are the poor and disadvantaged, public officials should focus on social policies improving the lives of those choosing to do so rather than condemnation of the "private" means which those victims of society employ.


title: Sex work

text: The topic of sexual labor is often contextualized within opposing abolitionist and sex-positive perspectives. The abolitionist perspective typically defines sex work as an oppressive form of labor. According to opponents of prostitution, it is not only the literal purchase of a person's body for sexual exploitation, it also constitutes exertion of power over women both symbolically and materially. This perspective views prostitution and trafficking as directly and intimately connected and therefore calls for the abolition of prostitution in efforts to eliminate the overall sexual exploitation of women and children. Opponents also refute the idea of consent among sex workers by claiming that such consent is merely a submissive acceptance of the traditional exploitation of women. For these reasons, opponents believe that decriminalizing sex work would utterly harm women as a class by maintaining their sexual and economic exploitation while "serving the interests of pimps, procurers and prostitutors".


title: Sex work

text: Some sex-positive feminists recognize sex workers as situated within a modern Western sexual hierarchy where a married man and woman are respected while LGBT people, fetishists, and sex workers such as prostitutes and porn models are viewed as sexual deviants. According to sex positive feminists, sex law incorporates a prohibition against mixing sex and money in order to sustain this hierarchy. Therefore, the individuals who practice these "deviant" sexual acts are deemed as criminals and have limited institutional support and are subjected to economic sanctions. Sex-positive perspectives challenge this hierarchy by appreciating sexual diversity and rejecting any notion of "normal" sex. With this understanding, people who choose to engage in criminalized sex acts are seen as autonomous sexual beings rather than victims of the sex industry. For black women, agency is viewed as contextual due to historical considerations, and can be regarded as one facet of a complex system of ideals that encompass black women's sexuality over time. One result of this is the way that race relations impact the mobility of black people in the sex industry.


title: Sex work

text: Some liberal feminists believe that a "democratic morality" should judge sexual activity (as if the proclivities of the majority, as well as their proficiency in providing sexual pleasures, should determine the direction of a society's moral compass) "by the way partners treat one another, the presence or absence of coercion, and the quantity and quality of the pleasures they provide". They propound that it should not be an ethical concern whether sex acts are coupled or in groups, same or mixed sex, with or without consensual acts of violence or video, commercial or free.


title: Assembly line

text: An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a "progressive assembly") in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequence until the final assembly is produced. By mechanically moving the parts to the assembly work and moving the semi-finished assembly from work station to work station, a finished product can be assembled faster and with less labor than by having workers carry parts to a stationary piece for assembly.


title: Assembly line

text: Assembly lines are common methods of assembling complex items such as automobiles and other transportation equipment, household appliances and electronic goods.


title: Assembly line

text: Assembly lines are designed for the sequential organization of workers, tools or machines, and parts. The motion of workers is minimized to the extent possible. All parts or assemblies are handled either by conveyors or motorized vehicles such as fork lifts, or gravity, with no manual trucking. Heavy lifting is done by machines such as overhead cranes or forklifts. Each worker typically performs one simple operation unless job rotation strategies are applied.


title: Assembly line

text: Designing assembly lines is a well-established mathematical challenge, referred to as an assembly line balancing problem. In the simple assembly line balancing problem the aim is to assign a set of tasks that need to be performed on the workpiece to a sequence of workstations. Each task requires a given task duration for completion. The assignment of tasks to stations is typically limited by two constraints: (1) a precedence graph which indicates what other tasks need to be completed before a particular task can be initiated (e.g. not putting in a screw before drilling the hole) and (2) a cycle time which restricts the sum of task processing times which can be completed at each workstation before the work-piece is moved to the next station by the conveyor belt. Major planning problems for operating assembly lines include supply chain integration, inventory control and production scheduling.


title: Assembly line

text: Consider the assembly of a car: assume that certain steps in the assembly line are to install the engine, install the hood, and install the wheels (in that order, with arbitrary interstitial steps); only one of these steps can be done at a time. In traditional production, only one car would be assembled at a time. If engine installation takes 20 minutes, hood installation takes five minutes, and wheels installation takes 10 minutes, then a car can be produced every 35 minutes.


title: Assembly line

text: In an assembly line, car assembly is split between several stations, all working simultaneously. When a station is finished with a car, it passes it on to the next. By having three stations, three cars can be operated on at the same time, each at a different stage of assembly.


title: Assembly line

text: After finishing its work on the first car, the engine installation crew can begin working on the second car. While the engine installation crew works on the second car, the first car can be moved to the hood station and fitted with a hood, then to the wheels station and be fitted with wheels. After the engine has been installed on the second car, the second car moves to the hood assembly. At the same time, the third car moves to the engine assembly. When the third car's engine has been mounted, it then can be moved to the hood station; meanwhile, subsequent cars (if any) can be moved to the engine installation station.


title: Assembly line

text: Assuming no loss of time when moving a car from one station to another, the longest stage on the assembly line determines the throughput (20 minutes for the engine installation) so a car can be produced every 20 minutes, once the first car taking 35 minutes has been produced.


title: Assembly line

text: Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufactured products were made individually by hand. A single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product. They would use their skills and tools such as files and knives to create the individual parts. They would then assemble them into the final product, making cut-and-try changes in the parts until they fit and could work together (craft production).


title: Assembly line

text: Division of labor was practiced in China, where state-run monopolies mass-produced metal agricultural implements, china, armor, and weapons centuries before mass production appeared in Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Adam Smith discussed the division of labour in the manufacture of pins at length in his book "The Wealth of Nations" (published in 1776).


title: Assembly line

text: The Venetian Arsenal, dating to about 1104, operated similar to a production line. Ships moved down a canal and were fitted by the various shops they passed. At the peak of its efficiency in the early 16th century, the Arsenal employed some 16,000 people who could apparently produce nearly one ship each day and could fit out, arm, and provision a newly built galley with standardized parts on an assembly-line basis. Although the Arsenal lasted until the early Industrial Revolution, production line methods did not become common even then.


title: Assembly line

text: The Industrial Revolution led to a proliferation of manufacturing and invention. Many industries, notably textiles, firearms, clocks and watches, horse-drawn vehicles, railway locomotives, sewing machines, and bicycles, saw expeditious improvement in materials handling, machining, and assembly during the 19th century, although modern concepts such as industrial engineering and logistics had not yet been named.


title: Assembly line

text: The automatic flour mill built by Oliver Evans in 1785 was called the beginning of modern bulk material handling by Roe (1916). Evans's mill used a leather belt bucket elevator, screw conveyors, canvas belt conveyors, and other mechanical devices to completely automate the process of making flour. The innovation spread to other mills and breweries.


title: Assembly line

text: Probably the earliest industrial example of a linear and continuous assembly process is the Portsmouth Block Mills, built between 1801 and 1803. Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel), with the help of Henry Maudslay and others, designed 22 types of machine tools to make the parts for the rigging blocks used by the Royal Navy. This factory was so successful that it remained in use until the 1960s, with the workshop still visible at HM Dockyard in Portsmouth, and still containing some of the original machinery.


title: Assembly line

text: One of the earliest examples of an almost modern factory layout, designed for easy material handling, was the Bridgewater Foundry. The factory grounds were bordered by the Bridgewater Canal and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The buildings were arranged in a line with a railway for carrying the work going through the buildings. Cranes were used for lifting the heavy work, which sometimes weighed in the tens of tons. The work passed sequentially through to erection of framework and final assembly.


title: Assembly line

text: The first flow assembly line was initiated at the factory of Richard Garrett & Sons, Leiston Works in Leiston in the English county of Suffolk for the manufacture of portable steam engines. The assembly line area was called 'The Long Shop' on account of its length and was fully operational by early 1853. The boiler was brought up from the foundry and put at the start of the line, and as it progressed through the building it would stop at various stages where new parts would be added. From the upper level, where other parts were made, the lighter parts would be lowered over a balcony and then fixed onto the machine on the ground level. When the machine reached the end of the shop, it would be completed.


title: Assembly line

text: During the early 19th century, the development of machine tools such as the screw-cutting lathe, metal planer, and milling machine, and of toolpath control via jigs and fixtures, provided the prerequisites for the modern assembly line by making interchangeable parts a practical reality.


title: Assembly line

text: Steam-powered conveyor lifts began being used for loading and unloading ships some time in the last quarter of the 19th century. Hounshell (1984) shows a sketch of an electric-powered conveyor moving cans through a filling line in a canning factory.


title: Assembly line

text: The meatpacking industry of Chicago is believed to be one of the first industrial assembly lines (or disassembly lines) to be utilized in the United States starting in 1867. Workers would stand at fixed stations and a pulley system would bring the meat to each worker and they would complete one task. Henry Ford and others have written about the influence of this slaughterhouse practice on the later developments at Ford Motor Company.


title: Assembly line

text: According to Domm, the implementation of mass production of an automobile via an assembly line may be credited to Ransom Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901.


title: Assembly line

text: At Ford Motor Company, the assembly line was introduced by William "Pa" Klann upon his return from visiting Swift & Company's slaughterhouse in Chicago and viewing what was referred to as the "disassembly line", where carcasses were butchered as they moved along a conveyor. The efficiency of one person removing the same piece over and over without himself moving caught his attention. He reported the idea to Peter E. Martin, soon to be head of Ford production, who was doubtful at the time but encouraged him to proceed. Others at Ford have claimed to have put the idea forth to Henry Ford, but Pa Klann's slaughterhouse revelation is well documented in the archives at the Henry Ford Museum and elsewhere, making him an important contributor to the modern automated assembly line concept. Ford was appreciative, having visited the highly automated 40-acre Sears mail order handling facility around 1906. At Ford, the process was an evolution by trial and error of a team consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin, the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen, Martin's assistant; Clarence W. Avery; C. Harold Wills, draftsman and toolmaker; Charles Ebender; and József Galamb. Some of the groundwork for such development had recently been laid by the intelligent layout of machine tool placement that Walter Flanders had been doing at Ford up to 1908.


title: Assembly line

text: The moving assembly line was developed for the Ford Model T and began operation on October 7, 1913, at the Highland Park Ford Plant, and continued to evolve after that, using time and motion study. The assembly line, driven by conveyor belts, reduced production time for a Model T to just 93 minutes by dividing the process into 45 steps. Producing cars quicker than paint of the day could dry, it had an immense influence on the world.


title: Assembly line

text: Charles E. Sorensen, in his 1956 memoir "My Forty Years with Ford", presented a different version of development that was not so much about individual "inventors" as a gradual, logical development of industrial engineering:


title: Assembly line

text: As a result of these developments in method, Ford's cars came off the line in three-minute intervals or six feet per minute. This was much faster than previous methods, increasing production by eight to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colours available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926.


title: Assembly line

text: The assembly line technique was an integral part of the diffusion of the automobile into American society. Decreased costs of production allowed the cost of the Model T to fall within the budget of the American middle class. In 1908, the price of a Model T was around $825, and by 1912 it had decreased to around $575. This price reduction is comparable to a reduction from $15,000 to $10,000 in dollar terms from the year 2000. In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.


title: Assembly line

text: Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism", and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take-off of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods.


title: Assembly line

text: In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide. Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany and Ford Japan 1925; in 1919, Vulcan (Southport, Lancashire) was the first native European manufacturer to adopt it. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke by not being able to compete; by 1930, 250 companies which did not had disappeared.


title: Assembly line

text: The massive demand for military hardware in World War II prompted assembly-line techniques in shipbuilding and aircraft production. Thousands of Liberty ships were built making extensive use of prefabrication, enabling ship assembly to be completed in weeks or even days. After having produced fewer than 3,000 planes for the United States Military in 1939, American aircraft manufacturers built over 300,000 planes in World War II. Vultee pioneered the use of the powered assembly line for aircraft manufacturing. Other companies quickly followed. As William S. Knudsen (having worked at Ford, GM and the National Defense Advisory Commission) observed, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible."


title: Assembly line

text: The gains in productivity allowed Ford to increase worker pay from $1.50 per day to $5.00 per day once employees reached three years of service on the assembly line. Ford continued on to reduce the hourly work week while continuously lowering the Model T price. These goals appear altruistic; however, it has been argued that they were implemented by Ford in order to reduce high employee turnover: when the assembly line was introduced in 1913, it was discovered that "every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963" in order to counteract the natural distaste the assembly line seems to have inspired.


title: Assembly line

text: Sociological work has explored the social alienation and boredom that many workers feel because of the repetition of doing the same specialized task all day long.


title: Assembly line

text: One of capitalism's most famous critics, Karl Marx, expressed in his "Entfremdung" theory the belief that, in order to achieve job satisfaction, workers need to see themselves in the objects they have created, that products should be "mirrors in which workers see their reflected essential nature". Marx viewed labour as a chance for us to externalize facets of our personality. Marxists argue that specialization makes it very difficult for any worker to feel they may be contributing to the real needs of humanity. The repetitive nature of specialized tasks causes, they say, a feeling of disconnection between what a worker does all day, who they really are, and what they would ideally be able to contribute to society. Marx also argued that specialised jobs are insecure, since the worker is expendable as soon as costs rise and technology can replace more expensive human labour.


title: Assembly line

text: Since workers have to stand in the same place for hours and repeat the same motion hundreds of times per day repetitive stress injuries are a possible pathology of occupational safety. Industrial noise also proved dangerous. When it was not too high, workers were often prohibited from talking. Charles Piaget, a skilled worker at the LIP factory, recalled that besides being prohibited from speaking, the semi-skilled workers had only 25 centimeters in which to move. Industrial ergonomics later tried to minimize physical trauma.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente (born 19 June 1957) is a Mexican insurgent, the former military leader and spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the ongoing Chiapas conflict, and an anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal globalization icon. Widely known by his initial "nom de guerre" Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (frequently shortened to simply Subcomandante Marcos), he has subsequently employed several other pseudonyms: he called himself Delegate Zero during the Other Campaign (2006–2007), and since May 2014 has gone by the name Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano (again, frequently with the "Insurgente" omitted), which he adopted in honor of his fallen comrade "Teacher Galeano". Marcos bears the title and rank of Subcomandante (or "Subcommander" in English), as opposed to Comandante (or "Commander" in English), because, he is subordinate to, and under the command of, the indigenous commanders who constitute the EZLN's Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee's General Command (CCRI-CG in Spanish).


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Marcos earned a degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and taught at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) for several years during the early 1980s. During this time he became increasingly involved with a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Forces (FLN), before leaving the university and moving to Chiapas in 1984.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) (Zapatista Army of National Liberation; often simply called the Zapatistas) was the local, Chiapas wing of FLN, founded in the Lacandon Jungle in 1983, initially functioning as a self-defense unit dedicated to protecting Chiapas's Mayan people from evictions and encroachment on their land. While not Mayan himself, Marcos emerged as the group's military leader, and when the EZLN, acting independently of the FLN, began its rebellion on 1 January 1994, he served as its spokesman.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Known for his trademark ski mask and pipe and for his charismatic personality, Marcos coordinated the EZLN's 1994 uprising, headed up the subsequent peace negotiations, and has played a prominent role throughout the Zapatistas' struggle in the following decades. After the ceasefire the government declared on day 12 of the revolt, the Zapatistas transitioned from revolutionary guerrillas to an armed social movement, with Marcos's role transitioning from military strategist to public relations strategist. He became the Zapatistas’ spokesperson and interface with the public, penning communiqués, holding press conferences, hosting gatherings, granting interviews, delivering speeches, devising plebiscites, organizing marches, orchestrating campaigns and twice touring Mexico, all with the aim to attract national and international media attention and public support for the Zapatistas.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In 2001, he headed a delegation of Zapatista commanders to Mexico City to deliver their message on promoting indigenous rights before the Mexican Congress, attracting widespread public and media attention. In 2006, Marcos made another public tour of Mexico, which was known as The Other Campaign. In May 2014, Marcos stated that the persona of Subcomandante Marcos had been "a hologram" and no longer existed. Many media outlets interpreted the message as Marcos retiring as the Zapatistas' military leader and spokesman.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos is also a prolific writer, and his considerable literary talents have been widely acknowledged by prominent writers and intellectuals, with hundreds of communiqués and several books being attributed to him. Most of his writings are anti-capitalist while advocating for indigenous people's rights, but he has also written poetry, children's stories, folktales and has co-authored a crime novel. He has been hailed by Régis Debray as "the best Latin American writer today". Published translations of his writings exist in at least fourteen languages.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Guillén was born on 19 June 1957, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, to Alfonso Guillén and Maria del Socorro Vicente. He was the fourth of eight children. A former elementary school teacher, Alfonso owned a local chain of furniture stores, and the family is usually described as middle-class. In a 2001 interview with Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Pombo, Guillén described his upbringing as middle-class, "without financial difficulties", and said his parents fostered a love for language and reading in their children. While still "very young", Guillén came to know of, and admire, Che Guevara— an admiration that would persist throughout his adulthood.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Guillén attended high school at the Instituto Cultural Tampico, a Jesuit school in Tampico. Later he moved to Mexico City and graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), majoring in philosophy. There he became immersed in the school's pervasive Marxist rhetoric of the 1970s and 1980s and won an award for the best dissertation (drawing on the then-recent work of Althusser and Foucault) of his class. He began working as a professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) while finishing his dissertation at UNAM, but left after a couple of years. It is thought that it was at UAM where he came into contact with, and subsequently joined the ranks of, with the Forces of National Liberation, the Maoist mother organization of what would later become the EZLN.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In 1984, he abandoned his academic career in the capital and left for the mountains of Chiapas to convince the poor, indigenous Mayan population to organize and launch a proletarian revolution against the Mexican bourgeoisie and the federal government. After hearing his proposition, the Chiapanecans "just stared at him," and replied that they were not urban workers, and that from their perspective the land was not property, but the heart of the community. In the documentary "A Place Called Chiapas" (1998), about his early days there, Subcommander Marcos said:


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Debate exists as to whether Marcos visited Nicaragua in the years soon following the Sandinista Revolution that took place there in 1979, and, if he did, how many times and in what capacity. He is rumored to have done so, although no official documents (for example, immigration records) have been discovered to attest to this. Nick Henck argues that Guillén "may have journeyed" to Nicaragua, although to him the evidence appears "circumstantial". Fernando Meisenhalter, drawing for the most part on the same evidence, is convinced that at least one trip, for non-military purposes, took place in 1980, and that a second, "very likely" involving "full military training", may also have been undertaken by Marcos "in 1982".


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Guillén's sister Mercedes Guillén Vicente is the Attorney General of the State of Tamaulipas, and an influential member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos made his debut on 1 January 1994, the first day of the 1994 Zapatista uprisings. According to Marcos, his first encounter with the public and the press, occurred by accident, or at least was not premeditated. Initially, his role was to have been to secure the police headquarters in San Cristóbal de las Casas. However, with the wounding of a subordinate, whose duty it was to transport the weapons just captured from the police station to the central town square where most of the Zapatista troops were amassed, Marcos took his place and headed there instead. As a group of foreign tourists formed around Marcos, the only English-speaking Zapatista at hand, others, including members of the press, joined the throng. Marcos spent from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., intermittently interacting with tourists, townsfolk, and reporters, and gave four interviews.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: From this initial spark, Marcos's fame would spread like wildfire. As Henck notes: "The first three months of 1994...saw the Subcomandante...giving 24 interviews (i.e. an average of two a week); and participating in ten days of peace negotiations with the government, during which he also held nine press conferences reporting on the progress being made..."


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In the coming months Marcos would be interviewed by Ed Bradley for "60 Minutes" be featured in "Vanity Fair" "." He would also devise, convoke and host of the August 1994 National Democratic Convention that brought together 6000 members of civil society to discuss how to organize peaceful struggle that aimed to make Mexico freer, more just and more democratic.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In early 1995, while the Secretary of Interior Esteban Moctezuma was, in good faith, reaching out to Marcos and the Zapatistas to arrange talks aimed at bringing peace to Chiapas, Mexico's Attorney General's Office () learned of the true identity of Subcomandante Marcos from a former-subcommander-turned-traitor Subcomandante Daniel (alias Salvador Morales Garibay).


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: On 9 February 1995, President Ernesto Zedillo, armed with this recently acquired information, publicly announced that Subcomandante Marcos had been identified as Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, and immediately ordered the Mexican military to go on the offensive and capture or annihilate Marcos and the Zapatistas. Arrest warrants were issued for Marcos, as well as other key figures in the FLN and EZLN, and Zapatista territory in the Lacandon Jungle was invaded by the Mexican Army.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: This sudden betrayal of both the truce proclaimed by President Carlos Salinas a year previously and the secret peace negotiations currently being undertaken by Secretary of Interior Esteban Moctezuma, provoked responses from several protagonists that, combined, forced Zedillo to promptly call off the military offensive:


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: First, Moctezuma tendered his resignation to Zedillo, who refused it and asked Moctezuma to try to restore conditions that would allow for dialogue and negotiation.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Second, civil society rallied to Marcos' and the Zapatistas' defense, organizing three massive demonstrations in Mexico City in one week. One of these rallies was attended by 100,000 people, some of whom chanted "We Are All Marcos" as they marched.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Third, Marcos himself capitalized on this sudden, hostile action, issuing some eloquent communiqués in which he lambasted the government's treachery, or at least duplicity, and portrayed himself as self-effacing mock heroic guerrilla. Marcos would later tell an interviewer: "It's after the betrayal of '95 that people remember us: Then the [Zapatista] movement took off".


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Finally, it prompted Max Appedole, Rafael Guillén's childhood friend and fellow student at the Instituto Cultural Tampico, to approach Edén Pastora, the legendary Nicaraguan "Commander Zero", to help in preparing a report for Under-Secretary of the Interior Luis Maldonado Venegas, Secretary Moctezuma, and President Zedillo, emphasizing Marcos's pacifist disposition and the unintended, detrimental consequences of a military solution to the Zapatista crisis. The document concluded that the complaints of marginalized groups and the radical left in México had been vented through the Zapatistas movement, while Marcos remained open to negotiation. If Marcos were eliminated, his function as a safety-valve for social discontent would cease and more-radical groups could take his place. These groups would respond to violence with violence, threatening terrorist bombings, kidnappings and even more belligerent activities, and so the country would then be plunged into a very dangerous downward spiral, with discontent surfacing in areas other than Chiapas.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: As a result, on 10 March 1995 Zedillo and Moctezuma signed into Chiapas Law the "Presidential Decree for the Dialogue, Reconciliation and Peace with Dignity", which was subsequently debated and approved by the Mexican Congress. Meanwhile, Moctezuma sent Maldonado to enter into direct peace negotiations with the Zapatistas on behalf of the Zedillo government, and these talks took place commencing April 3.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: By 9 April 1995, the basis for the Dialogue Protocol and the "Harmony, Peace with Justice and Dignity Agreement" negotiated between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas was signed. On 17 April, the Mexican government appointed Marco Antonio Bernal as Peace Commissioner in Chiapas, and peace talks began in San Andrés Larráinzar on 22 April.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: The weeks, months and years that followed the January 1994 Zapatista uprising saw Marcos play an incredibly active role as spokesperson for the Zapatista movement. In doing so, he helped deter the Mexican government from eradicating the Zapatistas militarily by keeping the national and international media’s attention fixed on the movement, and contributed to building bridges and forging solidarity with activist individuals and groups in Mexico and beyond.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: The following is a list of events (in chronological order) that were either convened by the Zapatistas, and initiated, organized, orchestrated, or presided over by Marcos, or at which he played a major role; or events put on by other organizations at which Marcos acted as representative of, or spokesperson for, the Zapatistas (EZLN):


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos's communiqués, in which he outlines his political and philosophical views, number in the hundreds. These writings, as well as his essays, stories and interviews, have been translated into numerous languages and published in dozens of edited collections and other compilations. Of Marcos's writings, Jorge Alonso claims, "With over 10,000 citations, he has also made a dent in the academic world. Marcos’ writings, as well as books based on him, have been referenced by a large number of researchers from different countries and in several languages."


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Much has been written about Marcos's literary style, in particular its poetic nature and his use of humor, especially irony. He generally appears to prefer indirect expression, and his writings often take the form of fables or allegorical children's stories, though some are more earthy and direct. In a January 2003 letter to Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (the Basque ETA separatist group) titled "I Shit on All the Revolutionary Vanguards of This Planet", Marcos wrote, "We teach [children of the EZLN] that there are as many words as colors and that there are so many thoughts because within them is the world where words are born...And we teach them to speak with the truth, that is to say, to speak with their hearts."


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: "La Historia de los Colores" ("The Story of Colors") is on the surface a children's story, and is one of Marcos's most-read books. Based on a Mayan creation myth, it teaches tolerance and respect for diversity. The book's English translation was to be published with support from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, but in 1999 the grant was abruptly canceled after a reporter brought the book's content and authorship to NEA chairman William J. Ivey's attention. The Lannan Foundation stepped in and provided support after the NEA withdrew.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In 2005, Marcos wrote the detective story "The Uncomfortable Dead" with the whodunit writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II. This crime novel bears "a pro-ecology, pro-democracy, anti-discriminatory (racial, gender, and sexual orientation), anti-neoliberal globalization, and anti-capitalist" message.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Some of Marcos's works that best articulate his political philosophy include "The Fourth World War Has Begun" (1997), alternatively titled "Seven Loose Pieces of The Global Jigsaw Puzzle"; "The Fourth World War" (1999); The Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (2005); the four-part "Zapatistas and the Other: The Pedestrians of History" (2006); and Marcos's presentations in "Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra" and "The Zapatistas’ Dignified Rage: Final Public Speeches of Subcommander Marcos". Marcos's literary output serves a political purpose, and even performs a combative function, as suggested in a 2002 book titled "Our Word is Our Weapon", a compilation of his articles, poems, speeches, and letters.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos has written an essay in which he claims that neoliberalism and globalization constitute the "Fourth World War". He termed the Cold War the "Third World War". In this piece, Marcos compares and contrasts the Third World War (the Cold War) with the Fourth World War, which he says is the new type of war we find ourselves in now: "If the Third World War saw the confrontation of capitalism and socialism on various terrains and with varying degrees of intensity, the fourth will be played out between large financial centers, on a global scale, and at a tremendous and constant intensity." He goes on to claim that economic globalization has caused devastation through financial policies:


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Toward the end of the Cold War, capitalism created a military horror: the neutron bomb, a weapon that destroys life while leaving buildings intact. During the Fourth World War, however, a new wonder has been discovered: the financial bomb. Unlike those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this new bomb not only destroys the polis (here, the nation), imposing death, terror, and misery on those who live there, but also transforms its target into just another piece in the puzzle of economic globalization.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos explains the effect of the financial bombs as "destroying the material bases of their [nation-state's] sovereignty and, in producing their qualitative depopulation, excluding all those deemed unsuitable to the new economy (for example, indigenous peoples)". He also believes that neoliberalism and globalization result in a loss of unique culture for societies as a result of the homogenizing effect of neo-liberal globalization:


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: All cultures forged by nations – the noble indigenous past of America, the brilliant civilization of Europe, the wise history of Asian nations, and the ancestral wealth of Africa and Oceania – are corroded by the American way of life. In this way, neoliberalism imposes the destruction of nations and groups of nations in order to reconstruct them according to a single model. This is a planetary war, of the worst and cruelest kind, waged against humanity.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: It is in this context that Marcos believes that the EZLN and other indigenous movements across the world are fighting back. He sees the EZLN as one of many "pockets of resistance".


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: It is not only in the mountains of southeastern Mexico that neoliberalism is being resisted. In other regions of Mexico, in Latin America, in the United States and in Canada, in the Europe of the Maastricht Treaty, in Africa, in Asia, and in Oceania, pockets of resistance are multiplying. Each has its own history, its specificities, its similarities, its demands, its struggles, its successes. If humanity wants to survive and improve, its only hope resides in these pockets made up of the excluded, the left-for-dead, the 'disposable'.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos's views on Latin American leaders who formed the continent's Pink Tide are complex. For example, in interviews he gave in 2007 he signaled his approval of Bolivian president Evo Morales, but expressed mixed feelings toward Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whom he labels "disconcerting" and views as too militant, but nonetheless responsible for vast revolutionary changes in Venezuela. He also called Brazil's former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Nicaragua's current president Daniel Ortega, whom he once served under while a member of the Sandinistas, traitors who have betrayed their original ideals.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In another interview, given to Jesús Quintero the previous year, however, when asked what he thought about the "pre-revolutionary situation" then existing in Latin America, and specifically about "Evo Morales. Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, etcetera", Marcos replied:We are interested in those of below, not in the governments, nor in Chavez, nor in Kirchner, nor in Tabaré, nor in Evo, nor in Castro. We are interested in the processes which are taking place among the people, among the peoples of Latin America, and especially, out of natural sympathy, we are interested when these movements are led by Indian peoples, as is the case in Bolivia and in Ecuador…We say: “Governments come and go, the people remain”…Chavez will last for a time, Evo Morales will last for a time, Castro will last for a time, but the peoples, the Cuban people, the Bolivian people, the Argentine, the Uruguayan, will go on for a much longer time… This emphasis on bottom-up (as opposed to top-down) politics, and concentrating on the people over leaders, even leftwing or revolutionary ones, connects with Marcos's stance on revolution and revolutionaries. In the interview with Quintero mentioned above, when asked "...what does it mean to be revolutionary today?", Marcos responded:The problem with being revolutionary is that the taking of power must be considered and one must think that things can be transformed from above. We do not think that: we think that society, and the world, should be transformed from below. We think we also have to transform ourselves: in our personal relations, in culture, in art, in communication…and create another kind of society…Ultimately, this has led Marcos to reject the label "revolutionary", preferring instead to self-identify as a "rebel", because“…a revolutionary proposes fundamentally to transform things from above, not from below, the opposite to a social rebel. The revolutionary appears: We are going to form a movement, I will take power and from above will transform things. But not so the social rebel. The social rebel organizes the masses and from below, transforming things without the question of the seizure of power having to be raised.Elsewhere, in a communiqué, Marcos elaborates on what distinguishes a revolutionary from a rebel, noting how the revolutionary...throws off whomever is sitting on the chair [of power] with one shot, sits down and … [t]here he remains until another Revolutionary … comes by, throws him off and history … repeats itself…[T]the rebel...on the other hand...runs into the Seat of Power…, looks at it carefully, analyzes it, but instead of sitting there he goes and gets a fingernail file and, with heroic patience, he begins sawing at the legs until they are so fragile that they break when someone sits down, which happens almost immediately.Despite his preference for rebels over revolutionaries however, Marcos has nevertheless expressed admiration for both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos's popularity was at its height during the first seven years of the Zapatista uprising, A cult of personality developed around the Subcomandante based on the romantic premise of a rebel confronting the powerful in defense of society's underdogs, and an accompanying copious press coverage, sometimes called "Marcos-mania". As a guest on "60 Minutes" in March 1994, Marcos was depicted as a contemporary Robin Hood.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: That initial period, 1994"–"2001, saw reporters from all over the world coming to interview Marcos and do features on him. He was also courted by numerous famous figures and literati (e.g. Oliver Stone, Naomi Klein, Danielle Mitterrand, Regis Debray, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Juan Gelman, Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago), and engaged in exchanges of letters with eminent intellectuals and writers (e.g. John Berger, Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Galeano). Zapatista events Marcos presided over were attended by people from all over the world by the thousands, including media organizations, and he appeared on the front pages of innumerable magazines, and on the covers of many books and DVDs.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: When, in February 1995, the Mexican government revealed Marcos's true identity and issued an arrest warrant for him, thousands marched through the streets of Mexico City chanting "We are all Marcos."


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: The following year (1996), saw a surge in the Subcommander's popularity and exposure in the media. He was visited by Oliver Stone, Danielle Mitterrand and Régis Debray, and he acted as host at the Intercontinental Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, which drew around 5,000 participants from 50 countries, including documentary makers, academics and reporters, some of whom published the interviews that Marcos granted them on the event's sidelines.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: The Subcommander also proved popular with certain musicians and bands. For example, Rage Against the Machine, the Mexican rock band Tijuana No!, Mexican singer-songwriter Óscar Chávez and French Basque singer-songwriter Manu Chao expressed their support for Marcos, and in some cases incorporated recordings of his speeches into their songs or concerts. His face appears on the cover of Thievery Corporation's album, Radio Retaliation.


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: Marcos experienced a general uptick in popularity in 2006 when he toured Mexico on the Other Campaign. On this trek to the capital he was welcomed by "huge adoring crowds, chanting and whistling", while "Marcos handcrafted dolls, and his ski mask-clad face adorns T-shirts, posters and badges."


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: By 2011, Mexican historian Enrique Krauze wrote that "Marcos [has] remained popular among young Mexicans, but as a celebrity, not as a role model".


title: Subcomandante Marcos

text: In May 2014, Marcos gave a speech in front of several thousand onlookers as well as independent media organizations in which, among other things, he explained that because back in 1994 "those outside [the movement] did not see us…the character named 'Marcos' started to be constructed", but that there came a point when "Marcos went from being a spokesperson to being a distractor", and so, convinced that "Marcos, the character, was no longer necessary", the Zapatistas chose to "destroy it".