Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry

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Book Reviews of Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry

Book Review: A strong, though minorly flawed, argument for legitimization
Summary: 4 Stars

The first and longest section of the book, entitled "In the Life", covers the experiences of sex workers mainly in the Americas and Europe. Through very personal first-hand accounts, the women detail how they decided to get into the industry-and the consensus is clearly financial. Together, the writings in this section paint a portrait of the sex industry as a mechanism for unskilled (or unlucky) women's empowerment and self-dependence.

In the second section, "Feminism and the Whore Stigmata", three feminist writers undertake the difficult task of defending prostitution and pornography from the charge that they serve to subjugate women, reducing them to objects in the eyes of men. Playing off the words of the workers in the first section, the theme of this section is that these women are, in fact, working to achieve everything the feminist movement stands for: self reliance, strength, and a fight against unfounded stigmatisms. The arguments go on to explain that feminist condemnation of the sex industry is actually bad for women as a whole. It prevents women from exploring their own sexuality, and in fact oppresses women sexually; girls avoid sexual exploration for fear of being termed a "whore". More significantly, support of the anti-prostitution stigmata leads to many policy and regulatory difficulties for women, not only in the criminilization of sex work, but the rights which are withheld from the workers in other areas of the law (granting of visas, custody rights, health care, etc.).

This discussion leads well into the final section, "United We Stand, Divided We Die: Sex Workers United". Detailed in these last hundred pages of the book are the efforts of sex workers to organize themselves into a labor movement. Discussed are such organizations as the Red Thread (Whores' Movement in Holland), the Pink Thread-a sister organization of sex workers and feminists, and the U.S. PROStitutes Collective. These organizations are fairly young, and self-admittedly uneducated in the business of lobbying and policy making. However, they have managed to arrange several international conferences and put forth a Charter for Whores' Rights. This Charter lays out both social goals of the prostitutes movement, and legislative changes desired by the group. These include the universal decriminalization of prostitution, a guarantee of universal human rights to sex workers, and surprisingly, a call for essentially no special regulations regarding the prostitution industry. The Charter specifically states that there should be no taxes on prostitution above those for normal independent contractors, no mandatory disease testing, and no zoning regulations on the practice of prostitution. These form a general foundation for more specific demands laid out in Draft Statements from the 2nd World Whores' Conference. While it is certain that most of the writings

included in this compilation were selected because of the empowering way they paint the sex industry, the reader is able to glean a decent amount of truth from them collectively. And while the book is successful in detailing the sex labor world, it unfortunately falls short in its section on feminism. In an effort to legitimize the profession, the book appeals to a movement which by and large still rejects the sex industry as anti-feminist. And, in the opinion of this writer, rightly so. The image of the world of sex-for-hire the women project in the first section is generally negative when the events are stripped of their voices. Desperation, drug abuse, physical abuse, and objectification are clearly part of almost every story. Even in one of the feminist essays-and in an attempt to support the legitimacy of the profession-one author states that "Many [women] have at some point thought about turning a trick to pay bills or to get out of serious debt." Aside from desperation, women allowing themselves be used as sexual outlets or in pornography may not always be personally degrading, but their actions still enforce the underlying stereotypes which are the original and constant enemy of the feminist movement.

With these misgivings aside, the feminist section does bring up many valid points about the inability of sex workers (legal and illegal) to receive legal and legislative protection. Those points are surely the most important in establishing a basis for the demands laid out in section three. After realizing that regardless of morality, these women are treated unfairly, the reader is more likely to consider the terms dictated by the organizations and charters discussed. It is in this respect that the book succeeds; despite its downfalls in certain places, the first hand stories of the workers, and presentation of the labor movement makes a convincing argument that the sex industry has been doned with a harmful and socially unproductive reputation which deserves reconsideration.

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