Customer Reviews

Female Sexual Slavery

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barry presents her case for female sexual slavery quite convincingly, except that she leaves out one very important detail - agency. Throughout the book she refers to men in general as the perpetrators of all of women's suffering, especially in the case of prostitution. While many feminists before her have made similar claims, none have been able to write such an influencing book without identifying specific actors.

Copyrighted in 1979, just 6 years after the prostitutes' rights movement was formed in the USA, Barry's work inspired Giobbe to form WHISPER, Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt. Many scholars have claimed that this book was a response to Margo St. James' attempts to legitimize prostitution.

Barry's book has enjoyed widespread recognition in circles of feminist scholars. While I find her research shoddy and specificity of agency lacking, I recommend the book to those interested in the prostitutes' rights movement. Barry's sensationalism inspired a new social movement organization that is still active more than 20 years later.

For those further interested in the sexual victimization of women, I would recommend Andrea Dworkin's _Pornography: Men Possessing Women_. To learn about another prominent organization in the prostitutes' rights movement, COYOTE, see Valerie Jenness' _Making it Work: The Prostitutes' Rights Movement in Perspective_.

I gave this book 5 stars not because "I loved it!" but because it opened my eyes to the underworld of the flesh trade. When going through life and then having something so abusive and horrible revealed to you... it's like having a door opened and stuffed within the dank closet are mutilated corpses. You take a second look or run. Your view has been changed... forever. And even though the mutilated part is a made-up example... the information in this book is real. That's damn scary. So I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about this global crime industry and/or who want to get involved to help these victims escape the clutches of pimps and the slave trade industry... and it is a massive industry.

The information is older but relevant. If anything this has only gotten worse across the planet.

This book take you to where you can understand why women are treated as second class citizens and what you need to do to fix it. Everyone should read this book (Women and especially men). The more I read, the more angry I got about how women are considered mens property!! This needs to change to make our society a better place for current and future generations on this planet!

I'm convinced: nobody picks up such books excepting out of puerile interest, and I am no exception. In fact, reading this book further convinced me that nobody writes such things excepting out of puerile interest. I was rather hoping to learn something of the psychodynamics of the seraglio, or some nifty historiographical slease on slavery, or even some outright filth with an intellectual veneer. I was somewhat disappointed in this. While it contained fairly predictable chapters on the paleo-feminist bugaboos of prostitution and wife-beating; it did contain quite a bit of bathroom material on actual modern day instances of egregious (or actual, depending on your susceptibility to feminist rhetoric) female sexual slavery. Whips, shackles, harems; the whole horrifying, grotesque lot; like something out of a vision of hell. Much of the book more or less was a complaint on common and horrible the phenomenon is. At the end; her "proof," the interpol report on the subject, pinpointing about 100 known cases a year of it in the whole world.

She also cited data which she said proved porn caused rape. They found that something like 45% of rapists had been exposed to porn. But 65% of the rest of the population had been exposed to porn! With her hilarious "thinking," she took this as proof that, not only does porn cause rape, but most men are rapists! Perhaps mathematics and logic are oppressive tools of the patriarchy. The punchline after thumbing through the drivel, was the photograph of the author. I'm not sure if it is "spiteful" to mention it, but she looks like someone who something horrible happened to; she practically cringes in her photograph. Or perhaps someone who wishes something horrible would happen to her, so she can do more than suffer for all the world's sins. You really have to wonder about people who think about sexual slavery this much. Such an obsession can not be good for mental hygiene.