Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor [Paperback]

Wendy Chapkis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415912881 | ISBN-13: 978-0415912884 | Publication Date: December 21, 1996

Drawing on more than fifty interviews in both the US and the Netherlands, Wendy Chapkis captures the wide-ranging experiences of women performing erotic labor and offers a complex, multi-faceted depiction of sex work. Her expansive analytic perspective encompasses both a serious examination of international prostitution policy as well as hands-on accounts of contemporary commercial sexual practices. Scholarly, but never simply academic, this book is explicitly grounded in a concern for how competing political discourses work concretely in the world--to frame policy and define perceptions of AIDS, to mobilize women into opposing camps, to silence some agendas and to promote others.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Commercial sex has long been a troublesome issue for feminists. Chapkis, a sociologist and author of Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance, is a self-professed champion of the rights of prostitutes and pornographers. This sets her at odds with those who are opposed to women's participation in "erotic labor" on the grounds that it exploits them. Here, she conducts 50-plus unstructured interviews with women in the trade between 1986 and 1995 in the Netherlands and in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, Calif.?all places where Chapkis lived. The author notes that she reprints fewer than half the interviews, which may reveal a great deal more about Chapkis than about her subjects. The book is shaped into seven main chapters, each with an academic essay about some aspect of the sex trade followed by two or more edited, but graphic, interviews with women in the sex business. The interviewees included "call girls, escort workers, pornography actresses and models, brothel workers, exotic dancers, peep show workers, phone sex workers, street workers, and window prostitutes." Chapkis also personally experimented with buying and selling sex to experience the transactions. Eight black-and-white photos of professional women add to the gritty and realistic, rather than erotic, tone of the book. It is part sociology and part journalism, with a polemic on the rights of women in the commercial-sex business running throughout. The mix doesn't work well, and will likely disappoint the possible audiences interested in sociology, journalism or polemic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...Chapkis is an exceedingly purposeful and interesting writer. Her discourse...is often amusing and never boring..." -- Lesbian Review of Books

"...a page-turner, sparkling with insight and with the surprising voices of prostitutes themselves..." -- Dissident

"...aims to change the tone of the feminist sex debates, bridging the daunting gaps between such such self-identified feminists as Kathleen Barry, Andrea Dworkin, Pat Califia and Camille Paglia." -- Ms. Magazine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (December 21, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415912881
• ISBN-13: 978-0415912884
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expanding the Conceptions of Sex Work, December 3, 1999

By 

danielle egan (Boston, Mass) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)

Chapkis in her book "Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labour" does an excellent job exploring the often complex experiences of women who perform erotic labor. She gives a careful and sensitive analysis, not falling into the trap of romanticisng their lives or disregarding their experiences. This is a truly excellent book. Which is theoretically complex and includes women's experiences in their own words. I loved it.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Realism can hurt, September 24, 2002

By 

cactus writer (Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)

For anyone who hasn't enjoyed this book, all I can say is that you probably haven't met many of the women whose stories are cited in here. I have, and I find them well represented. Chapkis doesn't drown out their voices the way so many other scholars have. She begins by tracing the debates concerning sex work, which is helpful for people new to the topic. She then develops her own argument (see editor's review) and concludes with a personal story on how she discovered her own sexual pleasure. I found it informative and touching, even though I've been doing similar field work on sex workers for the past four years.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensitive, provocative and fascinating, May 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)

I LOVED this book! I've been in the sex trade ever since college, and found the book to be absolutely insightful and fascinating. It is NOT a "a suger-coated [sic] way of talking about prostitution", but a very accurate representation of the business--at least for those among us who choose to be empowered rather than exploited. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone considering entering the sex trade, or to anyone curious about the reality of sex work.