Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (Paperback)

by Frederique Delacoste (Editor), Priscilla Alexander (Editor)
Key Phrases: pink thread, public sex, deviant street networks, New York, San Francisco, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A landmark collection of writings by street prostitutes, exotic dancers, nude models, escorts, porn stars, and massage parlor workers. Since publication in 1987, SEX WORK has generated much discussion and has changed the language we use to talk about sex for money.

Product Details

• Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: Cleis Press; 2nd edition (October 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573440426
• ISBN-13: 978-1573440424
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #61,015 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sex in the cities, October 28, 2001

By	J. Gifford (Las Vegas NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book thinking that I'd be reading only stories by women in the sex industry. I have always had a fascination with how people begin anything, but especially how women or men cross the line (I don't mean that negatively) and become prostitutes. What this book is, however, is half stories from women in the industry and half academic writings on the plight of prostitutes. Not what I wanted, but still pretty good.

The stories, from street prostitutes, call girls, massage parlor workers, and strippers are often quite touching. The women, many of whom are lesbian, I've discovered in this book, choose to become prostitutes, prostitution doesn't choose them. They profess to either enjoy their job or to suffer through it not unlike clockwatchers do. Still, I can't help but read pain between the lines in these women's stories. These women are used -- well used, poorly used -- for others' whims. All of us prostitute ourselves to some end, but these women live short careers. To them, there is no glass ceiling, only plaster and dim lights in dingy rooms.

The academic essays supply some fascinating insights into how prostitution started. The authors offer facts about who prostitutes are, where they live, how the law applies to them, and how prostitutes are grouping together for safety and power.

This book, an amalgam or heartbreaking stories and academic consideration, is really a college-level reader, but for those of us who didn't study this stuff at school or are simply interested in the way prostitutes live, it still makes for interesting reading.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A strong, though minorly flawed, argument for legitimization, May 8, 1999

By A Customer

After the success of the first edition, published in 1987, Sex Work was expanded significantly in the second edition of 1998. Divided into three major parts, the book brings together over fifty writings by prostitutes, dancers, feminists, and social workers on the subject of work in the sex industry. All are strongly pro-prostitution both morally and ethically. A good majority of the writings detail how the industry as a whole has been very good to the workers-particularly financially. Only a few mention any abuse or personal emptiness suffered as a result of the profession. Essays range from straightforward autobiographies to somewhat pornographic, but all are blunt and very honest.

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.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very personal look at women in the sex industry, June 22, 2002

By A Customer

Now that I've read, Whores and Other Feminists, Tales from the Clit, Sex for Sale, Out of Bondage, The Lusty Lady, and Brothel, Sex Work gives a personal touch beyond what Whores and Other Feminists has to offer. There is a line of reading that one must read to truly listen to the feminist minority that sex work is part of being a woman. Whether women get paid to have sex or not, all women live with social stigmas attached to them not only by men (police, politicians, and clients) but by women (wives, the feminist majority, and other sex workers). The book explores the good girl/bad girl status of a woman. There is also a lot of question between Madonna/Whore demarcation between women in the sex industry. It answers the question as to where did these women come from.
Women in the sex industry are mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. They are friends and co-workers. Sex workers are women who love and women who hate. They enjoy sex and don't enjoy sex. There is political activism and victims of the political process.
The very personal accounts read as poems, diary entries, or stories that the reader asks whether it is fact or fiction. Whatever it is, Sex Work explores a world that we all seem to assume we know all about. The sex industry is expansive and limiting, liberating and oppressive. The question now must be asked how can we structure our society so that women aren't labeled for their sexual choices? There are so many women that are defined as prostitute, living under the cloak of legitimacy.