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Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade Hardcover – July 1, 2013

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

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A generation ago, most people did not know how ubiquitous and grave human trafficking was. Now many people agree that the $35.7 billion business is an appalling violation of human rights. But when confronted with prostitution, many people experience an odd disconnect because prostitution is shrouded in myths, among them the claims that “prostitution is inevitable,” and “prostitution is a job or service like any other.” In Not a Choice, Not a Job, Janice Raymond challenges both the myths and their perpetrators. Raymond demonstrates that prostitution is not sex but sexual exploitation, and that legalizing and decriminalizing the system of prostitution—as opposed to the prostituted women—promotes sex trafficking, expands the sex industry, and invites organized crime. Specifically, Raymond exposes how legalized prostitution in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Nevada worsens crime and endangers women. In contrast, she reveals, when governments work to prevent the demand for prostitution by prosecuting pimps, brothels, and prostitution users—as in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland—trafficking does not increase, women are better protected, and fewer men buy sex. Raymond expands the boundaries of scholarship in women’s studies, making this book indispensable to human rights advocates around the world.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“After many years as a government minister and activist in Sweden, I read this book with great enthusiasm. . . . Janice Raymond gives us new arguments, better knowledge, and further hope that another world is possible.”—MARGARETA WINBERG, former deputy prime minister, Sweden

Not a Choice, Not a Job is a timely and needed book for those who are looking to dispel the smoke and mirrors and uncover the horrific and complex truths of prostitution and the global sex trade. Janice Raymond’s years of experience in leadership, education, and advocacy are undeniably found within this book. This is a must read for those who want to understand the facts about the harsh realities that so many experience.”—VEDNITA CARTER, founder and director of Breaking Free, a survivor-led service for victims of sexual exploitation

“This is an extraordinary work that will serve for years as the go-to book on the relationship between sex slavery and prostitution. Janice Raymond, who has spent decades wrestling with the prostitution challenge, has covered every nook and cranny of this issue: the history, the efficacy of present practices and, where we should go from here.”—JOHN MILLER, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large of Modern Day Slavery; former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (R-WA); and former director of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons from 2002–2006

“Janice Raymond has written a thoroughly documented book on combating prostitution in all its forms. I have no doubt that the book will greatly benefit not only governmental authorities and human rights activists but also academics and researchers in understanding the complexity of this ‘crime against humanity’ and methods to eradicate it.”—SIGMA HUDA, former UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children; Secretary General, Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights

“Janice Raymond has uncovered, analyzed, and exposed one of the biggest legislative scandals since the slave trade—that of state-sanctioned prostitution. Her research is impeccable, and her conclusion—that the international sex trade be seen as a human rights atrocity—should be taken on board by every politician, policymaker, and law enforcer around the world.”—JULIE BINDEL, journalist, author, and social commentator for the
Guardian and other publications

"
Not a Choice Not a Job is a desperately needed voice speaking out for the rights and dignity of women and girls worldwide, worthy of the highest recommendation."—Midwest Book Review

About the Author

JANICE G. RAYMOND, professor emerita of women’s studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has been a leader in the campaign to have prostitution recognized as violence against women. From 1994 to 2007, Raymond served as the co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), a nongovernmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. She is the author of four books, including A Passion for Friends: A Philosophy of Female Affection (Beacon, 1986) and Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Bodies(HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). She has published many articles, some of which have appeared in the Guardian and the Christian Science Monitor. She lives in western Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ POTOMAC BOOKS (July 1, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 161234626X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1612346267
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 0.99 x 9.23 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2013
This is a well-researched and well-written book about the disturbing world of sexual trafficking. Calmly and rationally, author Janice Raymond, who is Professor Emerita at the University of Massachusetts, exposes how governments the world over have colluded with traffickers in sexually exploiting women involved in prostitution. In this book, she challenges the use of the euphemism "sex worker", stating, "In my experience, I have learned that these terms serve mostly to dignify the sex industry by giving buyers, pimps, recruiters, and other key perpetrators of sexual exploitation more legitimacy than they could otherwise obtain." Marketing prostitution as some sort of free market commodity is exploitation of human beings at its worst. Meticulously detailed, with copious notes at the end, this scholarly book vividly yet rationally demonstrates that sexual trafficking is an act of violence against women. Highly recommended.
19 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2014
Much of the material I already knew, but it was handy to have it in one place. It remains amazing to me that we went through decades long campaigns to convince people that rape is not sex but violence, that beating your wife is not love but violence, and still here we are doing it again - decades long fight that prostitution is not sex but violence. When the victims are women, somehow the public blinds its eyes to the harm done - a blatant manifestation of the continued force of sexism.
14 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2015
Using in our Drop-in Center
4 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2015
Excellent book.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2016
Janice Raymond's Not a Choice, Not a Job is an essential book for people working for women's human rights, especially the human rights of women in prostitution. Raymond scrutinizes the aftermath of the legalization of prostitution in Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries and, using reviews conducted by their governments and UN assessments, concludes very convincingly that their experiences are a cautionary tale. She explains in detail how the Dutch government has promoted its prostitution legalization agenda abroad by sponsoring legalization advocacy by NGOs.

Unfortunately, Not a Choice, Not a Job contains at least one serious error. On page 163, Raymond misquotes UN Special Rapporteur Sigma Huda. Raymond misquotes Huda as follows:

"For the most part, prostitution as actually practiced in the world usually does satisfy the elements of trafficking. It is rare that one finds a case in which the path to prostitution and/or a person's experiences within prostitution does involve, at the very least, an abuse of power and/or an abuse of vulnerability."

Paragraph 42 of UN Special Rapporteur Sigma Huda's report, INTEGRATION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND A GENDER PERSPECTIVE, dated 20 February 2006, actually says the following:

"For the most part, prostitution as actually practised in the world usually does satisfy the elements of trafficking. It is rare that one finds a case in which the path to prostitution and/or a person’s experiences within prostitution do not involve, at the very least, an abuse of power and/or an abuse of vulnerability. Power and vulnerability in this context must be understood to include power disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity and poverty. Put simply, the road to prostitution and life within “the life” is rarely one marked by empowerment or adequate options."

The existence of such a serious error leads me to worry that there may be other serious mistakes in the text. Raymond needs to hire a better proofreader.
10 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2015
Writes Raymond: "The conservative view of prostitution is to blame women and girls for their alleged choice to be in prostitution; the liberal view is to romanticize women's 'choice' as self-determination and use it to normalize prostitution as 'sex work.' Both succumb to the belief that whatever happens to a woman in prostitution is normal because it's her choice. Both these views have facilitated the expansion of sexual slavery in many parts of the globe and the extensive ways in which women themselves become 'goods and services'--as prostituted women, as trafficked instruments of exchange, as objects of sex tourism, and as indentured domestic workers who are often sexually exploited as well."

It takes a lot of guts to stand up against BOTH sides of the question, but Raymond has facts to back up her claims, and this book is full of them. A must-read; my only disappointment is that Rachel Lloyd's work is not cited in the notes.
15 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2013
This author is reknown for writing non -evidenced based material about sex work, and one immediately realises that there is an anti- sex work agenda at play here rather than an investigation based on evidence.

To say that legalising and decriminalising aspects of sex work leads to trafficking, abuse and corruption goes against numerous rigorously researched material on the sex industry. The opposite is the case!!

Don't waste your money on this crap.
19 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2013
Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution.

[...]

The truth about trafficking, now this is FACTUAL research which is taken right off the FBI website...
[...]

To hear from the mouths of USA sex workers please see [...]

Its time to change the social perception that she wasn't a person, she was a "prostitute". No one wants to feel a sense of community or sameness with her. She was something other than us and therefore we don't need to feel fear or grief at the fact or the manner of her death."
11 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Charles Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars A RIOT OF PSEUDO-FEMINIST BIGOTRY
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2018
This is a book full of hatred and bigotry against decent consenting men and women who act as sex workers and clients. Its arguments are totally fallacious but if you believe in debating this issue then 'know your enemy'. This book is man-hating misogynistic, PC feminist junk. I loved it. Now I am armed with this fatally flawed anti-erotic testament to human small-mindedness. I know all the false arguments the enemy uses and for every one of them I now have a refutation and antidote. Forewarned is forearmed
S P Mead
4.0 out of 5 stars a scholarly critique of prostitution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2017
This is an interesting and well-written book aiming to present a critique of popular interpretations of contemporary prostitution. The author, Janice Raymond, is a leading advocate for the abolition of all forms of prostitution through criminalisation of its demand side, and her purpose is to tackle the way prostitution has been imagined and portrayed in many media articles and academic publications. Such representations are exposed as myths - that is, they amount to fabrications that result in little more than the continuation of prostitution.

What Raymond does is examine and analyse the meaning of prostitution, focussing on the harm and suffering it causes to the women and girls involved in it. The myths would have it that prostitution is a choice, and that when suitably regulated it's a safe and rewarding environment to work in. Indeed, it's sometimes presented as a form of sexual freedom and expression (akin to, say, those struggles for equality as regards sexual orientation). Raymond demonstrates - with clarity, precision and focus - that such ideas are nonsense. The immense majority of women and girls who find themselves involved in prostitution haven't exercised a choice - rather, it's through desperation and lack of any real choice that their bodies are sold. And prostitution is as far removed from being a form of 'work' as possible. No employment involves female staff being systematically sexually objectified and treated as receptacle for a succession penises. Furthermore, there's nothing liberating about the experience - rather, it's exploitive, oppressive, degrading and de-humanising.

I found the ideas, arguments and conclusions of this book to be convincing. It's informative, especially when exploring the realities of those countries which have sought to legalise and regulate prostitution - such as Holland and Germany. Moreover, the experiences of such countries are compared and contrasted to instances where the demand-side (that is, the men who engage in paying for sex) of prostitution has been criminalised - such as in Sweden. Yet, even though I highly recommended this book, I do think that it seeks to cover too much in such a short space. The main body of this publication is less that 200 pages in length - and that's not sufficient space to adequately offer an in-depth analysis on the problem of prostitution.

Alongside this book, I thoroughly recommend 
Paid for: My Journey Through Prostitution .
2 people found this helpful
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