Andrea Heinz, former sex seller, and Kathy King, bereaved mother, invite readers to confront the dark reality of prostitution and its connection to human trafficking. This contemporary literature review is accompanied by voices of experiential women, a former sex buyer, and noteworthy guest contributors. The authors shine light on a variety of topics including systemic drivers of oppression, legal considerations of buying sex, pornography, and the impact of societal complicity. This must-read book provides hope that humanity can be healthier and stronger once every person is afforded equality, respect, and dignity.
Drawing on original empirical data with men who buy sex, this book takes a fresh look at the relationships clients have with female sex workers. The core questions that form the backbone of the research are not only the expected inquiry into 'why men buy sex', but also into the sociological and psychological processes that men encounter in order to enter an assumed 'deviant' sexual behaviour as part of their everyday lives. These sociological processes of finding, negotiating and buying sexual services are complicated by the stigma directed towards men who buy sex. Exactly how do men behave with sex workers; what are their relationships like; what emotions are involved and can intimacy be bought? Questioning the dichotomy made between commercial and non-commercial relationships, the data suggests that intimacy and commerce are compatible. Managing secrecy, stigma and the consumption of intimacy takes this book into some of the more challenging theoretical areas of masculinity and emotional consumption in contemporary society. Drawing some parallels from the author's earlier book Sex Work: A Risky Business, the book offers insights into why engagement in commercial sex is prolific as sexual culture is transformed in late modernity.
A follow-up to The Natashas is a critical indictment of the men who solicit sex services from unwilling prostitutes, in an exposé that identifies the customers and organizations that foster and drive the sex trade throughout the world.
There are (at least) two competing views on prostitution: prostitution as a legitimate and acceptable form of employment, freely chosen by women and men's use of prostitution as a form of degrading the women and causing grave psychological damage. In 'The Idea of Prostitution' Sheila Jeffreys explores these sharply contrasting views.
Andrea Heinz, former sex seller, and Kathy King, bereaved mother, invite readers to confront the dark reality of prostitution and its connection to human trafficking. This contemporary literature review is accompanied by voices of experiential women, a former sex buyer, and noteworthy guest contributors. The authors shine light on a variety of topics including systemic drivers of oppression, legal considerations of buying sex, pornography, and the impact of societal complicity. This must-read book provides hope that humanity can be healthier and stronger once every person is afforded equality, respect, and dignity.
A fascinating overview of prostitution and sex work in the United States, from the Colonial era to today, examines the issue as it affects men, women, and transgender individuals of all races and classes. Prostitution and Sex Work is the first book since 1921 to offer a historic overview of this controversial topic—and what our views on it say about American society. Exploring key people, places, and events, the guide includes descriptions of the myriad variations of the sale of sex and of the venues where prostitution occurs, as well as recurring themes such as panics about sexually transmitted diseases and the ever-present issue of violence in the sex trade. After reviewing the history of prostitution and sex work over the past 400 years, the book offers detailed information about the legal context of prostitution in America during the last century. It focuses particularly on the period since prostitution was criminalized during a panic over "white slavery" in the early 20th century, drawing parallels with current "sex trafficking" topics. An appendix of materials produced by sex workers is especially informative for those wishing to truly understand both sides of the issue.
Here, one of the world's pioneers in the field of masculinity studies explores the construction of male sexuality, pornography, and sexual violence. Michael S. Kimmel analyzes what male sexuality is, where it comes from, how it works, what affects it, pornography's impact on it, what fantasies men have about sex, what people think about sex, and how male ideas about sex affect what men actually do. Provocative and wide-ranging, these essays make important contributions to sociology, queer theory, American studies, history, and studies of gender, sexuality, and gay and lesbian issues.
Policing Prostitution examines the complex world of commercial sex in the late Russian Empire. From the 1840s until 1917, prostitution was legally tolerated across the Russian Empire under a system known as regulation. Medical police were in charge of compiling information about registered prostitutes and ensuring that they followed the strict rules prescribed by the imperial state governing their visibility and behaviour. The vast majority of women who sold sex hailed from the lower classes, as did their managers and clients. This study examines how regulation was implemented, experienced, and resisted amid rapid urbanization, industrialization, and modernization around the turn of the twentieth century. Each chapter examines the lives and challenges of different groups who engaged with the world of prostitution, including women who sold sex, the men who paid for it, mediators, the police, and wider urban communities. Drawing on archival material from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Policing Prostitution illustrates how prostitution was an acknowledged, contested, and ever-present component of lower-class urban society in the late imperial period. In principle, the tsarist state regulated prostitution in the name of public order and public health; in practice, that regulation was both modulated by provincial police forces who had different local priorities, resources, and strategies, and contested by registered prostitutes, brothel madams, and others who interacted with the world of commercial sex.
How the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.
“I MAKE A LOT OF MONEY AS A CALL GIRL” wasn't the answer author Steve Cuno expected when he asked a new acquaintance how she planned to capitalize her start-up business.Wait, hold on, he thought. In Salt Lake City? Home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, where all it takes to become the object of steamy gossip is for a neighbor to see you take a sip of coffee? In a religion where nonmarital sex is second in seriousness to murder?“You've no idea the people I could get in trouble,” she told him. She'd entertained politicians, police officers, judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, doctors—all of them married, almost all of them practicing Mormons. Many were highly visible, highly regarded leaders in the faith.So began Cuno's behind-the-scenes investigation into Salt Lake City's prostitution industry. Over the course of three years, he interviewed prostitutes, johns, police officers, social workers, and massage-parlor owners—and uncovered a surprising underside to the Mormon Church's carefully cultivated image of wholesomeness and family values. He found that Salt Lake's prostitutes—“sex workers” or “providers,” as they prefer to be known—don't live in the illusory experience they create for their clients. Many are multilingual and hold college degrees. They fix meals, drive kids to school, help with homework, handle household chores, socialize with others in the community, have love lives of their own—and, yes, go to church, sometimes with the very people who sneak out to meet them.With wit and sensitivity, Behind the Mormon Curtain takes a deep dive into the quintessential American religion and the world's oldest profession, as Cuno tells the story of what he discovered, how he discovered it, and what it reveals not just about Mormons, but about us all.
