
The sex industry is an endless source of prurient drama for the mainstream
media. Recent years have seen a panic over "online red-light districts," which
supposedly seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, and New
York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel
raid. The current trend for writing about and describing actual experiences of
sex work fuels a culture obsessed with the behaviour of sex workers. Rarely do
these fearful dispatches come from sex workers themselves, and they never seem
to deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their
condition, and the industry simply abolished - a position common among feminists
and conservatives alike.
In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa
Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way
we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex
trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex
worker, Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes
both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that
separating sex work from the "legitimate" economy only harms those who perform
sexual labor.
In Playing the Whore, sex workers' demands, too long relegated to the margins, take center stage: sex work is work, and sex workers' rights are human rights.
Book, 136 pages
13,00 €
inkl. 10 % MwSt. zzgl. Versandkosten
Art.-Nr.: 5318