Best of
Sex-Work

2013

How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler's Memoir


Amber Dawn - 2013
    While the plot of the book was wildly imaginative, it was also based on the author's own experience as a sex worker in the 1990s and early 2000s, and on her coming out as lesbian.How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber Dawn's sophomore book, reveals an even more poignant and personal landscape—the terrain of sex work, queer identity, and survivor pride. This memoir, told in prose and poetry, offers a frank, multifaceted portrait of the author's experiences hustling the streets of Vancouver, and the how those years took away her self-esteem and nearly destroyed her; at the crux of this autobiographical narrative is the tender celebration of poetry and literature, that—as the title suggests—acted as a lifeline during her most pivotal moments.

Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation


Estelle B. Freedman - 2013
    elections confirms that it remains a word in flux. Redefining Rape tells the story of the forces that have shaped the meaning of sexual violence in the United States, through the experiences of accusers, assailants, and advocates for change. In this ambitious new history, Estelle Freedman demonstrates that our definition of rape has depended heavily on dynamics of political power and social privilege.The long-dominant view of rape in America envisioned a brutal attack on a chaste white woman by a male stranger, usually an African American. From the early nineteenth century, advocates for women's rights and racial justice challenged this narrow definition and the sexual and political power of white men that it sustained. Between the 1870s and the 1930s, at the height of racial segregation and lynching, and amid the campaign for woman suffrage, women's rights supporters and African American activists tried to expand understandings of rape in order to gain legal protection from coercive sexual relations, assaults by white men on black women, street harassment, and the sexual abuse of children. By redefining rape, they sought to redraw the very boundaries of citizenship.Freedman narrates the victories, defeats, and limitations of these and other reform efforts. The modern civil rights and feminist movements, she points out, continue to grapple with both the insights and the dilemmas of these first campaigns to redefine rape in American law and culture.

Curb Service: A Memoir


Scot Sothern - 2013
    He dove to the murky depths of sexual obsession and resurfaced five years later, shell-shocked and without excuse. While there, trusty Nikon in hand, Scot, a second-generation photographer, made full-frontal X-rated exposures, black and white, filled with pathos and an uncanny realism. The pictures captured the plight of the disenfranchised in America, those forgotten and drug-addicted. Now he is ready to tell the story behind the photographs, the confessions of a befuddled baby-boomer maintaining a slippery connection to propriety while side-tripping into noirish infatuations with those low in life. Curb Service recounts Sothern’s past as a troubled kid in the 1960s who visited two-dollar whorehouses and as an adult in the 1980s is still at it. A photographer who either can’t get a break or blows it when one comes his way, Scot wants to hold onto jobs, wives, and relationships; he tries to be a good father to the son he loves. Yet he continues picking up street prostitutes, photographing them, having sex with them, living moments of their lives and watching them fade away in a culture that deems them criminal and expendable. It was only a few years ago that Scot’s photography started to receive notice – by influential Drkrm Gallery in Los Angeles – which led to the publication of Lowlife, a photo book, by Stanley Barker in the UK and soon by powerhouse in Brooklyn. His work has since been exhibited world-wide including shows in London, Los Angeles, and Ottawa.

Selling Sex: Experience, Advocacy, and Research on Sex Work in Canada


Emily Van Der Meulen - 2013
    Instead, it is often criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices -- including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors -- to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as social stigma, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book.

Composing Myself


Elena Aitken - 2013
    It’s just that some things are better left unsaid; especially when your mother’s a stripper and you’re trying to get a job at a prestigious private school that definitely won’t appreciate her talents.Raised by her grandma, Whitney’s always managed to keep her two worlds separate, even if it meant lying to everyone. And when Reid Phillips—a charming, sexy songwriter—becomes her not-entirely-welcome roommate, Whitney has no intention of telling him the truth either. But she wasn’t excepting Reid to see right through her and challenge her compartmentalized life. With Grams seriously ill, her mother’s life in turmoil and her dream job on the line, it’s more important than ever for Whitney to keep everything together. But that will mean being honest with everyone, starting with herself.(less)

Invisible: Britain's Migrant Sex Workers


Hsiao-Hung Pai - 2013
    Both are single mothers in their thirties and both came to Britain in search of a new life: Ming from China and Beata from Poland. Neither imagined that their journey would end in a British brothel.In this chilling exposé, investigative journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai works undercover as a housekeeper in a brothel and unveils the terrible reality of the British sex trade. Many workers are trapped, some are controlled – the lack of freedoms this invisible strait of society suffers is both shocking and scandalous and at odds with the idea of a modern Britain in the twenty-first century.Adapted into the Channel 4 documentary ‘Sex: My British Job’ by Nick Broomfield.Hsiao-Hung Pai is an acclaimed Taiwanese-born writer and journalist. She is the author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2009, and Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants. Pai’s report on the Morecambe Bay tragedy for the Guardian was adapted into Nick Broomfield’s film Ghosts. She lives in London.

Amber Topping: Professional Trollop


Abby Ashe - 2013
    She's petite, cute, and girly...and she's got a little surprise for her clients. She's a transsexual escort extraordinaire!In her first collection of short stories, Amber takes on hot men and women, weird kinks, and all sorts of trashy situations. Every day for her is a sexy adventure that you won't want to miss!

Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885-1917


Gretchen Soderlund - 2013
    By tracing the history of high-profile print exposés on sex trafficking by journalists like William T. Stead and George Kibbe Turner, Soderlund demonstrates how controversies over gender, race, and sexuality were central to the shift from sensationalism to objectivity—and crucial to the development of journalism in the early twentieth century.

Paulyanna International Rent-boy


Paul Douglas Lovell - 2013
    Some very typical, such as early abandonment, poverty, lack of education and sexual abuse. But Paul does not dwell too much on the past and refuses to allow these events to mar his ambition. At eighteen a lost train ticket leaves him stranded in the city after a job interview. He uses his questionable wits to make a quick decision that steers him down a rather dodgy path.Without added glamour or grit, Paul shares the raw accounts of his life as a rent-boy in the 90s, from London to Los Angeles. It may not have been pretty, and there was risk and danger as well as fun and thrills, but Paul had the audacity to succeed in his quest to obtain happiness, security and wealth.This is not an erotic tale. It is an ordinary account of day-to-day life as viewed from a unique perspective. A peek into what really goes on behind the glassy-eyed smile of a male street worker. Read about his life in this optimistic and fascinating roadbook adventure.

The Tax Domme's Guide for Sex Workers and All Other Business People


Mistress Lori a St Kitts - 2013
    Essential tax information for the small business owner in every industry that will bring their tax liability to its knees.Written in language that everyone can understand, this well-rounded guide offers essential business basics and tax information that all small business owners need to know to set up, maintain and grow a successful business.Some of the hot topics discussed are: Office & file organization Record, file and tax return recovery W-2, 1099-Misc and the new 1099-K Business expenses Incorporation, Partnership and LLC basics Health and retirement benefits for the self-employed Talking to the IRS and responding to notices What to expect in an audit In an honest and frank discussion about sex work, business and taxes, Tax Domme also addresses those issues specific to people working in the Adult Industry such as: How any type of sex worker can prepare and file their tax return legally Handling income from various sex work properly Deductions specific to the different types of sex work demystified This guide was inspired by questions from business owners, client tax issues encountered and discussions with colleagues and the IRS.

Johns, Marks, Tricks, and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Their Clients Writing about Each Other


David Henry Sterry - 2013
    It is a unique sociological document , a collection of mini-memoirs, rants, confessions, dreams, and nightmares by people who buy sex, and people who sell. And because it was compiled by two former sex industry workers, the collection is, like its predecessor, unprecedented in its inclusiveness. $10 crack hos and $5,000 call girls, online escorts and webcam girls, peep show harlots and soccer mom hookers, bent rent boys and wannabe thugs. Then there's the clients. Captains of industry and little old Hasidic men, lunatics masquerading as cops and bratty frat boys, bereaved widows and widowers. This book will shine a light on both sides of these illegal, illicit, forbidden, and often shockingly intimate relationships, which have been demonized, mythologized, trivialized and grotesquely misunderstood by countless Pretty Woman-style books, movies and media. This is hysterical, intense, unexpected, and an ultimately inspiring collection.