Whores and Other Feminists


Jill Nagle - 1997
    Comprising a range of voices from both within and outside the academy, this collection draws from traditional feminisms, postmodern feminism, queer theory, and sex radicalism. It stretches the boundaries of contemporary feminism, holding accountable both traditional feminism for stigmatizing sex workers, and also the sex industry for its sexist practices.

Philosophy, Pussycats, and Porn


Stoya - 2018
    Stoya often points her journalistic lens inward, providing us with personal, illustriously detailed stories of her life, her collaborators, and how she has built a flourishing media haven in the face of a culture that is still learning how to handle public discourses on sex work.

Porn Carnival


Rachel Rabbit White - 2019
    White's deliberate, dominating voice evokes a Plath-like dynamism turned on to queer pleasure and displeasure, indulgence and raison d'être, the bedevilments of a gay bitch on the pole.

You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide to Discovery


Dara Hoffman-Fox - 2016
    Are you wrestling with questions surrounding your gender that just don't seem to go away? Do you want answers to questions about your gender identity, but aren't sure how to get started?In this groundbreaking guide, Dara Hoffman-Fox, LPC--accomplished gender therapist and thought leader whose articles, blogs, and videos have empowered thousands worldwide--helps you navigate your journey of self-discovery in three approachable stages: preparation, reflection, and exploration.In You and Your Gender Identity, you will learn: Why understanding your gender identity is core to embracing your full beingHow to sustain the highs and lows of your journey with resources, connection, and self-careHow to uncover and move through your feelings of fear, loneliness, and doubtWhy it's important to examine your past through the lens of gender explorationHow to discover and begin living as your authentic selfWhat options you have after making your discoveries about your gender identity

The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It


Victor Malarek - 2009
    Each year more than 800,000 women and children are lured, tricked or forced into prostitution to meet an apparently insatiable demand, joining an estimated 10 million women already ensnared in the $20 billion worldwide sex trade. To date, most research on the subject has focused on the various issues that propel these women into the trade, but little has been investigated, or written, about those who trigger the demand?the “Johns.” In this hard-hitting expos?, Malarek unmasks the kind ofmen?and organizations?that foster and drive the sex trade, from America to Europe, Brazil to Thailand, Phnom Penh to St. Petersburg and Costa Rica. The Johns is a chilling look into a dark corner of the world that these men have created at the expense of countless women and children.

We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival


Natalie West - 2021
    Responding to the resurgence of the #MeToo movement in 2017, sex workers from across the industry--hookers and prostitutes, strippers and dancers, porn stars, cam models, Dommes and subs alike--complicate narratives of sexual harassment and violence, and expand conversations often limited to normative workplaces.Writing across topics such as homelessness, motherhood, and toxic masculinity, We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival gives voice to the fight for agency and accountability across sex industries. With contributions by leading voices in the movement such as Melissa Gira Grant, Ceyenne Doroshow, Audacia Ray, femi babylon, April Flores, and Yin Q, this anthology explores sex work as work, and sex workers as laboring subjects in need of respect--not rescue.

The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District


Louise Brown - 2005
    The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it. Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.

XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography


Wendy McElroy - 1995
    An unconventional argument for the preservation of pornography asserts that pornography can serve to benefit the feminist movement and promote sexual freedom for women, and explores the historical relationship between women and pornography.

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry


Laura María Agustín - 2007
    Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radical analysis. Frequently, says Agustín, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry. Although they are treated as a marginalised group, they form part of the dynamic global economy.Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice.-from the back cover

Girl Culture


Lauren Greenfield - 2002
    In Girl Culture, she combines a photojournalists sense of story with fine-art composition and color to create an astonishing and intelligent exploration of American girls. Her photographs provide a window into the secret worlds of girls social lives and private rituals, the dressing room and locker room, as well as the iconic subcultures of the popular clique: cheerleaders, showgirls, strippers, debutantes, actresses, and models. With 100 hypnotic photographs, 20 interviews with the subjects, and an introduction by foremost historian of American girlhood Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Greenfield reveals the exhibitionist nature of modern femininity and how far it has drifted from the feminine ideologies of the past.

Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age


Nancy Friday - 2009
    The book collects the sexual fantasies of dozens of women and men, and teaches us to proudly own the creativity of our sexual imagination and indulge in the power of our sexual visions.

Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession


Tyler Stoddard Smith - 2012
    Tyler Smith's fascinating and sometimes truly astonishing tales of streetwalkers, call girls, madams, pimps and rent boys are fundamentally true (a few, as he recognizes, fall into the category of cultural myths), and are not only interesting but also funny--often hilarious.Have you ever wondered how Heidi Fleiss came to be the face of upscale prostitution or if Casanova really was the world's greatest lover? How about why Latin playboy Rubi Rubirosa got the nickname "The Ding Dong Daddy"?While you may think that you know everything about this occupation, Whore Stories includes plenty of details and even celebrities, such as Maya Angelou and Bob Dylan, that will leave you in awe.From private sex schools and Snoop Dogg, to child preachers, mime fantasies and unfortunate amputations, Whore Stories offers a fascinating, hilarious and often times shocking look at the world's oldest profession.

Girlvert: A Porno Memoir


Joseph Mattson - 2011
    From accolades to agony, GIRLVERT illuminates the surreality of a life lived beyond all comprehension."If Hemingway had been a porn star, this is how he would have written." -- The Nervous Breakdown "Oriana Small has pushed herself to the outermost extremes of what the body and mind are capable of--all before turning thirty years old--and now she's made it an authentic read for the rest of us to marvel at, elevating the depravity and denial inherent in the pornographic arts to a singular literary experience." -- James Frey

Valencia


Michelle Tea - 2000
    Through a string of narrative moments, Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart. Valencia conveys a blend of youthful urgency and apocalyptic apathy.

Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good


Wendy Shalit - 2007
    Now, in Girls Gone Mild, the brilliantly outspoken author investigates an emerging new movement. Despite nearly-naked teen models posing seductively to sell us practically everything, and the proliferation of homemade sex tapes as star-making vehicles, a youth-led rebellion is already changing course.In Seattle and Pittsburgh, teenage girls protest against companies that sell sleazy clothing. Online, a nineteen-year-old describes her struggles with her mother, who she feels is pressuring her to lose her virginity. In a small town outside Philadelphia, an eleventh-grade girl, upset over a “dirty book” read aloud in English class, takes her case to the school board. These are not your mother’s rebels.In an age where pornography is mainstream, teen clothing seems stripper-patented, and “experts” recommend that we learn to be emotionally detached about sex, a key (and callously) targeted audience–girls–is fed up. Drawing on numerous studies and interviews, Shalit makes the case that today’s virulent “bad girl” mindset most truly oppresses young women. Nowadays, as even the youngest teenage girls feel the pressure to become cold sex sirens, put their bodies on public display, and suppress their feelings in order to feel accepted and (temporarily) loved, many young women are realizing that “friends with benefits” are often anything but. And as these girls speak for themselves, we see that what is expected of them turns out to be very different from what is in their own hearts.Shalit reveals how the media, one’s peers, and even parents can undermine girls’ quests for their authentic selves, details the problems of sex without intimacy, and explains what it means to break from the herd mentality and choose integrity over popularity. Written with sincerity and upbeat humor, Girls Gone Mild rescues the good girl from the realm of mythology and old manners guides to show that today’s version is the real rebel: She is not “people pleasing” or repressed; she is simply reclaiming her individuality. These empowering stories are sure to be an inspiration to teenagers and parents alike.