Sex For Sale

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.

This groundbreaking collection of essays on the sex industry contains original studies on sex work, its risks and benefits, and its political implications. Sex for Sale covers areas not commonly researched, including gay and lesbian pornography, telephone sex workers, customers of prostitutes, male and female escorts who work independently, street prostitution, sex tourism, legal prostitution, and strip clubs that cater to women. Sex for Sale also tracks various trends during the past decade, including the mainstreaming and growing acceptance of some types of sexual commerce and the growing criminalization of other types, such as sex trafficking. Sex for Sale offers a window into the lived experiences of sex workers as well as an analysis of the larger gender arrangements and political structures that shape the experiences of workers and their clients. This book contributes greatly to a growing research literature that documents the rich variation, nuances, and complexities in the exchange of sexual services, performances, and products. This book will change the way we understand sex work.

Authored by one of the most original contemporary thinkers on the subject, this book is an enlightening illustrated cultural history of the sex trade that puts sex workers center stage, revealing how they have lived and worked all around the globe. The history of selling sex is a hidden one—and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. These enthralling tales are brought to life by Whores of Yore creator Kate Lister’s witty and authoritative text, and illuminated by a rich archive of photographs, artworks, and objects offering insight into sex workers’ lives, challenging assumptions about this age-old trade. Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts’ chapters are structured thematically in a broadly chronological order, each one introducing a lively cast of complex and entertaining characters operating in an array of different periods, locations, and settings. In ancient Mesopotamia, the harlot Shamhat was powerful and respected, able to civilize the wild man Enkidu through her charms. In medieval London, Elizabeth Moryng serviced religious clergy under the guise of an embroidery business, though she was eventually jailed for being a prolific panderer and bawd. In the hedonistic floating world of Edo, Japan, Kabuki actresses and geishas entertained and pleasured their patrons. Lister’s engaging and illuminating tales invite readers to look, listen, and reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world’s oldest profession. Together, these captivating tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women.

Reconfiguring Stigma in Studies of Sex for Sale is about the production and effects of stigma in sex work or prostitution with contributions from four continents and different disciplines that taken together explore how such stigma is conditioned by differences in time, place, citizenship, gender, sexuality, class and race. Stigma is about relationships between people and also sets an interpretative frame whereby people understand and react to situations and actions, and the book is developed and organized to investigate this from various angles. It presents empirical studies that build on and expand the scholarship on stigma and sex work. This means that it contributes to a more complex understanding of stigma in sex work studies. Further, by using the example of sew work to explore how we can best understand the production and consequences of stigma, the book makes a contribution that is relevant for all scholars who work on stigma and stigmatization. The book is intended for academic audiences interested in sex work or prostitution, on the one hand, and stigmatization, on the other. It is also intended for students in a broad range of disciplines, as well as for practitioners and activists who encounter or work with stigmatization or stigmatized populations.

The problem of prostitution, sex work or sex for sale can often be misunderstood, if we do not take into consideration its spatial, temporal and political context. Understanding Sex for Sale aims to understand how prostitution, sex work or sex for sale are delineated, contested and understood in different spaces, places and times; with a particular focus on identifying how the relation between sex and money is interpreted and enacted. Divided into three parts, this interdisciplinary volume offers contributions that discuss ongoing theoretical issues and analytical challenges. Some chapters focus on how prostitution, sex work, or sex for sale have been regulated by the authorities and on the understandings that regulations are built upon. Other chapters investigate the experiences of sex workers and sex buyers, examining how these actors adjust to or resist the categorisation processes, control and stigma they are subjected to. Finally, a third group of chapters discuss contemporary definitional issues produced by various actors tasked with controlling prostitution or offering social services to its participants. Advancing and placing analytical tools at the forefront of the discussion, Understanding Sex for Sale appeals to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers interested in fields such as, sociology, anthropology, criminology, history, human geography and gender studies.

'Regulating sex for sale' provides a detailed analysis and critical reflection on the processes, assumptions and contradictions shaping the UK's emerging prostitution policy. It examines the total package of reforms and proposals that have been introduced in this area since May 2000.

Love for Sale is the first study to examine the ubiquity of commercial sex in Russian literary and artistic production from the nineteenth century through the fin de siècle. Colleen Lucey offers a compelling account of how the figure of the sex worker captivated the public's imagination through depictions in fiction and fine art, bringing to light how imperial Russians grappled with the issue of sexual commerce. Studying a wide range of media—from little-known engravings that circulated in newspapers to works of canonical fiction—Lucey shows how writers and artists used the topic of prostitution both to comment on women's shifting social roles at the end of tsarist rule and to express anxieties about the incursion of capitalist transactions in relations of the heart. Each of the book's chapters focus on a type of commercial sex, looking at how the street walker, brothel worker, demimondaine, kept woman, impoverished bride, and madam traded in sex as a means to acquire capital. Lucey argues that prostitution became a focal point for imperial Russians because it signaled both the promises of modernity and the anxieties associated with Westernization. Love for Sale integrates historical analysis, literary criticism, and feminist theory and conveys how nineteenth-century beliefs about the "fallen woman" drew from medical, judicial, and religious discourse on female sexuality. Lucey invites readers to draw a connection between rhetoric of the nineteenth century and today's debate on sex workers' rights, highlighting recent controversies concerning Russian sex workers to show how imperial discourse is recycled in the twenty-first century.

Based on leading empirical psychological research from around the world, this book offers valuable insights on women who sell sex. It synthesizes the extensive body of scholarly work on the topic of women selling sex from a psychological perspective in order to understand why women choose to do so. In turn, the book highlights a range of important sociocultural contexts surrounding the sale of sex that are major sources of stress, and examines how women cope with these circumstances. Illustrating the multi-faceted nature of selling sex, the book will contribute to debates on individual and societal responses to this major sociopolitical—and at the same time, deeply personal—issue. Including original case material and outlining future directions for researchers, it offers an informative and engaging resource for academics, researchers, students and professionals around the globe.

This groundbreaking collection of essays on the sex industry contains original studies on sex work, its risks and benefits, and its political implications. Sex for Sale covers areas not commonly researched, including gay and lesbian pornography, telephone sex workers, customers of prostitutes, male and female escorts who work independently, street prostitution, sex tourism, legal prostitution, and strip clubs that cater to women. Sex for Sale also tracks various trends during the past decade, including the mainstreaming and growing acceptance of some types of sexual commerce and the growing criminalization of other types, such as sex trafficking. Sex for Sale offers a window into the lived experiences of sex workers as well as an analysis of the larger gender arrangements and political structures that shape the experiences of workers and their clients. This book contributes greatly to a growing research literature that documents the rich variation, nuances, and complexities in the exchange of sexual services, performances, and products. This book will change the way we understand sex work.