Enter the world of academia as it specifically relates to women’s sexuality and sexual rights. Wendy Chapkis writes about women who voluntarily enter into the “erotic labor” industry. In America, especially, we hear of the sex work business and immediately associate it with trafficking and illegal immigrants. We’re very wrong in that assumption. There are many women (and men) who chose to work in this industry without being forced or threatened into it. However, Wendy also addresses those who are forced and threatened into staying in the sex work industry. She explores outside of the United States, taking us to the Netherlands, to hear from women whose lives are controlled by the industry.
The first chapter of the book, before she got to the stories, nearly killed me. She discussed the various feminist viewpoints on sex work. Each side had gaping flaws in their logic and rhetoric. One side of the feminist movement, who was antipornography, went as far as to say that “all sex is a form of male domination.” Not a qualified statement; the word “some” may have made this more plausible. Instead, they use the word “all.” Reading through these flaws arguments from women who’ve never walked a step in a sex worker’s shoes infuriated me. They were so judgemental that it was hard not to skip the entire chapter.
Aside from this, I loved this book and would really recommend it for anyone studying women sexuality or sex work, specifically those working within human trafficking.
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Filed under: Literature Reviews, Wendy Chapkis , Live Sex Acts, Non-Fiction
