Notes on Chapter 30: More About My Work
for the book, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent.
More notes from the book here.
Organizations
Organization working to decriminalize sex work: decriminalizesex.work/
Network of Sex Work Projects: nswp.org/
Sex Workers Outreach Project: swopusa.org/
Articles
A pretty good starting place – Anna North, in Vox: The Movement to Decriminalize Sex Work, Explained
Anne Elizabeth Moore, in Truthout: The American Rescue Industry: Toward an Anti-Trafficking Paramilitary
Human Rights Watch discusses the need for decriminalization: Why Sex Work Should be Decriminalized
Amnesty International: Q&A: Policy to Protect the Human Rights of Sex Workers
UNAIDS: The legal status of sex work: Key human rights and public health considerations (a PDF download)
Jo Yurcaba, in Bustle: Sex Workers Tell us What Support they Actually Need from Politicians.
The origin of the term “sex work”: Carol Leigh Coins the Term “Sex Work”
A thorough list of sex worker rights resources: bayswan.org/
Taken from the Bustle article above:
Human Trafficking And Sex Work Are Not The Same Thing
The problem, many sex workers say, is that the Nordic model — and politicians who support it — equates or conflates consensual sex work and human trafficking, which Thompson says is problematic for a lot of reasons. First, trafficking occurs at higher rates in industries like farm labor, domestic work, construction, and food service, than it does in the sex industry. Despite that, Thompson says sex trafficking receives far more attention from funders, celebrities, and decision makers.
Second, this kind of conflation erases the nuance necessary to support all kinds of people in sex work. Thompson describes the reasons people are in the sex trade as “a spectrum of choice, circumstance, and coercion.” The extremes on either end of the spectrum — the trafficking victim who is forced into the sex trade, and what Thompson calls the “happy hooker” narrative (“usually cisgender white women who have freely chosen sex work”) — are commonly represented in media, but don’t reflect many sex workers’ realities. Many experiences in between those extremes are left out of conversations about human trafficking and sex work, which makes it harder to create policies that support people no matter where they fall on this spectrum.
Some early inspirations
Women of the Light: The New Sacred Prostitute, by Kenneth Ray Stubbs, unfortunately out of print
Unrepentant Whore: The Collected Works of Scarlot Harlot, by Carol Leigh
America’s War on Sex: The Continuing Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty, by Marty Klein