Are sex workers victims, criminals, or just trying to make a living? Over the last five years, public policy and academic discourse have moved from criminalization of sex workers to victim-based understanding, shaped by human trafficking. While most research focuses on macro-level policies and theories, less is known about the on-the-ground perspectives of people whose lives are impacted by sex work, including attorneys, social workers, police officers, probation officers, and sex workers themselves.
Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work brings the voices of lower-echelon sex workers and those individuals charged with policy development and enforcement into conversation with one another. Chapters highlight some of the current approaches to sex work, such as diversion courts, trafficking task forces, law enforcement assisted diversion and decriminalization. It also examines how sex workers navigate seldom-discussed social phenomena like gentrification, pregnancy, imperialism, and being subjects of research. Through dialogue, our authors reveal the complex reality of engaging in and regulating sex work in the United States and through American aid abroad.
Contributors include: Aneesa A. Baboolal, Marie Bailey-Kloch, Mira Baylson, Nachale “Hua” Boonyapisomparn, Belinda Carter, Jennifer Cobbina, Ruby Corado, Eileen Corcoran, Kate D’Adamo, Edith Kinney, Margot Le Neveu, Martin A. Monto, Linda Muraresku, Erin O’Brien, Sharon Oselin. Catherine Paquette, Dan Steele, Chase Strangio, Signy Toquinto, and the editors.
"Inclusive representation of voices from within the sex industry is a major challenge which Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work has overcome in abundance. Bold, contemporary, and brave in the topics addressed, the editors and contributors help us reflect on the politics, positionality, and polemics deeply embedded in debates around sex work, exploitation, and the liminality of selling sex."
—Professor Teela Sanders, University of Leicester, and author of Sex Work: A Risky Business and Paying for Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex
"During this time of criminal ‘justice’ reform, sex worker advocates need resources that can help identify which suggested strategies are punitive, not just in theory but in practice. Challenging Perspectives on Street-Based Sex Work provides quintessential and concise information, highlighting the competing criminal justice policies, the ideologies behind them, and, crucially, their impact on people who are targeted when they exchange sex."
—Carol Leigh, Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network, and inventor of the term "sex work"
"(T)his new addition to the field of sex work studies is largely successful in fulfilling the goal set out in its title.... (M)any of the chapters provide insightful and nuanced analyses of how sex workers are affected by criminalization, policing, anti-trafficking campaigns, gentrification, poverty, racism, transphobia, violence, stigma, and more. Importantly, some of the authors also highlight sex workers' resistance and resilience in the face of these and other social inequities. A key strength of the collection is the inclusion of a small number of chapters by current or former sex workers themselves.... The collection as a whole does a solid job of advancing both scholarship and public discourse on street-based sex work, and is thus recommended for reading."
—Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"The anthology addresses street-based sex work systematically, comprehensively, and constructively.... Challenging Perspectives on Street-based Sex Work ’s greatest strength is its thorough consideration of the needs of the classroom. Certainly, the text is interesting and delightfully innovative, but importantly, it’s meant to be a teaching tool."—Contemporary Sociology
"This brilliantly crafted text not only challenges common misconceptions regarding street-based sex work but also offers, in its shared authorship and its organization, a model for harm reduction and community building.... For any activist or scholar engaged in sex worker rights, this text is essential reading to inform innovative and ethical research and social justice methodologies shaping the lives of sex workers."
—Resources for Gender and Women's Studies
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