Women Who Sell Sex

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.

"Despite being dubbed "the world's oldest profession," prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it has been criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. Interest in and concern over sex work is not grounded in the lived realities of those who work in the industry, but rather in inflammatory ideas about who is participating, how they wound up in this line of work, and what form it takes. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices - including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors - to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as the social stigma of sex work, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book."--Publisher's website.

Pornography and the â ~science of sexâ (TM) â " sexology â " are redefining sexuality in the West today, but is the model of sexuality promoted by these two industries selling sex short? In this, the first book to fully investigate the connections between the industries of pornography and sexology, they are found to promote a very similar type of sexual ideal. Sex therapists now recommend hard-core pornography to patients and porn stars have become sex-advice â ~expertsâ (TM) offering bestselling self-help books. With reports of the increasing â ~pornificationâ (TM) of popular culture and an epidemic of â ~Female Sexual Dysfunction, â (TM) it is more important than ever to understand the influence of pornography and sexology on our sexual lives. Through a feminist critique of current trends in pornography, in sexological research, and in sex self-help books, it is shown that the type of sex being promoted by these industries closely resembles the model of sex found in systems of prostitution. This is a model in which women are bought and sold and yet it is being held up as an ideal for couples to mimic in their everyday heterosexual relationships. Ultimately, this is an unethical model of sexuality that sells sex short.

2013 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Division of International Criminology, American Society of Criminology Every year, thousands of Chinese women travel to Asia and the United States in order to engage in commercial sex work. In Selling Sex Overseas, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer challenge the current sex trafficking paradigm that considers all sex workers as victims, or sexual slaves, and as unwilling participants in the world of commercial sex. Bringing to life an on-the-ground portrait of this usually hidden world, Chin and Finckenauer provide a detailed look at all of its participants: sex workers, pimps, agents, mommies, escort agency owners, brothel owners, and drivers. Ultimately, they probe the social, economic, and political organization of prostitution and sex trafficking, contradicting many of the ‘moral crusaders’ of the human trafficking world.

The first and possibly only book to be reviewed favorably in both The Women's Review of Books and Hustler, Sex Work popularized the term "sex work" to describe the occupations of street prostitutes, exotic dancers, nude models, escorts, porn actresses, and workers in massage parlors, and so changed the way we talk about sex and money. Features the original stories of women in the life, including writings by Sapphire, Nina Hartley, and Joan Nestle. Updated for the Second Edition: * Sex Workers' response to AIDS * Latest information on the legal status of sex work in the United States, Europe, and Asia * Growth of the international prostitutes' rights movement * Bibliography, revised to reflect a decades’ worth of writing and publishing on sex work * Resources, including activist organizations and publications—many just a Web click away

“At last, a study that goes far beyond the urban-centered discourse with which we are already familiar to place the trafficking of women in a solid historical and comparative context. Through a carefully reasoned and balanced analysis of diverse sources, Stanley shows how prostitution practices varied. This book will set the standard for studies of prostitution in early modern Japan for decades to come.” -Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine “Selling Women is a remarkable achievement. With her gaze fixed firmly on the young women whose labor sustained prostitution as an industry, Amy Stanley traces shifts in the moral economy of the sex trade over the course of the Tokugawa era, and unveils the ironic consequences of economic growth and social change. This meticulously researched, wonderfully written book is a major contribution to the literature on gender and society in Japan.” -David L. Howell, Harvard University

Selling Sex in the City offers a worldwide analysis of prostitution since 1600. It analyses more than 20 cities with an important sex industry and compares policies and social trends, coercion and agency, but also prostitutes' working and living conditions.

Drawing on empirical data from women who pay for sexual services and those who provide services to women, this ground-breaking study is the first of its kind in the UK, detailing the experiences of women who pay for sex in an explicit, direct, prearranged way. Unlike previous research on clients, which has predominantly focused on men who buy sex or women who engage in romance tourism in places such as the Caribbean, this innovative research offers new and original insights into the demand side of commercial sex. Too often, it is assumed that only men pay for sex from women or other men. Women are assumed to be service providers and are unimaginable as clients. This book therefore offers a radical departure from existing scholarship on commercial sex. In addition, the book examines the experiences of couples who pay for commercial sex, a client group that has received scant investigation. The book explores women’s reasons for their engagement in commercial sex services, their backgrounds and characteristics, their strategies for remaining safe and managing potential risks, as well as their sexual health strategies. The nature of sexual service bookings with women clients is also examined, exploring the types of services women seek, the places where bookings occur and the fess they pay. Finally, the experiences of men, women and trans sex workers who provide sexual services to women are examined. By drawing on our unique data and comparing it to the literature on men clients, we present our theory ‘Converging Sexualities’. We argue that commercial sex is a site of behavioural convergence and that women clients are behaving in ways that could be described as masculine or feminine. Our study therefore offers new ways to understand sexuality. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of sexuality, sex work and women’s behaviour.