New Anthology Gives Sex Workers Space to Tell Their Own Stories

LOS ANGELES—A new book gives sex workers the space to discuss their lives and daily struggles in their own words. Edited by former dominatrix and Gender Studies Ph.D., Natalie West, along with Tina Horn — host and producer of the podcast Why Are People Into That?! — the volume titled We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival collects essays by Melissa Gira Grant, Audacia Ray, Arabelle Raphael, April Flores, Lorelei Lee and others into a book that Booklist described as “salvation” for sex workers who are too often marginalized by mainsteram media. Published by The Feminist Press, the book, according to the publisher’s decsription, “explores sex work as work, and sex workers as laboring subjects in need of respect—not rescue.”  The book, however, presents an unflinching portrait of the hazards faced by sex workers on a daily basis, particularly in the aftermath of the 2018 shutdown of Backpage.com, a classified ad site that welcomed sex workers and gave them an opportunity to screen potentially violent or otherwise undesirable clients, and share safety information with other sex workers.  Essays in the book also fault the 2018 passage of the United States FOSTA/SESTA law, which according to statistics as well as the anecdotal accounts of sex workers has led to an increase in violence against sex workers. The law makes online sites responsible for user content which can be interpreted as promoting “sex trafficking,” but in practice, sex workers say, it has simply deprived them of another layer of security by making it more difficult to use the internet to promote their services. Other essays in the book cast a harsh light on the behavior of police officers, who until recently were legally permitted to have sex with sex workers that they were actually investigating. The practice was finally fully prohibited in 2017, when Michigan became the final state to pass a law against cops using their positions of authority to coerce sex workers into sexual acts. The new book also includes sex worker essays on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their work and their lives, often forcing them to figure out how to earn a living online. But the underlying and constant theme of the book is the self-empowerment of sex workers, and the legitmacy of the sex work profession. “Too often those of us who are advocating for the dignity and rights of sex workers are afraid to voice these less-than-positive experiences,” writes one sex worker in the book. “But in this fight, there is room to demand more. Yes, I can say I was raped, but that doesn’t give you license to take away the place where I work, the means by which I support myself, and my financial independence.”  A portion of the proceeds from We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, wil lbe donated to SWOP Behind Bars, a program for incarcerated sex workers run by the Sex Workers Outreach Project. Photo By The Feminist Press