ESSENTIAL READING
Making Sex Work: A failed experiment in legalised prostitution.
Mary Sullivan. Published by Spinifex Press
Can a prostitute be raped?
Are pregnancy and STIs an Occupational Health and Safety issue?
What sort of society buys and sells women and children for sex?
Does legalisation solve the dangers of sex work?
Sex worker advocates have argued for many years that legalising prostitution is the way to make the industry safer both for workers and clients. In 1984, the State of Victoria did just that, and Western Australia is currently considering following suit.
In this book, Mary Lucille Sullivan looks at the evidence of Victoria’s experience, and asks whether the concept of sex work as ‘a job like any other’ matches the reality. Discussing the practicalities of brothels as regular businesses, the author unearths astounding facts about both the legal and illegal sectors. Covering issues such as violence, organised crime, women’s health, and mainstream businesses’ involvement in the sex trade, Making Sex Work is a compelling read.
This book gives an insight into the sex industry, and into a society where women and children have become just another consumer item.
If you’ve ever thought of prostitution as simply a choice some women make, read this book and then ask yourself: Could you do this job? How would you feel if your friend, sister, or daughter chose this career?
Mary Lucille Sullivan is the author of What Happens When Prostitution Becomes Work: An update on legalised prostitution in Australia (2006). She has written two other books on social justice issues, An Australian Pilgrimage: Muslims in Australia from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (1993) and Colony to Community (1997). Mary Lucille Sullivan has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Melbourne. She has toured the US, Britain and Norway discussing the impact of legalised prostitution.
For more information or to order a copy of Making Sex Work contact Spinifex Press: Tel: +61-(0)3-9329 6088 Fax: +61-(0)3-9329 9238 email: women@spinifexpress.com.au http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/
NOT FOR SALE - Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. Edited by Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. Published by Spinifex Press
As prostitution and pornography increasingly saturate our lives and our communities, they are also becoming normalized and accepted as harmless entertainment for men and as legitimate, even liberating, forms of work for women. Not For Sale brings the feminist movement against prostitution and pornography into the 21st century, showing how these industries cause grievous harm to those within them while undermining the possibilities for gender justice, human equality, and truly diverse and joyful sexual relationships.
The essays collected here connect feminist perspectives on the sex industry with radical critiques of racism, poverty, militarism, and unbridled corporate capitalism, and show how the harms of prostitution and pornography are amplified by contemporary technologies of mass communication. Bringing together research, testimony, and theory by more than thirty writers and activists from different countries and generations, including a number of courageous industry survivors, Not For Sale is both a vital contribution to ongoing debates and a call to action and resistance.
For more information or to order a copy of Not For Sale contact Spinifex Press: Tel: +61-(0)3-9329 6088 Fax: +61-(0)3-9329 9238 email: women@spinifexpress.com.au http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/
THE IDEA OF PROSTITUTION. Sheila Jeffreys. Published by Spinifex Press
The idea which this book explores is that of men's entitlement to abuse and profit from the abuse of women in prostitution. The Idea of Prostitution shows how this idea, central to male supremacist ideology, has been bolstered by masculine systems of thought such as sexology, sociology, historiography and queer theory. The feminist challenge to this idea has become more difficult in recent times because sexual liberalism, economic individualism and free 'choice' ideas have persuaded even some feminists that prostitution should be seen as 'just a job like any other'.
Jeffreys argues that it is important to recognise men's abuse of women in prostitution as a variety of male sexual violence and a violation of women's human rights.
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