Sex Work Matters: Exploring Money, Power, and Intimacy in the Sex Industry

Melissa Hope Ditmore, Antonia Levy, Alys Willman

Zed Books Ltd., Apr 4, 2013 - Social Science - 288 pages

Sex Work Matters brings together sex workers, scholars and activists to present pioneering essays on the economics and sociology of sex work. From insights by sex workers on how they handle money, intimate relationships and daily harassment by the police, to the experience of male and transgender sex work, this fascinating and original book offers new theoretical frameworks for understanding the sex industry. The result is a vital new contribution to sex-worker rights that explores the topic in new ways, especially its cultural, economic and political dimensions. Readers weary of the sensational and often salacious treatment of the sex industry in the media and literature will find Sex Work Matters refreshing.

About the author

Melissa Hope Ditmore is a post-doctoral fellow at NDRI. She has investigated ethics in research, the effects of police raids on sex workers and trafficked persons, and violence against sex workers. She is an author on the three reports produced by the Sex Workers Project. Melissa Ditmore has written about sex work, migration and trafficking for The Lancet and SIECUS Report. She is a contributor to Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered (2005) and The Affective Turn (2007.) Antonia Levy is a member of the PapertigerTV collective and a part-timer organizer for her union, the Professional Staff Congress at CUNY. She has been co-chair of several academic/activist conferences and workshops, including Sex Work Matters: Beyond Divides and the Second Annual Feminist Pedagogy Conference. Alys Willman is a feminist economist specializing in gender, violence and illicit markets. She is the author of What's Money Got to Do With It? (2009) and numerous articles in both academic and grassroots publications. She has produced a documentary Mateando en la Gran Manzana on Argentine immigration to New York. Alys Willman has worked in a dozen countries throughout Latin America with NGOs, the United Nations and the World Bank. She holds a doctorate in Urban and Public Policy from The New School University in New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Sex Work Matters: Exploring Money, Power, and Intimacy in the Sex Industry
• Editors: Melissa Hope Ditmore, Antonia Levy, Alys Willman
• Contributors: Barbara G. Brents, Rebecca Pates, Maggie O'Neill, Melissa Petro, Jane Pitcher, Daniel Schmidt, Jo Weldon, Carrie M. Hobbs, Kate Hausbeck, Anne Dölemeyer, Laura Mara Agustn, Mindy S. Bradley-Engen, Giulia Garofalo, Mashrur Shahid Hossain, Kerwin Kaye, Patty Kelly, Juline Koken
• Publisher: Zed Books Ltd., 2013
• ISBN: 1848138407, 9781848138407
• Length: 288 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Gender Studies; Social Science / Prostitution & Sex Trade; Social Science / Women's Studies