- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Dec 19 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0415912881
- ISBN-13: 978-0415912884
- Product Dimensions: 22.7 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 345 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #533,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Commercial sex has long been a troublesome issue for feminists. Chapkis, a sociologist and author of Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance, is a self-professed champion of the rights of prostitutes and pornographers. This sets her at odds with those who are opposed to women's participation in "erotic labor" on the grounds that it exploits them. Here, she conducts 50-plus unstructured interviews with women in the trade between 1986 and 1995 in the Netherlands and in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, Calif.?all places where Chapkis lived. The author notes that she reprints fewer than half the interviews, which may reveal a great deal more about Chapkis than about her subjects. The book is shaped into seven main chapters, each with an academic essay about some aspect of the sex trade followed by two or more edited, but graphic, interviews with women in the sex business. The interviewees included "call girls, escort workers, pornography actresses and models, brothel workers, exotic dancers, peep show workers, phone sex workers, street workers, and window prostitutes." Chapkis also personally experimented with buying and selling sex to experience the transactions. Eight black-and-white photos of professional women add to the gritty and realistic, rather than erotic, tone of the book. It is part sociology and part journalism, with a polemic on the rights of women in the commercial-sex business running throughout. The mix doesn't work well, and will likely disappoint the possible audiences interested in sociology, journalism or polemic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Drawing on more than fifty interviews in both the US and the Netherlands, Wendy Chapkis captures the wide-ranging experiences of women performing erotic labor and offers a complex, multi-faceted depiction of sex work. Her expansive analytic perspective encompasses both a serious examination of international prostitution policy as well as hands-on accounts of contemporary commercial sexual practices. Scholarly, but never simply academic, this book is explicitly grounded in a concern for how competing political discourses work concretely in the world--to frame policy and define perceptions of AIDS, to mobilize women into opposing camps, to silence some agendas and to promote others.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The sexualization of the female body historically has been a concern for women's rights activists. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The sexualization of the female body historically has been a concern for women's rights activists. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Realism can hurt,
By cactus writer (Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)
For anyone who hasn't enjoyed this book, all I can say is that you probably haven't met many of the women whose stories are cited in here. I have, and I find them well represented. Chapkis doesn't drown out their voices the way so many other scholars have. She begins by tracing the debates concerning sex work, which is helpful for people new to the topic. She then develops her own argument (see editor's review) and concludes with a personal story on how she discovered her own sexual pleasure. I found it informative and touching, even though I've been doing similar field work on sex workers for the past four years.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, A Book That Represents Both Sides of the Debate,
By A Customer
This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)
The intro to this book presents a clear, concise account of contemporary feminist perspectives on sex work, ranging from the adamantly anti to the decidedly pro (no pun intended). Likewise, the essays inside represent an equally broad range of views and experiences from women in nearly every facet of the sex industry, proving once and for all that sex work is neither inherently degrading nor inherently empowering.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sensitive, provocative and fascinating,
By A Customer
This review is from: Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor (Paperback)
I LOVED this book! I've been in the sex trade ever since college, and found the book to be absolutely insightful and fascinating. It is NOT a "a suger-coated [sic] way of talking about prostitution", but a very accurate representation of the business--at least for those among us who choose to be empowered rather than exploited. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone considering entering the sex trade, or to anyone curious about the reality of sex work.
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