The Business of Sex

by Laxmi Murthy (Editor), Saraswathi Seshu (Editor)

Mainstream feminist discourse has failed to fully engage with commercial sex work. In a series of groundbreaking, previously unpublished essays, The Business of Sex corrects this lacuna.

Moving beyond the traditional feminist focus on slavery and trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and other health issues, the contributors to this volume engage fully with the political and theoretical implications of sex work. Dismissing old antagonisms, they argue that feminism—thanks to its role in revolutionizing perspectives on sexuality and labor—is a natural ally for the sex workers’ rights movement. In the process, these innovative scholars provocatively critique the dominant moral paradigm of heterosexual monogamy, which has created a pervasive “victim” discourse and limited our understanding of sex work’s complex realities.

Drawing on first-hand stories of sex workers and prostitutes, this volume gives voice to newly articulated movements such as “whore feminism” and “queer feminism”—feminisms that have the potential to move discussions about sex work onto new and fruitful terrain.

257 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2013

About the author

Laxmi Murthy is associate editor, Himal Southasian. Her writings, with a focus on giving voice to issues marginalised by mainstream media, have appeared in major dailies including The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Hindu and the Indian Express. Laxmi was an editor at the Women's Feature Service, an international news-feature agency specialising in development issues from a gender perspective and was also South Asia coordinator for the Tolerance Prize, an award for excellence in journalism instituted by the International Federation of Journalists.

(from http://infochangeindia.org/about-us.html)