Sex Work

Sex work is an exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation, including direct and indirect sexual stimulation. It includes types of prostitution, exotic dancing, phone sex, and performing in adult films, as well as other potentially lesser-known forms of sex work. Sex work is often confused with human/sex trafficking. While they are similar, there are differences--the main one is that sex work is voluntary, while trafficking is not.

Most Read This Week Tagged "Sex Work"

Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction

A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten: A Memoir

Sex Work Books

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex

Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry

The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)

Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper

Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)

Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk

More sex work books...

Lists

Sex Worker Memoirs

197 books — 101 voters

One (or more) MC is a Sex Worker

34 books — 4 voters

To Live Freely in This World by Chi Adanna Mgbako

Prejudice, Racism, and Tribalism by Anthony M. D'Agostino MD

Books at The Sex Workers' Pop-Up

33 books — 3 voters

Positive Sex Work Rep

79 books — 6 voters

Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland

Best Books Involving Sexwork (Fiction and Nonfiction)

402 books — 196 voters

Vampire Strippers

2 books — 2 voters

Related Genres

Sexuality
Prostitution
Strippers

Featured News & Interviews

New Voices Alert! 51 New & Upcoming Debut Novels

Read »

Quotes Tagged “Sex Work”

“ While anti-sex work feminists see trading sex as the ultimate concession to patriarchy, I see it as a refusal. A refusal to accept the terms we've been given, to accept the violence of poverty, exhaustion, and overwork, to accept the limited options and future we're meant to be content with. In that refusal is an affirmation of our right to exist, of our right to survive, and the possibility of a reality without white supremacism or capitalism. ...more ”
― Matilda Bickers, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex

0 likes

“ I want to bring us back to basics. Prostitution: what is it? It is the use of a woman's body for sex by men, he pays money, he does what he wants. The minute you move away from what it really is, you move away from prostitution into the world of ideas. You will feel better; you will have a better time; it is more fun; there is plenty to discuss, but you will be discussing ideas, not prostitution. Prostitution is not an idea. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, ...more ”
― Andrea Dworkin, Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women

3 likes

More quotes...