Sex Workers Unite

October 14, 2013
Sex workers are the next marginalized, stigmatized group due for liberation, argues activist and professor Chateauvert. The book combines accounts of labor organizing, cultural activism, civil rights demonstrations, and aid or “harm-reduction” efforts into an uneven history of sex workers’ resistance to their systematic disempowerment by society. The author’s goal is to find “a model of organizing... focused on transformative justice,” but the real obstacles lie in the pervasive “whorephobia,” which subjects sex workers, if not to imprisonment or violence, then to harassment, fear, and shame. According to Chateauvert, the worst perpetrators of whorephobia are police, feminists, and “straights”—those who valorize heterosexual monogamy—who insist on casting all sex workers as criminals or victims, rather than seeing those who pursue such work voluntarily as scrappy survivors. Her portraits of individual activists and advocacy groups are well drawn, proving that humanization through story, not philosophical debates about personhood and privacy, will win this campaign. However, the book would have benefitted from a better argumentative structure, less jargon, and more effective knitting together of claims and evidence, quotes and sources. Yet, while respect might be slow in coming, Chateauvert makes a strong case that “engaging in sexual commerce should not be grounds for disenfranchisement.”

December 1, 2013
A verbose chronology of the perpetual demonization of prostitution. "Human rights for sex workers reframes decriminalization," writes grass-roots sexuality and gender activist Chateauvert (Center for Africana Studies/Univ. of Pennsylvania) in her historical account of sex workers, who, in her opinion, are long overdue to receive universal respect and justice. Combining decades of documentation and personal experience teaching university-level social justice course work, Chateauvert presents her treatise via a rapid-fire avalanche of focal events, key players and historically relevant advocates for social change. Though the direction of the dense chapters is somewhat rudderless, the breadth of the material impressively commemorates the movement's decadeslong struggle. The author spotlights many historic activist groups, such as ACT UP and anti-entrapment organization COYOTE, then moves on to address the patriarchal resistance and identity politics of the 1970s, AIDS awareness and prevention efforts, and the galvanization of the pornography and sex-for-hire industry toward being recognized as a hyperprofitable, bona fide business. Yet the struggle for legitimate recognition continues, as does the ridicule associated with those who make sex work their livelihood, Chateauvert soberly notes. Negative repercussions of the trade proliferate and manifest in pernicious prejudices like "slut-shaming," which implies the victim of a sex crime deserved it, and "whorephobia," a denigrating form of sex panic. While consistently inclusive of all manner of sex-trade workers, the author primarily focuses on the plights of lesbians, the transgendered population and feminists, though she shows a particular disdain for "straight" pro-monogamists and those who believe a prostitute's self-image is the key to their victimization. Chateauvert examines more contemporary visibility activities, including SlutWalk, a multi-city empowerment event meant to peacefully demand that sex workers be destigmatized and respected as a humane community. Overly professorial in tone, yet it sufficiently delivers the importance and impact of sexual equality for all.

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