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Distributed for Zubaan Books

The Business of Sex

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 In a series of groundbreaking, previously unpublished essays, The Business of Sex corrects this lacuna.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 | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2013

Gender and Sexuality


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Table of Contents

The Business of Sex: An Introduction
Laxmi Murthy and Meena Saraswathi Seshu
 
From Pity to Power: Musings of a Health Rights Activist
Adrienne Germain
 
The Feminist and the Sex Worker
Meena Saraswathi Seshu and Laxmi Murthy
 
Victimhood and Vulnerability: Sex Work and the Rhetoric and Reality of the Global Response to HIV/AIDS
Joanne Csete
 
Sex Workers and Feminists: Personal Reflections
Cheryl Overs
 
From Centre to Periphery and Back: Tracing the Journey of Spaces in Prostitution
Rohini Sahni and V. Kalyan Shankar
 
How Sex Workers Expand Feminist Concepts of Choice and Consent
Srilatha Batliwala
 
Sex Work, Trafficking and Human Rights
Sandhya Rao and Cath Sluggett
 
The Politics of Prostitution in Brazil: Between “State Neutrality” and “Feminist Troubles”
Sonia Corrêa and José Miguel Nieto Olivar
 
A Walk Through the Labyrinths of Sex Work Law
Rakesh Shukla
 
Notes on Contributors

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