This is a non-exhaustive list of reading recommendations on the topic of sex work, from books to zines to online articles, that I intend to regularly update. These written works are collated for people who want to inform themselves about the realities of sex workers’ lives, to educate themselves about our needs and history, or to learn about sex worker rights. All books listed will include a description written by me, with info on who might like to read it and what kind of book it is!
Anything which is available for free will be marked with an asterisk (*) before it with a link.
Sex Work 101:
- Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac
This is a book you could give to a friend who knows nothing about sex work or the law surrounding it, which would be accessible to them. Both authors are from the UK though the book does branch out and speak about sex work in all sorts of different places across the world. It specifically covers the harms of different legal models from both a statistical and personal perspective, explaining terminology as it goes. The focus is distinctly on women. - Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
Dismantling myths about sex work, authored by a journalist and former sex worker based on many years of experience seeing how sex work is discussed and written about. - Not Your Rescue Project Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice by Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam
Learn about migration and policing as they relate to sex work, as well as the sex trafficking panic and the way governments and people respond to it that are unhelpful to those who sell sex, trafficked or not. Migrant sex workers are uplifted rather than spoken over and the book uses an abolitionist lens. - *Tryst Articles (x)
Tryst has so many articles that it’s difficult to pick just a few, but I’ll list some of my favourites: Exploitation Under Capitalism, IDK about BBC, Sex Work & Chronic Pain Detained and Deported: My Experience at the US Border, Whorearchy 101, No More Perfect Victims: Solidarity and Incarcerated Sex Workers
You can seek out information on any specific element of sex work that you’d like to understand more about, written by a sex worker themselves who was paid to put the article together. With so many authors, you call pull perspectives from all kinds of sex workers belonging to various demographics. - The Ethical Stripper by Stacey Clare
If you want to learn about the real working conditions of strippers and how their activism fits into the broader sex worker rights movement, this is a must-read. - heauxthots : On Terminology, and Other [Un]Important Things by Suprihmbé
A zine full of essays, many short and some longer, on a variety of topics within sex work. It’s easy entry and can be dipped into, providing insight into language around sex work, activism, and parenting. - *SWARM Writing
SWARM is a sex worker run organisation focused on educating the public and supporting sex workers. On their site you can read about the Nordic Model, trans people sharing sex work knowledge, events with sex workers in the House of Commons and various other issues! - Luttes des Putes by Thierry Schauffauser
This book is in French and has no English translation (yet) so may not appeal to many of you, but it is a fantastic book detailing the struggle for sex worker rights in France which covers many basic questions and gets into the specifics of legal and social changes there. - To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa by Chi Adanna Mgbako
This work paints a vivid picture of the settings many sex workers exist in across Africa, to the point that you can imagine yourself at their protests and feel their frustrations. As the book is the product of interviews done in 7 countries across Africa with over a hundred sex workers, it contains a range of perspectives which capture a snapshot even if it’s impossible to put everything into one book. Focuses on people who do not usually get a voice within the publishing world.
History:
- Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts: A History of Sex for Sale by Kate Lister
With the range of time periods covered and the personal touch to each of the stories shared, you’d be hard-pressed to find something giving a more thorough overview of sex work throughout history in different regions. Photos and pieces of art included give an even fuller picture for those who might struggle to visualize the past, and there are a lot of them!
Subject Specific:
- Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex by Sophia Giovannitti
If you’re someone interested in art or who wants to understand more about the experience of being an artist within capitalism, this book going through one sex worker’s experience and comparing between selling art and sex can give you some valuable insight. A comparison I haven’t seen much of elsewhere! - Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work & Drug Use By Justice Rivera
Drug use, reproduction, racist healthcare inequality, sex work; these are all subjects which fundamentally deal with bodily autonomy and are tied together in the struggle to obtain it. A work pulling these issues together.
Memoirs:
- Skint Estate: A memoir of poverty, motherhood and survival by Cash Carraway
This is a memoir where sex work just so happens to be part of the story. Covers the impact of austerity in Britain through one woman’s experience, though there are many stories just like this which don’t get told. - Dear Mr Andrews by Lotte Latham
A frank memoir about sugaring, digging into the dynamics in various kinds of relationships and the impact of one person holding power over another. The stories of dealing with clients in this feel like something a sex worker friend might share with me while we chat and it makes this into a really easy read. - Prostitute Laundry by Charlotte Shane
Originally a series of newsletters about selling sex and the thoughts it brings up about a variety of subjects. - This Is My Real Name: A Stripper’s Memoir By Cid V Brunet
A look into stripping that doesn’t only focus on the author but also colleagues who are stripping and have their own feelings and difficulties. - Money for Something by Mia Walsch
How people entered into sex work is a question we often see posed, but this memoir goes from the very start and provides insight into how someone comes to terms with the profession and can use it to their benefit.
Anthologies:
- We Too: Essays On Sex Work And Survival by Natalie West with Tina Horn
This anthology includes a range of sex workers it’s difficult to find elsewhere, from a variety of backgrounds and involved in multiple types of sex work, and it’s a great one to read if you’re looking to read the words of many sex workers in one place. - Sluts by Michelle Tea
While sex work isn’t the sole focus of this anthology, sex workers are included within it (as well as details about them unionizing) and they fit in as part of this anthology about promiscuity and how it’s viewed. This is more for if you want to see sex work fit into a wider context. - The Holy Hour: An Anthology on Sex Work, Magic and the Divine by Molly B. Simmons and Emily Marie Passos Duffy
Dozens of workers share pieces covering religious, spiritual and magical practices related to selling sexual services. It’s multi-media and rather than being all essays there are photos, poems, fiction, collage, and all sorts of forms of written and artistic expression. - Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex by Matilda Bickers
I’m not sure how to describe this book any better than it’s own description. This is the work you want to read to get an idea of our working conditions in the modern day.
“Fiercely intelligent, fantastically transgressive, Working It is an intimate portrait of the lives of sex workers. A polyphonic story of triumph, survival, and solidarity this collection showcases the vastly different experiences and interests of those who have traded sex; among them a brothel worker in Australia, First Nation survivors of the Canadian child welfare system, and an afro-latina single parent raising a radicalized child.” - Truth and Lies: An Anthology of Writing & Art by Sex Workers
Like the others, this anthology has a range of sex worker voices (13 in this case, so the pieces within are longer if you’d like to spend more time with each writer). There is a bit more of a specific focus on the impacts of criminalization than some other anthologies, as well as insight into brothel-keeping laws. - Hustling Verse Edited by Amber Dawn & Justin Ducharme
This one’s an anthology of poetry with over 50 sex workers!
Self-help:
- Thriving in Sex Work by Lola Davina
There are a couple of books in this series, plus a workbook, and the major thing they do is break down the myths and give a dose of reality for what sex workers can expect from the industry.
My books:
Working Guys: A Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology edited by Jack Parker
Working Guys is a collection of essays, personal narratives and interviews about the lives of transmasculine sex workers, in our own words. Joyful, traumatic, or somewhere in between, this book preserves nuance and highlights a range of experiences. From selling sex under a female persona to taking advantage of the rise in popularity of trans men in porn, the pieces within provide a snapshot of moments in various transmasculine sex workers’ lives.
This anthology includes submissions from 21 transmasculine sex workers (including myself!) with chapters to introduce them as well as quotes and observations from over 100 surveys and interviews.
* Contemporary Prostitution: Study of a Social Question (1884) by Léo Taxil, translated by Jack Parker
Contemporary Prostitution: Study of a Social question is a book that was originally published in 1884 by Léo Taxil, causing significant scandal for its condemnation of the morality police and its argumentation for the regulation of prostitution to be abolished. It details the lives of sex workers in France, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Europe, and supplements these accounts with data from the police and doctors tasked with the inspection and treatment of sex workers. Various elements of contemporary prostitution in the 1800s are discussed, from disease to mistreatment at the hands of police to lesbians and gay men selling sex and the sexual vices. The text shines a light on children being registered as prostitutes by the very police claiming to desire to protect them.
Paperbacks are also available!
Hooker Mentality by Jack Parker
Tired of reading leftist theory that degrades sex workers, misunderstands the nature of our work, or ignores us altogether? Maybe you’ve never considered what sex workers’ experiences might reveal about capitalism and gender and policing? This book covers all the ways that selling sex can give hookers an insight into the systems which control us all, demonstrating why so many of us become radically left-wing after we start selling sex.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 