Despite being dubbed “the world’s oldest profession,” prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it is often criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices – including feminists, researchers, advocates, and sex workers of every stripe – to challenge dominant narratives surrounding sex work. Presenting a variety of perspectives on such diverse topics as social stigma, police violence, labour organizing, and human trafficking, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book.

Emily van der Meulen is a professor in the Department of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She conducts research in the areas of sex work and human trafficking, prison and community-based harm reduction and gendered and transnational surveillance. She is co-editor of numerous books, including Red Light Labour: Sex Work Regulation, Agency, and Resistance (with Elya M. Durisin and Chris Bruckert), Making Surveillance States: Transnational Histories (with Robert Heynen) and Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (with Kelly Fritsch and Jeffrey Monaghan).

Emily van der Meulen's profile page

Elya M. Durisin's profile page

Victoria Love's profile page

As a Canadian sex worker, I know too well how hard it can be to find a balanced, nuanced analysis of the lived experiences of people in my profession and the complex legal and social realities we encounter. Selling Sex proved to be a notable exception ... this book is invaluable as a resource to help people understand the complexities of the sex trade and to see the people who work within it as competent and capable of making their own decisions, rather than victims in need of rescue or deviants in need of punishment and control.

Canadian Dimension

Selling Sex is an impressive testament to the agency, activism, and theorizing of sex workers, drawing from a multiplicity of viewpoints, including trans, male, youth, and Indigenous experiences. It importantly shines light on histories of sex work, the politics of regulation, and organizing for change in Canada and is a critical intervention into debates on feminism, anti-racism, and decolonization. A deeply insightful collection and a vital new contribution to the field of sex work studies.

Kamala Kempadoo, professor of Social Science at York University and co-editor of Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition

The breadth of ethnographic data and theoretical insights explored in Selling Sex makes it an excellent resource for most courses in sociology, law, gender and sexuality studies, criminology, and anthropology interested in deconstructing the contingent nature of sexuality, labor, and gender identity, and its intersection with various state agencies and other mechanisms of regulation. Similarly, the timely nature of this publication in relation to the Bedford decision situates this text, and the contributing authors, as influential authorities on sex work research in the post-Bedford era.

Canadian Review of Sociology

A unique collection of sex workers and their allies describing and defending a timely subject. A very insightful read.

Maria Nengeh Mensah, professor, School of Social Work, Université du Québec à Montréal

Intellectually stimulating, emotionally engaging and beautifully written, Selling sex: Experience, advocacy and research on sex work in Canada weaves together the diverse voices and perspectives of sex workers, academics, and activists to present a multilayered, complex, and rich understanding of sex work practice, research, policy, and political organizing. This collection of chapters centers the lived experiences of sex workers who are experts in their own lives and who are critical to the knowledge production about sex work.

I highly recommend this refreshing and inspiring book that positions itself as a form of activism and resistance against sensationalistic and mainstream narratives of sex work. It challenges unidimentional notions of sex work by highlighting often silenced communities, including male, trans, youth, and indigenous sex trade workers. This collection of voices is an essential read for anyone working in a practice setting with sex workers, for students engaging in a critical analysis of sex work, for researchers committed to privileging the lived experiences of marginalized communities, and for those interested advancing their human rights and engaging in activism for social change.

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