#swbooks — Public Fediverse posts

«The Missing Anthology: Stories from Singapore's Sex Workers»

👤 Editors: Vanessa Ho, Raksha Mahtani, Nor
🗓 2025-03-09
🆔 ISBN: 978-981-94-1956-2
📔 Editorial: Faction Press 🛒 https://www.faction.press/shop/p/the-missing-anthology-stories-from-singapores-sex-workers

> Sex workers in Singapore — and most places around the world — tend to be dehumanised, glamourised or sensationalised by the public and media alike. Rarely do mainstream narratives centre sex workers’ voices and agency. The Missing Anthology presents fifteen bold new voices from sex workers, whose writings resist society’s simplistic assumptions about sex work. In these works, authors recount their lived experiences, share their struggles and triumphs, and imagine different futures for the sex industry.

> Born from an open call and writing workshops organised by Project X — the only non-profit organisation in Singapore that provides social, emotional, and health services to people in the sex industry — these pieces daringly experiment with form, genre, and perspective. In these pages, you’ll find two “chickens” discussing their dreams while blowing up a condom; pieces on the dynamics of domme-ing and servicing second-hand hearts; essays on the importance of activism and its obstacles; short fiction exploring fantasies of violent liberation; tender letters to loved ones and younger selves that reflect on their journeys and how far they’ve come.

> ‘The Missing Anthology’ re-centres sex workers’ voices from the margins, bringing them into the conversation about an industry often treated as illicit and taboo. By doing so, it aims to address issues of inequality, social and economic mobility, stigmatization, and safety that are fuelled by misconceptions about sex workers and their profession.

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Psssst… yeah, very much recommended. ^~

Nonfiction? Southeast Asia told by those in southeast Asia? Sex work told by sex workers?
Nonfiction talk on sex work in Southeast Asia by actual sex workers in Southeast Asia? Hell yeah~!

It's not often at all you find this combination. ;3

#SWBooks #SexWork #ProjectX #Singapore #Anthology #March2025 #Book #Books #Bookstodon

«Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant sex workers fighting for justice»

👤 Chanelle Gallant 👤 Elene Lam
🗓 2024-11-12
📔 Haymarket Books 🛒 https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2258-not-your-rescue-project
🌐 Website: https://www.notyourrescueprojectbook.com

> A landmark abolitionist primer on migration, sex work, policing, and the “anti-trafficking industry”—and a powerful argument about who is really leading the way toward justice: migrant sex workers themselves.

> In this impassioned corrective to decades of misguided, carceral approaches to migration and sex work, long-time organizers Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam deftly expose the harms of criminalization in the name of “anti-trafficking” and lift up migrant sex workers’ organizing in the US, Canada, and elsewhere. In doing so, they make the compelling case that the only effective response to the needs of migrant sex workers must be led by migrants in the sex trade, as they fight for rights, safety, and autonomy.

> Gallant and Lam illustrate how this movement is taking aim at the root causes of violence and abuse: the white supremacist securitization of borders, the criminalization of both migration and sex work, the patriarchial devaluation of women’s labor, and forced displacement due to climate disaster, war, and poverty—all fueled by racial capitalism.

> An indispensable exploration of the relationship between migration and sex work—and the underlying societal conditions they reflect—Not Your Rescue Project is a thorough indictment of the anti-trafficking industry as an engine of criminalization and state violence, and an instructive account of the emancipatory politics already being practiced by migrant sex workers in their organizing. Throughout, Gallant and Lam place migrant sex workers at the center of struggles against border imperialism, carceral states, and capitalism—dispelling a range of poisonous myths and paving the way for deeper alliances across movements with the shared goal of dismantling and abolishing carceralism in all its forms.

#SWBooks #SexWork #Migration #Policing #RescueIndustry #Abolition #AntiTrafficking #Colonialism #Intersectionality #NotYourRescueProject #Book #Books #Bookstodon #November2024

«The Red Book Online: STI and BBV resources, for sex workers, by sex workers»

🗓️ N/A (live guide)
👥 Scarlet Alliance (+ lots of contributors)
🌐 Live text: https://redbook.scarletalliance.org.au/
💬🇬🇧🇨🇳🇹🇭🇰🇷
(Available in English, Chinese, Thai and Korean)

> The Red Book Online contains health and safety information by sex workers, for sex workers. There are a lot of ways sex workers can use the Red Book Online! There are a few different ways to find the information you’re looking for: BROWSE the resource, SEARCH for what you’re looking for, or use our QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE.

> This resource is a sex worker-led project. It has incorporated the efforts of sex workers, peer educators, sex worker organisations, community organisations and health professionals across Australia. It is made by sex workers, for sex workers.

> Much of the content builds on the printed resource, The Scarlet Alliance STI Handbook: A Reference Guide for Sex Workers to Sexually Transmissible Infection (“Red Book”). Red Book was first developed in 1998 with updates in 2003 and 2009. Many sex workers may be familiar with the pocket-sized Red Book that sex worker organisations have been handing out on outreach to sex worker workplaces for many years. The book is not currently available in that format, but all of the information it contains is regularly updated here on Red Book Online.

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This week I'm bringing something a little different for the #SWBooks series (also to expand it a little, since I'm mostly adding to the Spanish one…).

The Red Book is a collection of practical information on STIs, sexual health, and sex work on Australia, designed by and for people who very much cannot afford NOT to know but who nevertheless might not have had any real chances to learn any of it (and revised by physicians, yes…).

I'll say it outright: this is an absolutely wonderful resource for just about everyone with a sex live, and whose usefulness extends weeeeell beyond its original scope (be that sex workers, or Australia).
Yes, it's mostly basic; that's what high pragmatism tends to entail.
But for real, I've seen actual medical manuals and guides over an order of magnitude worse…

There are indeed sections specific to sex work (such as the extensive list of #SWTips for online SWers) or to #Australia (those on SW orgs, the legal mess, specific services available there, etc).
However, just about anyone can — and most certainly WILL — benefit from the core of the book: overview, signs and prevention guides for a whole host of STI, accompanied by basic sexual health and care information, and a bunch of tidbits such as, among others, how to check for STIs, making a dental dam, other safer sex resources…

The whole guide does have the unspoken but still kinda loud disclaimer of “upon doubt, consult a clinician”. Yeah, you can't actually get around this. That doesn't reduce one bit its usefulness, however; specially so when sex education is just cringeworthy just about everywhere.

But, at the end of the day… #SexWorkers ARE experts on their field. 😉

#SexWork #SWResources #SexualHealth #STI #ScarletAlliance #RedBook #RedBookOnline

«Sex Work and Racism»
Community Report #2: The Impact of Structural Racism on Racialised Sex Workers in Europe and Central Asia.

👥 ESWA 🗓️ October 2022
🌐 Web: https://www.eswalliance.org/sex_work_racism_second_community_report
📄 PDF (© ¿?): https://assets.nationbuilder.com/eswa/pages/256/attachments/original/1665409755/SW___Racism_2.pdf?1665409755

> This briefing paper is the second publication of the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance’s (ESWA) series on sex work and racism. It follows the paper entitled ‘Sex Work and Racism: Historical Overview of Racism in Anti-Sex Work, Anti-Trafficking and Anti-Immigration (ASWTI) Legislation in Europe’ (ESWA, 2022), which explained the development of anti-sex work, anti-trafficking, and anti- immigration legislation and policy and the history of sexual racialisation under the white European systems of chattel slavery, colonialism, and militarised sex work. As was explored in the paper, the legacy of these systems is structural racism, which is defined as “a product of a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various ways to perpetuate racial inequity, and has been a feature of the social, economic, and political systems in which we all exist.” (European Network Against Racism (ENAR, n.d.).

> Structural racism results in discrimination against racialised sex workers that hinders equal opportunities and treatment in various aspects of their work and everyday lives. Racialised1 sex workers who are LGBTQ, (undocumented) migrants, poor, and/or work on the street have to deal with multiple oppressive forces and systems, such as homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, classism, sexism, ableism, and others, which intersect with racism (ENAR, 2020).

> This briefing paper aims to explore the impact of structural racism among racialised sex workers in Europe and Central Asia. To do so, ESWA first reviewed the existing literature in the field of structural racism in Europe and Central Asia, also in relation to sex work. Since data disaggregated by race and ethnicity is lacking in many European and Central Asian countries, ESWA also investigated the literature on sex work and migration, as the groups of racialised sex workers and (undocumented) migrant and refugee sex workers frequently overlap in this context. Following this, ESWA conducted research using an online e-consultation open to all ESWA members, followed by a racialised sex worker focus group to explore the topic more in-depth.

> The briefing paper is structured as follows: the first section details the prevalence and impact of structural racism in the areas of housing, health, labour, law enforcement, and accessing justice. The following section highlights how racialised sex workers resist this racism, and the final section presents conclusions and recommendations to address the issue of structural racism at European, national, and individual levels.

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Much like the previous: don't think it needs further commentary.
A significant portion of sex workers in Europe/CEECA regions are racialized; it's pretty clear racism will thus affect them.

As with most things surrounding sex work, however, there are additional layers of discrimination and structural and institutional violences on top.
Here's a relatively in-depth overview of how it materializes in Europe and Central Asia across multiple different intersections.

See above for the first part, as well~

#SexWork #Report #Racism #CommunityReport #Legislation #Antitrafficking #Immigration #Colonialism #History #ESWA #Europe #CentralAsia #SWBooks #October2022

«Sex Work and Racism»
Community Report 1: Historical Overview of Racism in Anti-Sex Work, Anti-Trafficking, and Anti-Immigration (ASWTI) Legislation

👥 ESWA 🗓️ April 2022
🌐 Web: https://www.eswalliance.org/sex_work_racism_first_community_report
📄 PDF (© ¿?): https://assets.nationbuilder.com/eswa/pages/234/attachments/original/1649756144/SW___Racism_-_aligned.pdf?1649756144

> Racialised people constitute an important yet frequently overlooked group of sex workers in Europe. The daily racism they experience is a result of European and North American chattel slavery, colonialism, and militarised prostitution. Under these systems, white European and North American men obtained uninhibited sexual access to enslaved and colonised people, particularly women (Kempadoo, 2001). Although chattel slavery has been abolished and many former colonies have liberated themselves, racist colonial structures, ideas, stereotypes, and practices continue to exist. For racialised sex workers, many of whom are (undocumented) migrants (Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants [PICUM], 2019; Kempadoo, 2001), the racism and discrimination they experience is structurally rooted in a socio-political landscape that includes anti-sex work, anti-trafficking, and anti-immigration (hereafter, ASWTI) laws and policies.

> This community report explores how racism is entangled in ASWTI legislation in Europe. To do so, the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA) conducted a literature review on the history of sexualised racism in the European context and racism in global and national sex work policies and laws. This community report is thus structured as follows: the first section explains how the sexual racialisation of non-Western peoples by European and North American powers was both a source and product of racism during chattel slavery, colonalism, and militarised prostitution. The following section then explores how sexualised racialisation and racism has influenced ASWTI legislation and policy. The final section presents concluding remarks and recommendations.

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Don't think this one needs the slightest commentary, tbh.
Anti-SW sentiment is DEEPLY intertwined with racism and misogyny; and so is anti-trafficking legislation with control of immigration and sexuality, via colonial ideas.

The report exposes the not-so-subtle but often overlooked weave among these topics, which is still very much present to this day.

See below for the second part, as well~

#SexWork #Report #Racism #CommunityReport #Legislation #Antitrafficking #Immigration #Colonialism #History #ESWA #Europe #SWBooks #April2022

«Whoring Art: a Red Light Anthology»

🆔 ISBN: 9-789-08-3453-22-4
🗓️ 21st May 2026
👥 Edited: HXSSY
📔 Editorial: @spookstad 🛒 https://spookstad.boo/
[🔍 Search for the title, although it'll be towards the top for a while]

> What happens when sex workers are in charge of their own image, labor laws, work places, and community spaces?

> Sex work everywhere is facing erasure from public life. In Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District – De Wallen – the combined forces of gentrification, repression, hetero-cis sexism, and stigma are threatening its future. But sex workers have risen up, reclaiming the unconstrained genius and militancy of whores as the key to social transformation.

> This book brings together the voices of sex workers, queer and trans cultural workers, and Amsterdam’s squatting movement, to offer a radical vision of whoring liberated. Whoring Art: A Red Light Anthology is an abundant reimagination of sex work in the city.

> Edited by HXSSY, a former Red Light-based queer sex worker-centered collective led by Mercy St. J, Adanya Dunn, and Anna Torres.

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I think this one speaks for itself. ^~

Amsterdam's Red Light District gets talked about far and wide (often with a fair amount if poison) 'cept by those actually working there. As usual for sex work.

The book is just published — literally release date was three days ago, the website hasn't updated the “preorder” label yet even — so I can't add any sort of review, but I can confidently advance this is a much-needed reframing~

#SWBooks #SexWork #DeWallen #Amsterdam #RedLightDistrict #Anthology #NonFiction #HXSSY #Book #Books #Bookstodon #May2026

«Transactional Intercourse»

👤 Editor: Jack Parker
🗓️ April 27th 2026
🆔 ISBN: 978-17-38495-56-6
🛒 Physical: https://www.jackviolet.store/product/order-transactional-intercourse
🛒 PDF: https://www.jackviolet.store/product/transactional-intercourse-pdf
🛒 EBook (?): https://jackparker.gumroad.com/l/transactionalinter

> Transactional Intercourse is an anthology of trans and intersex sex workers' writing, serving as a snapshot of our experiences in our own words. It includes essays and personal narratives from 30 sex workers who either sell sex directly to clients or make porn, across the sex and gender spectrum.

> I'm tired of looking for stories from trans and intersex sex workers and finding far more instances of people speaking over us than instances where we get to speak for ourselves. I'm angry that when I do find documentaries or writing where we are featured and get the chance to express our thoughts, those involved have frequently gone unpaid and been treated poorly in the process of sharing. I'm devastated that we're so often gawked at or framed as dangerous deviants by people who gain money and notoriety from broadcasting the details of our trauma and ridiculing our joy. We deserve better, and I hope the anthology Transactional Intercourse can be a part of that!

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💙❤️🤍❤️💙
✨ It's here! 🔥
💛💜💛💜💛

Well, it's been for four days, but today is the book recommendation one. 😅
Nevermind tho, let's get to the point: this absolute jewel of a book. 💎

The work is about as self-describing as it can get: a compilation of life stories and reflections of trans and intersex people in the sex trade. ❣️

All three represent collectives that tend to remain on the sidelines and even actively silenced — never mind their intersection…

This book puts the focus right where it belongs: on the people living at these intersections, on their own voices.

It includes both the good, the bad and the ugly — because even among a relatively limited population, sex work experiences are all over the place, and none actually deserves being left out.

Of course, due to practical limitations, there are certainly going to be some that couldn't make it in —no matter how comprehensive it were, there'd always be— but nevertheless, one thing is certain:
You'll hardly find a comparable collection anywhere. 💞

#SexWork #Trans #Intersex #Anthology #SWBooks #TransActionalInterCourse #LGBTIQ #LGBTI #LGBTQI #Book #Books #NonFiction #Bookstodon #April2026

📕 «Working Guys: A Transmasculine Sex Worker Anthology»

👤 Editor: Jack Parker
🗓️ September 2024
🆔 ISBN: 978-17-38495-54-2
🌐 https://workingguys.carrd.co
🛒 Paperback: https://mxjackparker.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-paperback-of-working-guys-a-transmasculine-sex-worker-anthology
🛒 Ebook: https://jackparker.gumroad.com/l/workingguys

> While we are slowly seeing more accounts about the experiences of sex workers being shared, there are large gaps in the representation.

> 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.

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🏳️‍⚧️ We're still pretty close to Trans Day of Visibility.
☂️ And it's “Sex Work Book Friday” or something [yes, I've made that up, but I intend to keep it going].
🌟 So, this book is a PERFECT match. 💖❤️‍🔥

Trans people don't get their voices heard often enough.
That usually goes double for trans men.
Sex workers have as much or worse troubles themselves.

So it readily raises the question… What happens with transmasculine sex workers..?

“Wait, is there such a thing.?!”
Oh, yes there is!
Unsurprisingly though, they're on the deep end of the “ignored” spectrum, as their mere existence tends to make EVERY take on sex work from EVERY side shake pretty badly…
So yeah, one doesn't heard much about them.

I'm not gonna spoil you the fun. ^~
The book is exactly what is says on the tin — and its value ought to be more than self-evident.
Plus, it's really just 5£ (.epub), and waaay better than any beer you might buy instead. ;P

#SWBooks #SexWork #Anthology #Trans #TransMen #TransMasc #Book #Books #Bookstodon #September2024