Natalie West - How to Build a Hookers Army: Essays on Sex Work and Survival

Advance praise for
We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival

A necessary, wide-ranging, preconception-smashing collection of essays by writers who speak from experience within the sex industry. At turns, these essays are devastating, astute, funny, and heart opening. Taken together, they are a welcome antidote to the reductive narratives about sex worker experiences that we hear too often. We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival is an anthology that honors the humanity, diversity, and depth of insight within the field. Reading it made me want to stand up and cheer.

MELISSA FEBOS, author of Abandon Me: Memoirs

This incredible anthology has pulled together personal stories of sex work that speak to a reality that only so many of us know. Beyond the buzzworthy story of selling sex is the truth and lived experience, and the understanding of value, self-worth, self-pity, and self-empowerment. We Toos firsthand accounts will give perspective and nuance to the sex work is work conversation in this new era of informed consent.

LOTUS LAIN, adult performer and sex worker rights advocate

We Too embodies the rallying cry Nothing about us without us. Featuring incisive essays by sex workers of all backgrounds, this vital anthology centers diverse narratives about sex work, labor rights, sexual assault, trauma, and healing that too often go unheard. Raw, gut-wrenching, and transformative, We Too is a powerful addition to the canon of books by sex workers and for sex workers and their allies.

KRISTEN J. SOLLE, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive

We Too offers a sharp indictment of this world and a warm invitation to build another one. Against a #MeToo movement that represents some at a high cost to others, We Too places sex workers at the front lines of an anti-violence movement for the rest of us. We Toos vision knows that the state is no ally, that freedom wont come without solidarity, and that real cultures of consent will come from the ground up.

HEATHER BERG, author of Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism

We Too is a powerful, engrossing collection of essays, each lending a unique perspective from a courageous and resilient voice. Together, these essays constitute a critical resource for understanding the complex and diverse world of sex worker experience.

ISA MAZZEI, author of Camgirl

The Me Too movement, started by Tarana Burke, was formed to fight for the working class, often left vulnerable to sexual violence with little to no justice. This anthology examines that sexual violence and labor with a lens aimed specifically at how sex workers experience and witness it. Documenting personal accounts of sexual violence in the workplace, We Too can be a hard pill to swallow but presents a path toward healing from and combating rape culture from people who have survived on the front lines. This anthology brilliantly showcases the billowing voice of the sex worker community and how it supports and should be supported by feminist movements like Me Too.

COURTNEY TROUBLE, founder of NoFauxxx.com

In We Too, the voices of those within the sex worker community come together on topics that dont get much exposure outside our own private gatherings. This collection is incisive, generous, vulnerable, and insightful with a fair dash of humor and verve. It should come as no surprise that sex workers thinking and writing on harassment and interpersonal violence are much more multidimensional, tender, and thoughtful than most mainstream intellectuals on the topic. Its so important that these stories are heard as told by us.

RACHEL RABBIT WHITE, author of Porn Carnival

We Too is a crucial, brutally necessary book that works to create needed intersectionality within the Me Too movement and feminism generally. These stunning outsider voices are thick with inside information, personal and political, and most importantly theyre great, gripping reads. Im very grateful for this collection.

MICHELLE TEA, author of Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms

WE TOO

ESSAYS ON SEX WORK AND SURVIVAL

EDITED BY NATALIE WEST

WITH TINA HORN

FOREWORD BY SELENA THE STRIPPER

Published in 2021 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

First Feminist Press edition 2021

Compilation and introduction copyright 2021 by Natalie West

Foreword copyright 2021 by Selena the Stripper

Individual copyright retained by the respective contributors

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First printing February 2021

Cover design by Jacqueline Frances

Text design by Drew Stevens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: West, Natalie, 1985- editor. | Horn, Tina, editor. | Selena, the Stripper, writer of foreword.

Title: We too : essays on sex work and survival / edited by Natalie West with Tina Horn ; foreword by Selena the Stripper.

Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York City : The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020036576 (print) | LCCN 2020036577 (ebook) | ISBN 9781558612853 (paperback) | ISBN 9781558612877 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sex workers--United States--Biography. | Sex workers--United States--Social conditions. | Sex workers--Civil rights--United States. | Sex-oriented businesses--Social aspects--United States.

Classification: LCC HQ144.W478 A3 2021 (print) | LCC HQ144.W478 (ebook) | DDC 338.4/73067--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036576

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036577

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

SELENA THE STRIPPER

NATALIE WEST

ASHLEY PAIGE

JESSIE SAGE

JUNIPER FITZGERALD

ARABELLE RAPHAEL

MAGGIE McMUFFIN

AK SAINI

CHRISTA MARIE SACCO

BRIT SCHULTE
with JUDY SZURGOT and ALISHA WALKER

VANESSA CARLISLE

NORMA JEAN ALMODOVAR

MELISSA GIRA GRANT

SONYA ARAGON

ANTONIA CRANE

CYD NOVA

LAUREN KILEY

LINA BEMBE

HELLO ROOSTER

femi babylon (formerly known as suprihmb)

REBELLE CUNT

MILCAH HALILI and APRIL FLORES

DIA DYNASTY

REESE PIPER

TINA HORN

ANONYMOUS

LORELEI LEE

IGNACIO G. HUTA XEITI RIVERA

AUDACIA RAY

CEYENNE DOROSHOW with ZACKARY DRUCKER

LOLA DAVINA

GODDESS CORI

YIN Q

VANESSA CARLISLE

Foreword

SELENA THE STRIPPER

D uring the 2017 resurgence of the Me Too movement, you may not have heard much from sex workers. Were we there? Did you somehow miss us? As a sex worker, I can attest that we were there, and some of us spoke openly about surviving sexual assault, but many of us were also reluctant to come forward. Those of us on the front lines of the fight for decriminalization often hesitate to admit to the abuses we have faced, for fear that our opponents will use our trauma against us to further crack down on our industry. Those of us who perform services outside of the protected spectrum of legal sex work often remain silent for fear of incrimination and prosecution. Considering that society has historically sided with predators, all victims of sexual assault are forced to make the difficult decision of whether or not to come forward. The difficulty of prosecuting sexual assault is only exacerbated when defining it within a commercial sex exchange. And so we look to our community. We share our stories and protect each other. We confide in each other because the rest of the world writes off our assaults as part of the job. This book exists to create space for our stories. It is where we acknowledge the trauma that has touched so many of our lives. It is also an incredible show of resilience and diversity. This is a safe space, for those of us who are denied safety everywhere else. And so I begin with my own confession.