Prostitution Narratives is a compelling collection of first-person accounts of survival in the brutal prostitution market in industrialised countries. The women describe the way prostitution destroys a persons identity, health and self-worth, leaving them without safety or a rightful place in the world. The world owes a debt of gratitude to these women for their courage in speaking out against the most cruel, organized economic system in the world. These narratives should serve as a rallying cry for action to end this modern-day slave trade.
Donna M. Hughes, Professor & Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Womens Studies, University of Rhode Island
Whatever your stand on prostitution, its the first-hand stories of women that have to be listened to. These accounts are among the most unsettling you will ever read, dispelling the comforting fairy tales our society has built around sex work.
Steve Biddulph AM, author of The New Manhood
Prostitution Narratives is a call to revolutionary action. In these pages you will graphically understand that prostitution is the degradation of and cruelty to women. You will be sickened. You will be enraged. You will be filled with disgust that this sexual violence and enslavement of women and girls not only is allowed to continue but is facilitated by governments and even so-called human rights organizations. Most of all, you will be inspired by the courage, resilience and fortitude of these survivors. You cannot read this book and say I didnt know.
Kathy Sloan, feminist advocate and author specializing in the sexual and reproductive objectification of women
Prostitution Narratives reveals the shallowness of the prostitution-is-a-choice mantra that supporters of the sexual exploitation industries peddle. The real choice lies with men: stop participating in the sexual use and abuse of women that is at the heart of prostitution, pornography, and stripping.
Robert Jensen, University of Texas, Austin, author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity
In this book, brave articulate prostitution survivors describe the myriad forms of violence they suffered in stripclubs, web-camming, pornography and other forms of prostitution. At last their voices join those of other women survivors, of rape, child rape, violence against women in the home, whose knowledge and activism inspired feminist campaigns and changes in the law. It is hard to believe anyone reading this book could still seriously say that prostitution is a job like any other and that it should be called sex work. This book is an invaluable foundation for defining prostitution as a form of mens violence that should be outlawed in law and culture.
Sheila Jeffreys, Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, author of The Idea of Prostitution and The Industrial Vagina
An antidote to the hollow cant that prostitution is inevitable, a choice, and just a job like any other. These are the voices that tell the truth about prostitution. These are the voices that the media ignores. These are the voices that Amnesty International rejected when it resolved to decriminalize pimps and prostitution users. A heartrendingly frank and honest account about the brutality of prostitution from the women who have been there.
Janice Raymond, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, and Board of Directors, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
How precious the voices of women! Those trying to end male violence against women are confirmed by this truth-telling. Their valiant endurance and escapes confirm what we theorized: that prostitution is best understood as an institution of mens dominance of women, its methods as violent and oppressive as any right wing dictators death squad.
Lee Lakeman, feminist activist, front line anti-violence worker at the Vancouver Rape Relief and Womens Shelter, Canada
Reading these generous Survivor Narratives is a humbling experience for any man. Hearing this common language may be the key to substantive solidarity with women, against profiteers and politicians.
Martin Dufresne, Tradfem translation collective, anti-sexism activist, Canada
These survivors of prostitution are the leading edge of the abolitionist movement; their voices are the bedrock on which our movement is built. Like slave narratives, prostitution survivors truths are compelling, revealing, and deeply disturbing.
Melissa Farley, PhD, Executive Director, Prostitution Research & Education
This book is courageous and lucid truth-telling about a global industry that anyone who is remotely thoughtful or ethical would know is saturated with extreme forms of exploitation, crime, violence and systemic corruption. Their voices are a wake-up call to all of those who claim to defend human rights.
Abigail Bray, academic, author of Misogyny Re-loaded and co-editor of Big Porn Inc.
Prostitution Narratives sunders any notions we have that the majority of sex workers have full choice, full bodily autonomy, in the sex trade. Their voices are powerful, disturbing, complicated, honest and extraordinarily brave. Listen to their words. And pass them on.
Victoria A. Brownworth, columnist, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of Lost in America: The Story of Juvenile Prostitution.
Powerful and painful. Read it and weep. This book is an essential tool in the fight for freedom.
Danielle Strickland, anti-trafficking advocate and author
Caroline Norma, PhD, is a lecturer in the school of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University and a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA). She is also the author of The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars (Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016).
Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, speaker, commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls. Co-founder of Collective Shout: For a world free of sexploitation, Melindas books include Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (2009) and Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry (2011, co-edited with Abigail Bray).
Other books by Caroline Norma
The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery
During the China and Pacific Wars (2016)
Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting:
Context, Challenges and Strategies
(with Sedat Mulayim and Miranda Lai, 2015)
Other books by Melinda Tankard Reist
Big Porn Inc:
Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
(co-edited with Abigail Bray, 2011)
Getting Real:
Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (2009)
Defiant Birth:
Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics (2006)
Giving Sorrow Words:
Womens Stories of Grief After Abortion (2000)
