Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work

By Melissa Grant

“An important contribution to debates around sex and work ... deserves to be read.” Nina Power

The sex industry is an endless source of prurient drama for the mainstream media. Recent years have seen a panic over "online red-light districts," which supposedly seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel raid. The current trend for writing about and describing actual experiences of sex work fuels a culture obsessed with the behaviour of sex workers. Rarely do these fearful dispatches come from sex workers themselves, and they never seem to deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their condition, and the industry simply abolished — a position common among feminists and conservatives alike. In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the "legitimate" economy only harms those who perform sexual labor. In Playing the Whore, sex workers' demands, too long relegated to the margins, take center stage: sex work is work, and sex workers' rights are human rights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verso
• Release date: Mar 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781781686386

Reviews for Playing the Whore

[askelmore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Sex work can indeed be empowering. But that is not the point. Money is the fucking point.”
- Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore

Growing up I had three basic images of sex work (although I didn’t call it that then): the Julia Roberts / Pretty Woman version; the desperate, drug addicted woman; and the ‘sex slave’ in another country who was ‘rescued’ regularly on Dateline and 48 Hours. I didn’t spend time thinking about sex workers, but I did wonder why sex work was illegal in most places.

Recently I’ve become more interested in labor rights; specifically how society views certain types of labor as worthy (of money or legality) and others as deserving of criminalization or at least disdain. I live in Seattle, where the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour was met with such charming arguments from non-shift workers as ‘what did a McDonald’s worker do to deserve that? I barely make that!’ as though people in the fast food industry aren’t working just as hard as people sitting in air conditioned offices, able to take coffee and bathroom breaks whenever they want.

This interest led me to Ms. Grant’s book. She takes a perspective that is missing in coverage of sex work and workers – one that does not start by asking ‘should people do sex work’ but instead asks what can we do to improve the lives of the people who work in that industry. The book is well-written and educated me on the topic, but when asked to describe it in a few sentences I have a hard time. Each chapter feels like a separate essay in a broader collection, and initially I was not sure of the main purpose of the book, as it covers a broad area. It is not a linear history of sex work, nor is it an argument (primarily) for the decriminalization or legalization of sex work. It is more than that.

Going back through my notes and rereading the portions I highlighted does bring more clarity to me. That is a function not of Ms. Grant’s writing, but of my need to re-read the book to better take in all of the information she shares. Her purpose seems to be to point out all of the ways in which people who seek to help sex workers fail, and in doing so Ms. Grant draws the reader’s attention to the need for the reader to take actions in solidarity with these workers, and support those who can change the conditions of their lives for the better, not pull them out of sex work or make it more dangerous for them to perform the work they do.

Ms. Grant illustrates this in many ways, including critiquing the fight against online posting of sex worker ads and the large anti-sex work organizations that purport to rescue sex workers from horrible conditions. Ms. Grant points out that so many of the ‘rescued’ end up in worse situations, with less agency than they had when doing sex work, and concludes that this stems from the inability of so many to see these women and men as people doing a job and not as one-dimensional ‘whores.’

“The goal, these antiprostitute advocates say, of eradicating men’s desire for paid sex isn’t ‘antisex’ but to restore the personhood of prostitutes, that is, of people who are already people except to those who claim to want to fix them.”

That’s the point, really. Sex workers are people first, people who make their money in the sex work industry. The problems these workers face doesn’t stem from the morality of sex work – they originate with the rest of society, which is invested in making sex work dangerous. The question the reader is left with – that I am left with – is what am I going to do to benefit these workers?

[mmaestiho · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was mostly very well done. I think it was it was a great exploration of this topic and takedown of many of the arguments in this issue. Even more so, it called out a variety of problems feminism promotes when dealing with this issue including transexclusion, the perfect victim, and forgetting/ignoring that race/sexuality/everything besides white, middle-class, straight, and cis exists.

Even though it was pretty accessible in writing, I wouldn't say it was an entry-level book. There were some places where you had to have known the theory behind it to understand what she was explaining. However, overall very well done and I enjoyed it immensely and will be checking out other works referenced within it.

[gregorybrown-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Grant's work is great for foregrounding sex workers' own agency and humanity, rather than using them as pawns or allegories for a larger morality. This seems like a trivial bar to clear, but so few writers even make the attempt, and reading Grant is so damn refreshing as a result. Sadly, though, the piece doesn't have much structure to hold it together. So you get a bunch of great insights that don't really cohere into a book or a wider plan. Still a really worthwhile and important read, but it feels like the prelude to something even better from her soon. :[

[marthajeanne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book interesting and thought provoking. On the other hand, I am not willing to condemn the recent legal changes here that limit prostitutes working on the streets in areas where people live. These laws have freed other women who had become afraid to leave their homes after dark. They also seem to have reduced the number of young teenagers trafficed from Eastern Europe and forced into sex work by their illegal status. But I do understand that she is overstating her position in opposition to real problems with those she is reacting against.

[reganrule · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The overall thrust of Playing the Whore can be summed up in two fairly short sentences: 1. In the public debate regarding sex work and its improvement/eradication, the voices of sex workers have not been heard. 2. Sex workers' work should be recognized as labor and treated as such, not criminalized. Gira Grant is at once a reporter, sociologist, activist, historian, and a sex worker. This book traces the ways in which the policing of sex work endangers women and trans lives, rather than preserves and protects them. Anti-prostitution feminists purport to stand in solidarity with sex workers by promising to "rescue them," but they have not bothered to ask sex workers if they want to be rescued. Citing a USAID report, M.G.G. claims that 88% of them have made the uncoerced decision to pursue sex work as their preferred form of labor. Rather than focusing on the 12% of sex workers that genuinely need rescuing (they are victims of human trafficking), anti-prostitution groups cast a wider net, and view all sex workers as in need of rescuing. Their campaigns against sex work/escort ads (in print and online)have pushed sex workers ever more to the margins of society. Without doing anything to eradicate sex work, anti-prostitution groups just make it more difficult (and dangerous) for sex workers to get their jobs done. There is a lot to chew over in this book. Not being a sex worker, M.G.G. reminds me towards the end, I am not in a particularly good position to comment or reflect on how the lives of sex workers can be improved, at least not if I have never taken the time to listen to a sex worker discuss her labor as labor without moralizing or fearing it.

[katsmiao · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I found this book extremely difficult to read.

the majority of the time I couldn't follow the author's arguments, or at least my train of thought did not follow that of the author. The author's conclusions and arguments for the most part did not make sense to me.

I was extremely interested in this topic,and don't have a lot of prior knowledge, so was very disappointed in the writing of this book.

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the first in-depth reading I've done on sex work and sex workers and I found it fascinating and eye opening. I especially enjoyed the author positing that instead of sex work being oppressive or empowering--as different sides in the feminist argument over it insist--that it is value neutral and that it's okay to be that way.

I think I'll be returning to this book again as I continue my research in this area.

(Provided by publisher)