Revolting prostitutes: The fight for sex workers’ rightsMollySmith and JunoMacLondon: Verso, 2018, 278 pages, ISBN 139781786633606, £14.99 paperback

As the world of work changes, the concept of labour has also evolved. Precarious and nonstandard workers have joined together to gain rights and improve working conditions. For nonstandard workers, these efforts begin with the need to create legitimacy of their labour, often through the establishment of a shared sense of identity as workers. Prostitutes, strippers, burlesque dancers and those involved in the sale of various sexual services are one such group that have tied collective action efforts to a collective identity label. This group of labour activists refer to themselves as sex workers and use this label as a way of uniting a diverse set of workers. Smith and Mac's book, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, details the collective action efforts of sex workers in their struggle to obtain rights around the world. The book consists of eight chapters. Each chapter outlines a different facet of the debate around sex worker labour rights and policy around the world. The book begins by familiarizing the reader with feminist discourse on the nature of sexuality, gender and work. Next, the authors prime the reader for a deeper discussion of the issues with an intersectional exploration of labour migration and how geography impacts labour market access. The remainder of the book is dedicated to in-depth discussions of various legal models for regulating sex work. In Chapter 1, ‘Sex’, the authors acknowledge that there can be no discussion of female labour of any kind without the application of feminist theory of the morality of sex. In this way they examine the role of patriarchal double standards surrounding female sexuality and sex. The authors are critical of tropes which reduce sex workers to idealized extremes. Examples are discussed such as sex workers as childlike innocent victims, antisocial vessels of disease, benevolent caregivers to society's undesirables and empowered expressions of the highly sexual. These examples depict the polarity of views which reduce sex workers to stereotypes, allowing no room for the nuance of lived experiences. The deep historical roots of these images of sex workers are discussed along with how they dictate contemporary regulatory policies. In Chapter 2, ‘Work’, Smith and Mac begin the discussion of sex worker rights not simply with the morality of the selling of sex but with the morality of work itself. The authors’ deep exploration of the modern concept of work begins with refuting theorists that dismiss sex workers ‘as not real workers’ (p. 45) by outlining how those critics draw on classist notions of idealized workplace conditions and the nature of work. Concepts such as fulfilling work coupled with autonomy and self-actualization are represented as ideologies of those with significant economic and class power, disconnected from the realities of the economically disenfranchised and lower socioeconomic classes. Smith and Mac contrast the physical, intellectual and emotional exhaustion linked to the vast majority of work with capitalist notions of morality in productivity. After exploring both sides of the debate on sex worker labour rights, the authors take the middle line between carceral feminists who view all sex work as inherently exploitative and a form of sex trafficking, and those that view all sex work as empowering sexual expression. One-dimensional images of sex work are discussed as causing the greatest harm when employed by activists as they lead to calls for policy which fails to address the holistic needs of sex workers or the conditions which lead individuals to join the industry. Sex work is represented as a societal and economic reality, existing both within social constructs of sexuality, morality and patriarchy, and for the authors and their call for labour rights, external to such debates. The authors critique the political weaponization of sex worker complaints of working conditions as a way to dismiss the legitimacy of their status as workers. Smith and Mac excuse themselves from the debate of sex work as a social good or ill, clarifying their position that a desire for labour reform and rights within an industry does not imply a blanket endorsement of the nature of the work. In this way the authors prepare readers for a discussion of harm reduction by allowing all workers access to the existing protections of labour law. In Chapter 3, ‘Borders’, the concept of human sexual trafficking is discussed within the frame of racialized, neocolonial, anti-migrant policy. The authors give a thorough depiction of how these policies impact the lives of those they are supposedly enacted to protect through statements and cases of those who suffer under these laws, providing real world context to a seldom heard viewpoint, that of the migrant women themselves. In this way the authors allow the view of anti-trafficking measures through a lens that highlights racialized moral ideologies in which the state acts as the white saviour. The cases described involve various situations ranging from those who cross borders with the intent to sell sex, those that did so as a means of survival following migration and those who found themselves coercively reliant on sex work to repay those who smuggled or otherwise aided their border crossing. The common thread in all situations is economic need and cumbersome and restrictive immigration law which led to their undocumented migration in the first place. Smith and Mac make a compelling argument as to the ways in which human trafficking policy feeds the industrial prison complex. Still, they fall short in describing the true labour market impacts of increasingly closed borders. This requires the reader to infer from the words of the migrants themselves, that freedom of movement to follow economic opportunities is highly dependent on the birth lottery of race, class and gender. Some migrants experience the de facto categorization of sex trafficking victim simply by being female migrants of certain national origins. Current human trafficking policy enshrines the global north as exploiter of the global south by inscribing racial and gendered narratives on the lives and bodies of migrant women. It is in the discussion of anti-trafficking law that the authors find the deepest connection between patriarchy and female labour. Policymakers eager to control border access to ensure superiority in economic access use sex trafficking as a symbol and tool. Migrants who engage in sex work both of their own volition and those undergoing exploitation are described as wayward youth no matter their age and viewed as incapable of expressing sound reasoning without the guidance of the state. In this way, adult women are infantilized wards of the patriarchy, with police acting not as liberators but the physical embodiment of masculine control. Smith and Mac describe states as touting benevolent concern while pumping funding into militarized immigration forces instead of welfare programmes thereby reducing services to those who are true victims of exploitation in favour of deportation as a solution. To Smith and Mac these policies unite all migrants engaged in selling sex no matter the conditions in one option they do not want, forcible deportation. The remaining four chapters are dedicated to ethnographic accounts of sex workers, contrasting their experiences of life and work under different regulatory approaches. Each chapter provides an account of one of the three main policies, full criminalization, legalization and decriminalization. In Chapter 4, ‘A Victorian Hangover: Great Britain’, the concept of partial criminalization is discussed in the United Kingdom. There, the buying and selling of sexual services is legal while many contradictory policies remain in place to create de facto criminalization. Chapter 5, ‘Prison Nation: The United States, South Africa, and Kenya’, discusses countries with full criminalization where laws target all involved in the sale of sex, including workers, clients and third parties ranging from managers to landlords where transactions take place. Chapters 6 and 7, ‘The People's Home: Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and Canada’ and ‘Charmed Circle: Germany, Netherlands, and Nevada’, discuss various incarnations of legal models around the world. Legalization refers to myriad legal systems which address sex work through the enaction of new policies. One example discussed is The Swedish Model, which decriminalizes the actions of sex workers while criminalizing the purchase of sex and actions of third parties. The authors discuss issues such as the reduction of worker safety due to a need for increased secrecy and increased economic insecurity of workers who must lower their prices as clients experience increased opportunity costs. In the following chapter other models such as those seen in Germany and the Netherlands create routes to legal sex work through heavily regulated bureaucratic channels. Smith and Mac find fault with these models as well, describing them as creating barriers to independent work forcing workers into the capitalist oligarchy of regulated brothels. The final chapter, ‘No Silver Bullet: Aotearoa (New Zealand) and New South Wales’, closes the book with discussion of full decriminalization in which all parties involved in sex work are decriminalized and regulated only through pre-existing labour laws. Ethnographic accounts of workers under this model in New Zealand and New South Wales are presented to highlight the experience of improved conditions. Smith and Mac reiterate their call for harm reduction without delusions of elimination, titling the chapter ‘No Silver Bullet’ and including many examples in which workers continue to suffer due to gaps in support services. The harm of austerity policies is cited as increasing economic insecurity for the most vulnerable members of society. These policies are represented as potentially factoring into decisions to engage in the selling of sex for survival and causing increased reliance on ever dwindling non-governmental organizations and religious organizations for those seeking support to transition out of the industry. The struggle of all precarious workers is highlighted by the lack of access to pensions and other benefits afforded to those in standard employment. The book ends with the plight of those who remain criminalized even in countries where decriminalization reigns, such as undocumented migrants. The realities and specific concerns of migrant workers were laudably treated as intertwined with the wider call for sex worker labour rights rather than a fringe offshoot. This well-researched and in-depth look into the modern incarnation of the sex worker labour movement adds a concise summary of the call for access to labour rights as a harm reduction strategy to the current body of literature's focus on collective identity and affective benefits of labour organizing (Aveling, Cornish, & Oldmeadow, 2009; Hardy & Cruz, 2019; van der Meulen, 2012). However, the value of the emic perspective has some trade-offs and results in the occasional straying from strict academic style. Its greatest weakness is a general omission of the current role of sex worker labour unions and advocacy groups. While frustrating for those seeking deeper documentation of the contemporary movement, it works to depoliticize a highly charged topic, resting the work in a moderate leftist call for simple access to existing labour laws without endorsement of any particular group. Overall, the book acts as a pulse point for the modern labour movement in which activists call for the union of all workers in a fight against capitalism, leveraging existing bureaucratic channels rather than overthrowing them entirely, eroding oppressive power structures through equitable access to protections and walking the moderate line of reducing harm while enhancing personal autonomy.

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