“Working Sex: Sex Workers Write about a Changing Industry” is a book of stories written by sex workers and compiled by Annie Oakley into this book published by Seal Press. The book is a softcover, black and white page book that is entirely text. The book is 301 pages long and includes 30 different stories. That means that each story averages ten pages. The book took me three hours to read from cover to cover.
The book does say “Working Sex” on the front, but aside from the text, there aren’t any other telling pictures on the book to give away what the book is about. You could read this in public as long as you don’t mind people knowing you are reading about sex workers.
The format of the sex book was really easy to read. The text was actually pretty big in size, so the book isn’t nearly as long as it seems like it should be. The stories are really easy to read.
The stories are written in different formats. The majority of the stories are written in a prose format. There are a couple written in a poetry format. The prose formats are really varied. Some of them tell a story about being with a client while other stories are a bit more vague and hard to understand. The book also features an interview with Gloria Lockett as well as some excerpts from the Anablog which is the blog of the first woman to leave her cam on 24/7 for viewers on the internet.
The stories include a lot of sex worker perspectives. Some of the stories are written by prostitutes who walked the street. Some of the stories are written by current sex workers while others are written by sex workers who are retired from the business. A couple of the stories are written from webcam workers. A couple of the stories are written by a male. As a note for those who would mind, quite a few of the women in the stories mention being under the influence of drugs in their stories.
It was interesting to read this selection. I’ve never known much about sex workers or anything they do. I’ve always been curious, but the majority of what has been portrayed to me is what I see on Law and Order: SVU and other television shows. The stories are all focused on the worker’s experiences, and most of the workers say that they enjoy what they do. They say that, compared to having a “regular” job, they put in a couple of hours of bad work but don’t have to spend the rest of the week working like a typical job would require. Of course, that’s only the opinion of a couple of the writers, but quite a few of the authors parroted those same sentiments.
The majority of the stories are actually really interesting and easy to read. These stories aren’t the typical “this is the funniest part of being a prostitute!” type of stories. Annie Oakley asked the workers to write their honest feelings about being workers and not just to write about some of the funniest or most fetishistic moments of sex work.
I was a bit disappointed by this book though. I feel like I didn’t learn as much as I could have learned from this compilation. Some of the writing was really vague, and while it was interesting to read, I felt like a lot of the writing was overly emotional. Gloria Lockett’s interview was really telling about the sex worker industry, and I just wish Annie Oakley would have included more stories that included some factual information about the sex industry. I felt like I got a good look into the individual workers’ lives but not the industry as a whole. On the flip side of that, it’s easy to look up online statistics about sex work, but getting a personal viewpoint (like in this book) is usually much harder to do.
It’s an interesting book to read, but I wouldn’t call it the end-all guide to learn about sex workers. I feel like it gives a good look into individual sex workers’ lives, but it doesn’t give you a look into the sex industry as a whole. However, the book was definitely entertaining and immersive, and I really did enjoy reading it. Thanks to Seal Press for sending me Working Sex: Sex Workers Write about a Changing Industry.
