Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival by Natalie West

2 reviews

bashsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

A must-read by anyone who supports the #MeToo movement, We Too collects the stories of a group often cast aside or maligned by mainstream feminism - sex workers of all types, across race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability. In these essays, they tackle the issues that feed into the assaults of sex workers - social stigmas, the tensions between sex workers and the US government, the complicated happenings within their workplaces, their relationships with families both found and birth, and their fights for survival and healing. Several of these essays were absolutely revolutionary to me - from discussions of sex work during the pandemic to the uneasy concept many of us have of what constitutes sexual assault. My favorites were: "Your Mother Is a Whore: On Sex Work and Motherhood" by Jessie Sage, "How to Not Be an Asshole When Your Sex Worker Partner Is Assaulted at Work" by Maggie McMuffin, "Undercover Agents" by Norma Jean Almodovar, "The New Orleans Police Raid That Launched a Dancer Resistance" by Melissa Gira Grant, "What Media Coverage of James Deen's Assaults Means for Sex Workers," by Cyd Nova, "Are You Safe?" by Reese Piper, "When She Says Woman, She Does Not Mean Me," by Lorelei Lee, "Going from Homeless Trans Youth to Holistic Caregiver" by Ceyenne Doroshow with Zackary Drucker, and "We All Deserve to Heal" by Yin Q.

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witwickan's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring

4.0

This is one of the only anthologies I've read where I didn't have to skip half the chapters. The vast majority of it is really great and illuminating and while I'm not a sex worker I am a queer traumatized slut and a lot of these chapters felt really empowering.

I do take issue with what I felt was tokenization of transfem sex workers while not including many of them and iirc only having one masc writer. There are a ton of nonbinary writers which I really appreciated but the vast majority of them were fem(me) and not transfem.

Overall I would really recommend this book and I genuinely loved it. I learned so much and it's a new favorite. It's just somewhat limited in its scope.

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