sex industry

Whose personal is more political? Experience in contemporary feminist politics

An academic article by Alison Phipps about how some feminists deem their traumatic personal experiences more worthy than others in order to negate the rights and organising attempts of sex workers and transwomen.

E20: The Exotic Dancers Union

Podcast episode about the workers at the Lusty Lady strip club in San Francisco who in 1997 were the first women who managed to unionise a strip joint in the United States, and who later took it over and ran it as a workers’ co-operative.

In the mirror - Krailat

Kon Krailat's short fiction about an alienated male sex worker.

The woman in present society

A anarcha-feminist call to arms to working class women, published in Italian in Argentina in January 1896.

Alexandra Kollontai argues for sending sex workers to forced labour camps for 'labour desertion', 1921

Kollontai discusses prostitution in the USSR, stating that the short-term solution should be to place prostitutes into forced labour camps if they do not have additional regular employment. Kollontai argues against the criminalisation of selling sex as such, but takes the position that sex work is not productive labour but instead 'taking from the rations of others'. Professional prostitutes were to be treated as 'labour deserters' justifying the same treatment as 'speculators, traders and hoarders'.

Lenin orders the massacre of sex workers, 1918

Lenin's letter to G. F. Fyodorov ordering "mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like." in Nizhni, where the Czech white forces were amassing. Kaganovich implemented the terror although while there is some evidence of a sex industry operating in Nizhni (see comments) actual executions during the terror are estimated to be in the low hundreds and predominately men.

Sex, work and sex work - Red and Black Leeds

A pamphlet compiling interviews with and articles by members of Red and Black Leeds (RABL), giving an anarchist-communist perspective on sex work, from the perspective of anarchist-communist sex workers.

No justice, no piece! A working girl's guide to labor organizing in the sex industry

A manual created by the Exotic Dancers Union in San Francisco from their experiences organizing a union at the Lusty Lady strip club in 1997. A valuable book both for those organizing sex workers and workers in general. A good overview of the NLRB election process, but also general tips on organizing and direct action.