Kirjahaku

A taboo-breaking and radically honest account of love, friendship and sex work

Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a provocative and tender reckoning of what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society.In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results. Shane uses her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.” Braiding the personal and the universal, Shane’s memoir is a merciless and moving love letter to straight men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a “rigorous and compulsively readable memoir” (New York magazine) exploring what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society. “A memoir of sex work that is also a poignant love story” —The Washington PostIn her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results. Shane uses her “unsparing honestly” (The New York Times Book Review) and her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at a romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.” Braiding the personal and the universal, An Honest Woman is a merciless and moving love letter to men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

An incisive, intimate diary of moments in the life of a travesti sex worker, from a prominent voice for trans and sex workers' rights in Brazil(So What) If I'm a Puta?, originally published on author Amara Moira's popular blog of the same name, is a series of 44 short cr nicas detailing Moira's entry into and experiences as a travesti sex worker in Brazil. In a brazen, funny, and at times heartbreaking voice, Moira provides a revealing account of her life as a sex worker and self-described "travesti putafeminista," exploring the political and personal textures of her encounters with the men who buy sex from her. Woven through Moira's no-holds-barred essays are reflections on transition, safe sex, desire and being desired, violence and consent, whore- and transphobia, bisexuality, and feminism. Ultimately, her position and her reason for writing ring clear as a bell: "I prefer to give a voice to us prostitutes," she writes, "to listen to our stories and demands, to fight so that we have full autonomy to choose which path we want."