A cutting-edge volume on current trends in sex work, from sugar relationships and cyber brothels to financial domination, sex worker activism, and feminist porn
Sex is for sale in more ways than ever. It can be bought and sold online, in sex clubs, on the street, and around the world. As with many industries, discrimination, exploitation, and inequality persist in sex work. Yet it also offers autonomy, job satisfaction, and even pleasurable experiences for those involved. Sex Work Today explores these contradictions, offering an intimate look at the benefits and challenges of sex work across geographic contexts.
Featuring thirty-one original essays by sex workers, advocates, researchers, and activists, Sex Work Today is the first compilation of research on new forms of digital sex such as camming, sugar dating, and AI sex dolls. Providing a lens to understand contemporary labor dynamics and the nature of sex work itself, this collection captures formerly ignored aspects of the sex industry including: fatphobia and disability; transmasculine and nonbinary sex workers; racialized emotional labor in the digital sex industry; high job satisfaction among professional dominatrixes; and sex worker scholars.
With federal policies ostensibly aimed at combating sex trafficking–affecting all sex workers–understanding this industry is more vital than ever. Decentering Western, white, cisgender voices, Sex Work Today underscores the global repercussions of these misaligned policies, which make sex work more challenging and less safe, and provides valuable insights for those seeking to shape policies, challenge prejudices, and foster a safer and more equitable world for all.
Sex Work Today, by Bernadette Barton
Bernadette Barton (Ph.D. University of Kentucky 2000) is Professor of Sociology and Director of Gender Studies at Morehead State University. Her research and teaching interests include sexuality, gender, popular culture, religion, qualitative methods, happiness and the sex industry.
Bernadette's scholarship explores the experiences of members of marginalized groups. She is most fascinated by issues of transformation and social justice, such as: what makes someone conscious of social inequality? What causes people to change oppressive attitudes and behaviors? How can we really see one another across vast differences of geography, gender, race, class and sexual identity? She is is co-editor of Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the 21st Century (November 2024), the author of The Pornification of America: How Raunch Culture is Ruining Our Society (2021), Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers (2017), Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays (2012), Stripped: Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers (2006), and co-author of Queer Resistance in Appalachia (forthcoming 2025).