Jane Kelly reviews Melissa Gira Grant's book published by Verso Books in collaboration with Jaco bin Magazine, 2014, 144 pp, £8.99 Written by a journalist and former Melissa Gira Grant sex worker, this book turns on its head the commonplace ap proach to sex work. Rather than discrediting the workers and their clients, or calling on police to arrest clients leaving sex workers without any means of survival, this argues for the legalisa tion of sex work and its clients. She argues that sex work is work and sex workers are at work. The writer bases her arguments on the rights of sex workers, the rights of clients and turns on its head the usual attack against men who use sex workers. She shows how policing of sex work makes it more dangerous for the women (and the men) and does nothing for their safety. She shows how those who want to 'help' prostitutes and sex workers do the very opposite. Helping sex workers by criminalising the men who use them is a contra diction in terms, for if the sex worker has to work in hidden places, she is more at risk than if it he can work in safe spaces. Those who want to outlaw such work do so by attacking the 'glamourisation' of sex workers, but ignore the pervasiveness of such 'glamour, in advertising for example. They ignore the continuous line of sexualised imagery - from TV commercials, photographs of film stars, models on the cat walk to prostitutes - positing one set as OK while the other is unacceptable. The division between 'legitimate' sex work, for example stripping or posing * Culture for pornographic images, and sex work that involves actual sex, is false for there is a continuum, a line of similar images of women that may start with a prostitute, but goes on to include models, adverts, right up to informal photos taken by a friend. That is not to say that we cannot analyse such images: we should make a critique of them, but the line of divide is false. There is not one form of sex work. There are many facets to it, whether street hustling, hostessing, stripping, performing sex for web cams, all can be described as prostitution, but some do not see their clients while others perform sex with them. The stereotype of a sex worker in short skirt and heels bending over a car to speak to its driver has become the symbol of the prostitute to stand in for all sex work, yet it is a lazy stereotype, not only because it hides that woman's other activities - shopping for food, looking after children, watching TV - but it also because it stands in for all sorts of other sex work. For many women, prostitution is an easier way to earn a living than many 'legitimate' jobs. Working on a zero-hours contract, at the mercy of the company, reduces it workers totally to the needs of the employer. Selling sex can be organised to suit the prostitute, when, where, with whom and how she The sex worker is silent in the arguments anti-prostitution campaigners use, they are 'spoken for rather than allowed to speak quotes Jill Nagle in Whores and Other Feminists, 'one could argue that the production of feminist discourse around prostitu tion by non-prostitutes alienates the labourer herself from the pro cess of her own representation.' They give voice to the voiceless but ignore the actual content of prostitutes speaking for themThe book puts an interesting argument. Refusing to accept everyday stereotypes of the prostitute, the one image that stands in for all sex work, she argues for decriminalisation and giving sex workers a voice. A voice to put forward their de mands, to fight for their rights and to overcome the stigma of The one criticism I have is that in arguing for the right of women to sell sex, there is no discussion of the men who often control prostitutes, for example bringing women from poverty abroad, on false promises of good jobs, and forcing them against their wishes to sell sex. The book ignores the role of such men confining her arguments to the rights of women who have chosen to work as sex workers. However the author does not claim to speak on all aspects of prostitution, she is against the all-pervasive argument put by anti-prostitution Nonetheless it is a refreshing and well-argued book, turning old stereotypes on their head and posing sex work in a new rela tionship to the rest of paid work. Rejecting much previous work on the subject, where the sex worker is spoken for rather than able speaks as someone who has cussed the ideas in the book with others who still sell sex, dis mantles pervasive ideas about their lives and opens up a new way to think about the subject.
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BANKOCRACY BANKOCRACY Price £15/€20/$20 Governments of industrialised coun tries have dramatically increased public debt to bail out private banks after the financial meltdown. Paying debts and reducing fiscal deficits have become the perfect pretexts to enforce austerity measures. This book explores how the crisis developed: the consequences of deregulating the banking system, the logic underpinning private banks' responses, and the crimes they perpetrate daily with the collusion of governments and central banks. The central theme of this highly informative, lucid, and very careful study is the current financial crisis, which elites present "as the motive justifying the biggest offensive since the Second World War against the economic and social rights of the people of Europe," and of the US as well..... Valuable and impressive. - Noam Chomsky. Eric Toussaint provides a comprehensive analysis of the deregulation of the banking system and finance before and after the Great Recession, and of the effects of the "Bankocracy" on the lives of people. He skillfully presents the complex mechanisms and instruments the financial sector has developed in a language which is accessible to anyone interested in understanding the current crisis. - Özlem Onaran, Professor at the University of Greenwich.
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TAK RIGHT IN EUROPE THE FAR RIGHT IN EUROPE Authors include Michael Lowy, Phil Hearse, Adam Fabry and Manuel Kellner. Edited by Fred Leplat Price: £12/€18/$18 Nearly 70 years after the fall of the Nazi regime, the far right and even fascism are again a significant threat in Europe. In the May 2014 European Parliament elections, organisations with a range of fascist, racist and anti-migrant ideologies won significant votes in a number of European countries. The National Front topped the poll in France and explicitly Nazi parties won seats in countries like Germany and Greece. This book is survey of the far right in seven countries of Europe with different political histories: Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden. The survey, by activists and researchers from these countries, reveals a
a contribution to understand th
lature of the far right, and to develo threat. xenophobia Price: £4.50/€6 referendum. front of the EU
THE EUROPEAN UNION
AND THE REFERENDUM
For a critical 'in' vote to
oppose xenophobia THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE REFERENDUM For a critical 'in' vote against The in-out referendum on membership of the European Union will dominate politics in the run-up to the vote on 23 June 2016. The left, as well as the right is divided on whether to call for a vote to leave or to stay. Right wing, xenophobic and reactionary arguments on migration and security will be peddled. There will also be a tendency from some in response to this to exaggerate the benefits of the European Union. This short book puts forward an alternative. It argues for a critical 'in' vote in this referendum to fight xenophobia. At the same time, it is critical of the European Union as an undemocratic and neoliberal institution that is rolling out austerity. The first chapter explains the position of Socialist Resistance on why it is calling for a vote to stay in the EU in this Chapter 2 gives the background to the crisis in Greece and the role of the EU. This is followed in chapter 3 by an analysis by Alan Thornett of the collapse of the Tsipras leadership of Syriza in http://resistancebooks.org
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