Recommended Reading

The Pimping of Prostitution

This book examines one of the most contested issues facing feminists, human rights activists and governments around the globe – the international sex trade. For decades, the liberal left has been conflicted as to whether pro-prostitution activists or abolitionists hold the correct view, and debates are ongoing as to who holds the key to the solutions facing the women and girls involved.

Not a Choice, Not a Job

A generation ago, most people did not know how ubiquitous and grave human trafficking was. Now many people agree that the $35.7 billion business is an appalling violation of human rights. But when confronted with prostitution, many people experience an odd disconnect because prostitution is shrouded in myths, among them the claims that “prostitution is inevitable,” and “prostitution is a job or service like any other.” In Not a Choice, Not a Job, Janice Raymond challenges both the myths and their perpetrators.

Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade

For too long the global sex industry and its vested interests have dominated the prostitution debate repeating the same old line that ‘sex work’ is just like any job. In large sections of the media, academia, public policy, government and the law, the sex industry has had its way. Little is said of the damage, violation, suffering, and torment of prostitution on the bodies and minds of mostly women and children, nor of the deaths, suicides and murders that are routine in the sex industry. 

The Johns

Following up on his scathing indictment of the international sexual enslavement of women in The Natashas, investigative journalist Victor Malarek lays bare the other side of the crisis – the men who fuel the demand.

The Natashas

The buying and selling of human beings for the worldwide sex industry is organized crime’s fastest-growing business with up to two million people globally—mostly women and children—being trafficked into the sex trade every year.

In The Natashas, leading investigative journalist Victor Malarek details the tragic lives of the women and girls ensnared in the most recent wave of this brutal trade.

Getting Off

In our culture, porn makes the man. So argues Robert Jensen in Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Jensen’s treatise begins with a simple demand: “Be a man.” It ends with a defiant response: “I chose to struggle to be a human being.” The journey from masculinity to humanity is found in the candid and intelligent exploration of porn’s devastating role in defining masculinity.

Pornland

An unflinching and intimate look at porn-its hardcore and racist content, its unchecked profits, and how it distorts our identity.

Expert Gail Dines has been writing and researching the porn industry for over two decades. She attends porn industry conferences, interviews porn producers and performers, and speaks to hundreds of young people each year about their experience with porn. Astonishingly, the average age of the first downloading of porn is now 11.5 years for boys, and studies show that young men are consuming more of it than ever before.

Invisible Chains

The global problem of human trafficking is only beginning to be recognized in Canada, even though it has been hidden in plain sight. In Invisible Chains, Benjamin Perrin, an award-winning law professor and policy expert, exposes cases of human trafficking, recording in-depth interviews with people on the front lines—police officers, social workers, and the victims themselves—and bringing to light government records released under access-to-information laws.

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism

The majority of scholarly and activist opinion by and about Aboriginal women claims that feminism is irrelevant for them. Yet, there is also an articulate, theoretically informed and activist constituency that identifies as feminist. By and about Aboriginal feminists, this book provides a powerful and original intellectual and political contribution demonstrating that feminism has much to offer Aboriginal women in their struggles against oppression. The contributors are from Canada, the USA, Sami (Samiland) and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The chapters include theoretical contributions, stories of political activism and deeply personal accounts of developing political consciousness.