Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution
Can a prostitute be raped? Are pregnancy and STIs an Occupational Health and Safety issue? What sort of society buys and sells women and children for sex? Does legalisation solve the dangers of sex work? Sex worker advocates have argued for many years that legalising prostitution is the way to make the industry safer both for workers and clients. In 1984, the State of Victoria did just that. Making Sex Work shows with great clarity that the legalisation of prostitution backfires. It further hurts prostituted people and encourages illegal sex industry activities that grow at three times the rate of the legal industry. In this book, Mary Lucille Sullivan looks at the evidence of Victoria’s experience, and asks whether the concept of sex work as ‘a job like any other’ matches the reality.
Discussing the practicalities of brothels as regular businesses, the author unearths astounding facts about both the legal and illegal sectors. Covering issues such as violence, organised crime, women’s health, and mainstream businesses’ involvement in the sex trade, Making Sex Work is a compelling read. This book gives an insight into the sex industry, and into a society where women and children have become just another consumer item. If you’ve ever thought of prostitution as simply a choice some women make, read this book and then ask yourself: Could you do this job? How would you feel if your friend, sister, or daughter chose this career?
Mary Lucille Sullivan is the author of What Happens When Prostitution Becomes Work: An update on legalised prostitution in Australia (2006). She has written two other books on social justice issues, An Australian Pilgrimage: Muslims in Australia from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (1993) and Colony to Community (1997). Mary Lucille Sullivan has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Melbourne. She has toured the US, Britain and Norway discussing the impact of legalised prostitution.
2007 | ISBN 9781876756604 | Paperback | 217 x 140 mm | 413 pp
Reviews
Making Sex Work is an extremely important work, as it moves the debate about the legalization of prostitution out of the realm of speculation and conjecture, and into the domain of the hard facts concerning its potential detriments. This work will be of interest to anyone interested in issues concerning legalized prostitution, public policy, and labor ethics, regardless of whether or not they are interested in learning specifically about Australia. Because its style is straightforward and lucid, this book is a work that will be easily understood by all.
—Nnenna Lynn Okeke, Journal of International Women’s Studies
... the evidence is compelling ... prostitution is male sex right in action, and this is where we need to start.
—Grazyna Zajdow, Arena Magazine
[Making Sex Work] is being used by policy-makers internationally on this issue and, like the best work in the social sciences, is making a real difference.
—Sheila Jeffreys, The University of Melbourne Voice
Sullivan makes the powerful case that in legalising prostitution, the state and society connive in institutionalising the sexual and personal exploitation and abuse of all women and girls, not only those who sell themselves directly. The legal, social and ethical collapse which Sullivan traces in the wake of legalisation is both rapid and devastating...The book is a vital resource for anyone concerned with plans to legalise prostitution anywhere in the world.
—Anna Krohn, The Record
I expect this book to attract a wide-ranging readership, appealing to academics, politicians, historians, lawyers, law enforcers, feminists and members of the general public. Never before has there been such a detailed body of work specifically documenting and challenging the liberal acceptance of the legalised prostitution industry.
—Carole Moschetti, Journal of Women and Policing