Blog post

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights | Juno Mac and Molly Smith

In these videos, Juno Mac and Molly Smith discuss the issues around the Nordic Model approach to prostitution law and how the criminalisation of sex work, the drug market and trafficking harms sex workers. They are the authors of Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights

Verso Books31 March 2020

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights | Juno Mac and Molly Smith

The Nordic Model makes sex workers LESS safe

The Nordic Model is often seen as more progressive because it criminalises only the clients of sex workers. But the legislation prevents sex workers from working and living together, and it makes it harder for sex workers to earn money, making them LESS safe.

Deporting sex workers isn't 'rescue'

The criminalisation of migration creates the market for trafficking. Borders make people vulnerable; intensifying border policing produces exploitation for undocumented people. In criminalised markets there can be no regulations, no workers’ rights: this includes the drug market, sex work and trafficking. 

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Do you have to think that prostitution is good to support sex worker rights? How do sex worker rights fit with feminist and anti-capitalist politics? Is criminalising clients progressive—and can the police deliver justice?

In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement. 

Revolting Prostitutes
How the law harms sex workers - and what they want insteadDo you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justi...