Abstract
Sex and Stigma is a timely book that succeeds on two levels: as an academic work about a specific legal sex industry from a communications, organizational, and feminist studies perspective and as an introduction to the inner workings of Nevada’s legal brothels. The book sets the stage academically with research theory, methodological explanation, and carefully laid out objectives for each chapter. The book is made more broadly interesting, as promised in the subtitle, with the inclusion of personal interviews and insights from sex workers at all levels of the brothels’ operations. Presented without sentimentality, the interviews from brothel owners, managers, local businesses, and present and past legal prostitutes, including one of the authors, give shape to the call for this industry to do differently, or no longer “lie low in the sagebrush” (p. 5). Above all, Sex and Stigma demystifies the ambitions and issues of the sex workers against the background of community integration, both politically and economically. The book places this legal sex industry on the edges of the company of non-stigmatized businesses by illuminating how Nevada’s legal brothels, and the sex workers themselves, balance and manage the stigma overshadowing their work.
The personal stories are powerful additions to the social justice aims of the book. Some of the information may be surprising, such as the large amounts of money that can be made, and the balancing acts made by some workers between their personal home life and their work life, including being a mother by day and sex worker at night. The sex workers in Nevada’s brothels are considered independent contractors. Most of them remain entirely in the brothel confines for several weeks or months at a time, depending on the contract dates they choose. Many are successful within this structure. However, some of the workers, for various reasons including inexperience and drug use, are not so successful, but this issue is not explored in-depth. Importantly, the authors examine problems faced by sex workers who desire to change their careers when their marketable work experience has been achieved in a stigmatized vocation. This was especially enlightening.
The authors discuss the positive community roles that legal sex work can fulfill for individuals, such as intimacy for those with physical disabilities or emotional issues. More analysis of this contribution would have strengthened their message. For example, what is the percentage of clientele that fall into these categories? Inclusion of such data would have clarified how stigma around sex work can be managed.
The structure of the book, moving between academic communications research and stories personalizing the sex workers and legitimizing the brothel business, disrupts the reading flow to some extent. However, it is worth the effort, even for the general reader, because of the wealth of information provided about a clandestine operation in a limited geographic area and the role stigma plays in defining and confining the business. The book would serve well as a discussion starter and supplementary text in undergraduate courses such as Psychology of Women or Issues in Women’s Studies. In the last chapter, “Brothels as Hidden Organizations,” the authors’ illumination of the organizational dilemma inherent in the revelation-concealment dynamic of a stigmatized business is powerful in its intersection with privacy and safety concerns, which can dovetail into oppression and unfair labor practices. Blythe, Wiederhold Wolfe, and Mohr could have generated two books from their material. I was left with many more questions than I came in with, always a good thing.
