Tag: sex work

Blog Tour: ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare.

Thanks to Random Things Tours and Unbound for inviting me onto the tour and the copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

From the Publisher:

Forget everything you’ve heard about strippers: this book is an antidote to stigma, shame and stereotyping.

How can a feminist also be a stripper? Is stripping sex work? What makes sex work “ethical”?

In this powerful book, Stacey Clare, a stripper with over a decade of experience, takes a detailed look at the sex industry – the reality of the work as well as the history of licensing and regulation, feminist themes surrounding sex work, and stigma. Bringing her personal knowledge of the industry to bear, she offers an unapologetic critique and searing indictment of exploitation and raises the rights
of sex workers to the top of the agenda.

‘The Ethical Stripper’ rejects notions of victimhood, challenges stigma and shame, and unpacks decades of confusion and contradictions. It’s about the sex-work community’s fight for safety and self-determination, and it challenges you to think twice about every newspaper article, documentary and film you have seen about stripping and sex work.

‘The Ethical Stripper’ takes a comprehensive look at sex work, balancing the lived experience of the author with an examination of the different legal frameworks for sex work around the world.

Continue reading Blog Tour: ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare

‘Rainbow Milk’ by Paul Mendez

This book, published in April, is one I really enjoyed and would recommend.

The story opens in the 1950s with boxer Norman Alonso and his family settling in the Black Country. He clearly isn’t well and the family face racism from the British people, but Norman hopes that the move will secure his family’s future.

This story is then abandoned to pick up the story of Jesse McCarthy in the early 2000s. A young, black Jehovah’s Witness, he seems to have a bright future ahead of him until one misjudgement on his part causes him to be rejected by the church and his family. He moves to London in an attempt to find his place in the world, instead finding racism, waiting tables, sex work and a whole host of people to become his new family. Jesse’s story occupies the vast majority of the book as he forges his own identity and finds his place in the world.

I found a lot of this novel absolutely compelling – Jesse is an engaging character and he meets a load of unusual and quirky people throughout the novel. The description of Jesse’s childhood and the Jehovah’s Witness movement was fascinating – totally alien to me, but really interesting. Jesse’s struggles with his sexuality and involvement in sex work were also really believable, although really quite graphic in places as other reviewers have suggested.

However, I did find the book slightly uneven, particularly the long descriptions of waiting tables and the final bringing together of the family strands, both of which slowed the pace dramatically and I thought could have been a bit more rigorously edited. These are small quibbles, however, and should absolutely not stop anyone reading this book!

Overall, this is a very unusual story and definitely an interesting portrayal of a complex life. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but Jesse is a lively, likeable and memorable character who will stay with you for quite a while to come.

I received a free copy of the book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

If you’d like your own copy of the book, my affiliate link is below – thank you for supporting my blog!

Header photo with thanks to Jason Leung for sharing their work on Unsplash.