Article contentĪmber Dawn and Justin Ducharme, the co-editors of Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry want to end that silence. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. As women, as young people of all genders, as trans people, as people of colour and sex trade workers, they are often consigned to silence. They have been literally studied to death by academics, bureaucrats and social workers, but their own voices are too often absent from public debates. Part of the problem, of course, is that far more is written and said about sex trade workers than by them. It is difficult to know how to begin, and how to sort out the contending versions of truth. Sometimes they are portrayed as workers in need of labour solidarity and employment standards protections. People who exchange sex for money are portrayed variously as victims of human trafficking, rape, racism, colonial violence and child abuse, as proud heroines who explore terrains of agency and autonomy while providing humane services or as the darkly iconic figures in the misogynist porn fantasies that flicker on a billion late night computer screens. We live in a culture that doesn’t know how to talk or think about sex work and sex workers. The next issue of Sunrise presented by Vancouver Sun will soon be in your inbox.

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Hustling Verse by Amber Dawn