The Rise of Digital Sex Work

Kurt Fowler

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781479824205
• eBook ISBN: 9781479824199
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

How technology transformed the nature of sex work The internet has revolutionized sex work perhaps more than any other profession. Today's sex workers go online to attract clients, shape personas, share information, screen potential clients, and build community. The Rise of Digital Sex Work is an intimate look into the changing face of the industry, telling the stories of workers themselves and revealing how they use the internet to share information, grow their businesses, and establish global communities.Kurt Fowler takes us inside the lives of sex workers who provide a variety of services: web-camming, dominatrix work, burlesque, and escorting. He provides insight into how race, class, and privilege affect their work and the role the internet has played in their professional journeys. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty workers from the United States, England, Canada, Germany, Australia, South Africa, and other industrialized countries, Fowler explores how they first entered the profession, how they manage their daily business and client relationships, their use of digital technology for safety and as a broader social resource, the role race plays in their work, and how they view their own level of risk and that of fellow sex workers. Fowler provides a look inside sex workers' digital worlds, as well as the complex meanings they attach to their experiences in their line of work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: “I Got This New Job”
• 1. Sex Work and Its Frames: “Things Get Whittled Down”
• 2. Digital Style and Symmetry: “There’s So Much More That Can Be Done”
• 3. Entrance: “The Classiest Shit to Ever Hit This City”
• 4. The Girlfriend Persona: “Then, the Sexy Happens”
• 5. Risks: “Guess Who Has a Gun Pointed in Their Face”
• 6. Security: “No One Is Gonna Be as Invested in My Safety as I Am”
• 7. A New Model: “At Least for Me, It’s Empowering”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author