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By: Justice Rivera (Editor), 2024, Paperback

From erotic labor, to the rights of people who use psychoactive substances, to reproductive health and carcerality—we are living through a political moment when debates about bodily autonomy are at a fever pitch.

Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work and Drug Use is a bold and timely collection that confronts these charged issues at the intersection of social justice and public health. It reveals the histories behind the United State's ideological wars and illustrates their costs to all of us. It is a primer on healing-centered harm reduction, which presents a visionary framework and set of practical strategies to advance unity and care while working to transform conditions for communities that bear the brunt of interpersonal and systemic violence, overdose deaths, and health inequities. In the words of leading advocates, service providers, and the scholars whose lives and communities have been harmed by American neo-colonial policies, Body Autonomy offers promising, healing-centered interventions that represent a critical culture shift. 

This collection features trusted voices on health and social policy reform, including Kate D'Adamo, Justice Rivera, Ismail Ali, Paula Kahn, and Sasanka Jinadasa, as well as respected healers like Richael Faithful, Amira Barakat Al-Baladi, and Mona Knotte. The articles, interviews, worksheets, and poems within are an offering to expand our collective understanding of survival, healing, and embodied freedom. Body Autonomy is a must read for anyone with a compassionate worldview, people seeking to know more about underground economies, and those who know that punishment doesn't lead to security. It is a liberatory design and a prayer for what's possible.

By: Bernadette Barton (Author), 2017, Paperback

What
kind of woman dances naked for money? Bernadette Barton takes us inside
countless strip bars and clubs, from upscale to back road as well as those that
specialize in lap dancing, table dancing, topless only, and peep shows, to
reveal the startling lives of exotic dancers.

Originally published in 2006, the product of years of first-hand research in strip clubs around the country, Stripped is a classic portrait of what it’s like for those who choose to strip as a profession. Barton explores why women begin stripping, the initial excitement and financial rewards of the work, the dangers of the life—namely, drugs and prostitution—and, inevitably, the difficulties in staying in the business over time, especially for their relationships, sexuality and self-esteem.

In this completely revised and updated edition, Barton returns to the strip clubs she originally studied to observe the major changes in the industry that have occurred over the last decade. She examines how “raunch culture” affects exotic dancers’ treatment by their clientele, who are now accustomed to seeing nudity and sexualized performance in accessible, R and X -rated media from a variety of outlets, particularly the Internet. Barton explores how new media has transformed exotic dancing, allowing dancers to build an online brand, but also introducing possibilities for customers to take unauthorized nude photos and videos of the entertainers.. And finally, Barton speaks to new dancers as well as dancers she interviewed in the previous edition, examining how the toll of stripping still impacts the lives of exotic dancers in a changing industry. Incorporating new scholarship, new observations, and increased awareness of emerging media technology, Barton brings a fresh and important perspective on the challenges that women face working in the still-thriving world of exotic dancing.