Truth, Justice, and the American Whore

I received Truth, Justice, and the American Whore by Siouxsie Q for review by mistake. I hadn’t realized that it was being written and it wasn’t the book that I had requested, so when I opened the file I was fairly confused even though I could tell right away that I wanted to read it.

I found myself highlighting passage after passage, devouring the book as fast as I could.

Comprised of 65 chapters (unfortunately without page numbers in the Table of Contents ¹), Siouxsie’s book is a compilation of some of her columns from The Whore Next Door in SF Weekly. Because of this, the chapters are all fairly short, making it a faster/easier read, but don’t let the length of the pieces fool you into thinking that Truth, Justice, and the American Whore lacks depth.

The chapters cover a range of topics from sex work law and legal recourse for sex workers in trouble to how positive STI results are handled withing the porn industry to sex work communities, the healing power of sex work, dating as a sex worker, and more.

Dispersed throughout the book are pictures of Siouxsie, which are both gorgeous and adorable, and they also help to smooth out transitions between two different subject matters. Unfortunately, some of the pictures are two pages and meant to be viewed side-by-side in a book rather than up-and-down on an e-reader, so a few of them displayed awkwardly on my iPad, but they are still very pretty.

Truth, Justice, and the American Whore is a book for sex workers and non-sex workers alike. It mixes the serious and the light-hearted, stories and education, and offers honest insight into an industry fraught with stereotype.

Random complaint on one very small section of the book: Some people love the . Others…well, we don’t. And it’s okay to not like that vibrator. There is no one-size-fits all for sex toys, There was just one paragraph recommending the toy, but the sentences “Stop buying other sex toys. This is actually the only one you will ever use.” angered me so much that I had to include a note on it. Repeat after me: there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t enjoy the Hitachi. There are other toys out there. It is not the be-all-end-all of toys.

So much of this book spoke directly to my soul. I could write pages and pages on it. Instead, I’m going to focus my review on a few key sections.

Dating As A Sex Worker

There are two chapters devoted entirely to this, “The Six Essential Rules for Dating a Porn Star” and “Logical Family”. The first chapter on it is amazing; talking about tips for non-sex workers interested in dating a sex worker and it is pretty much perfection. As I’m sure many workers other than myself can attest to, it can be pretty fucking difficult sometimes to find potential partners who are respectful toward and understand the industry. I want to send this piece to everyone I know and put it in my Tinder profile and just share it non-stop.

The second chapter…it was more difficult. I’ve re-read it a few times and every time I do, I immediately start to cry. I have a lot of anxiety about my partners’ families finding out that I’m a sex worker and “Logical Family” really highlights and reinforces that anxiety. Whorephobia is depressingly alive and thriving. The men booking us tell us how we could “do better” and should stop escorting. the people jerking to our videos post online about how our parents must have failed us and how we must hate ourselves and/or our jobs…the examples are endless.

Sometimes, as with Siouxsie’s dad, parents love and support us despite what field we work in. Other times, as with Jesse’s family, it changes everything.

And knowing this breaks my fucking heart.

Escorting

Like every career, there are good and bad aspects of being an escort. Siouxsie does not pretend otherwise; writing candidly about the clients she has had who are seeing her as a way of helping their marriage, about how the shut-down of sites like RentBoy and MyRedbook don’t actually help keep sex workers safe but instead make us simply more afraid to work, and about how sometimes her clients teach her things about herself that she had not known, such as her style of domination.

“[Asking for their ‘real name’] is one of the most disrespectful questions a client can ask a sex worker […] Sex workers choose alter egos and pseudonyms for many reasons, but it is primarily to protect our safety.”

Read about how to avoid making a client faux-pas and how to support the sex workers in your life. Let Siouxsie Q show you the humanity on both sides of the sex worker-client relationship. Learn about how crowdfunding platforms, paypal, facebook, and more all fight against sex workers and our right to earn a living. Truth, Justice, and the American Whore not only talks about this issue but also why it should matter to those of us who aren’t sex workers, which is an angle often overlooked.

Buy Truth, Justice, and the American Whore from Amazon!