Testimonials

Sex work, like all labor under capitalism, is exploited labor. But added to the mix for sex workers is the bane of constant police harassment and violence, the lack of recourse when harms occur, and the social stigmas fueled by patriarchy, misogyny and transphobia.

“SEX WORK It’s Just a Job,” by award-winning filmmaker, Tami Gold, not only illuminates this complex reality but allows a group of sex worker organizers to tell their stories compellingly in their own words and make the case for decriminalization. A powerful catalyst for any classroom discussion or political conversation about race, class, sexuality and the carceral state. Powerful and thought-provoking.

Barbara Ransby

Historian, Author, and Activist

Tami Gold, Alex Vitale and Bienvenida Marias have produced a stunning look at the hypocrisy of capitalism and the de facto morality police that stalk those engaged in sex work.

Pulling no punches, SEX WORK: It’s Just a Job explores the realities of the lives of sex workers in a United States that criminalizes sex work, while simultaneously sexualizing virtually everything. A hypocritical, supposedly religious capitalism, that demonizes sex workers yet privately lusts after them. This is a must see!

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Coauthor, Solidarity Divided, Author, “They’re Bankrupting Us” – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions, The Man Who Fell From the Sky, and The Man Who Changed Colors.

Sex Work: It’s Just a Job — it’s a fantastic piece of work, super engaging, visually gorgeous, and fascinating intimate conversations.

Sex Work: It’s Just a Job — it’s a fantastic piece of work, super engaging, visually gorgeous, and fascinating intimate conversations. Viewers of Sex Work: It’s Just a Job are privy to fascinating personal conversations with sex workers who are also political activists. Sex Work: It’s Just a Job is both a tender portrayal of people who don’t often merit such an approach and a political work. The conversations, narration and visual messaging all convey that sex work is work, that sex workers are the experts on themselves, and that they are participating in the political process and demanding that there’ll be Nothing about us without us!

Kate Marquez

COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics)

… a must-see for anyone who yearns for a deeper understanding of the meaning of sex work and the movements for sex workers’ rights.

“Sex Work: It’s Just a Job” is a film that brings needed perspective to the topic of sex workers’ rights, with a focus on decriminalization, legislative activism, and other efforts in support of sex workers’ rights. What sets this film apart is its centering of the voices of diverse sex workers themselves — we hear from a diverse group of New York City workers and learn about their challenges, successes, and the solidarity they bring to their activism. This film is a must-see for anyone who yearns for a deeper understanding of the meaning of sex work and the movements for sex workers’ rights.

Rachel Schreiber

University Professor
Director, Gender, and Sexualities Studies Institute
The New School

LOVE IT!!! It’s just beautiful – the voices, the messages, the graphics, the ETHICS and politics, you’ve nailed it! You got the simple message of sex work as “just a job”.

I LOVE IT!!! It’s just beautiful – the voices, the messages, the graphics, the ETHICS and politics, you’ve nailed it! You got the simple message of sex work as “just a job”; the need for full decriminalization and the legislative champions and the strong sense of community and love among the workers – and the negative: risks of violence, police brutality, stigmatization, family alienation. “SEX WORK It’s Just a Job” can’t get out into the big world soon enough.

Rosalind Petchesky

Distinguished Professor Emerita, Women’s and Gender Studies, Political Science
Hunter College CUNY

… this film brings us into the lives of [sex] workers to provide a holistic understanding of their real lives, and the political changes that would make those lives safer and happier.

Many people have opinions about sex work and the workers who do it, but very few of those people have spent any time listening to those workers discuss their own conditions and needs. This film brings us into the lives of these workers–who come from a variety of class backgrounds, ethnicities, and gender identities–to provide a holistic understanding of their real lives, and the political changes that would make those lives safer and happier.

Sarah Jaffe

author of Work Won’t Love You Back

Sex Work: It’s Just a Job zeroes in on diverse group of New York-based sex workers and their political campaigns against criminalization. It’s visually and emotionally compelling.

Sex Work: It’s Just a Job is visually and emotionally compelling. It zeroes in on diverse group of New York-based sex workers and their political campaigns against criminalization. Individuals appear first as subjects reflecting on their own history, feelings, and experiences. But later, we meet some of them again as participants in a movement, protesting on the streets or lobbying for legal change in Albany. The film advances a strong political argument for decriminalization, acknowledging some of the difficulties facing sex workers (untimely deaths, estrangement from families, rape, and widespread mistreatment by the police), while also highlighting a positive counter story about new families forged through a work culture, the way sex work provides a livelihood that saves people from the streets, pays for their apartment, and even allows some of them to finish law school. A great achievement.

Judith Walkowitz

Historian
“Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State”
“The Politics of Prostitution and Sexual Labour.” History Workshop Journal

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