Rather than focusing on a distinct, discreet sex market niche, the book unfolds across a continuum of sexscapes in which women consume and sell sexualized fantasies and/or sex acts: from pole dance schools, to strip clubs, to streets and private homes where women sell sex. There are to-date very few books set across multiple 'sexscapes', and the existing ones remain within the traditional boundaries of the sex industry. The book makes a critical intervention in the feminist debate on the nature and regulation of prostitution; one which, in prioritising an analysis of power relations among women, makes an argument for dismantling hierarchies of value structured by patriarchal notions of respectability.
Sexscapes of Pleasure : Women, Sexuality and the Whore Stigma in Italy