My Dangerous Desires-PB

It's not every day you meet a self-identified ""lesbian sex radical ex-hooker incest survivor rural gypsy working-class poor white trash high femme dyke"" who has founded a major AIDS prevention program, won an award at Sundance, organized unions and written for the Socialist Review. In this stunning collection of essays and interviews, Hollibaugh describes herself as having led a ""double life""Dsavvy union organizer by day, stripper and sex worker by nightDbut the truth is that she's led multiple lives. Painfully excluded from the very movements she's helped to build, Hollibaugh repeatedly disguises herself, whether hiding her role as a prostitute (knowing it would alienate other feminists) or pretending to be a slumming college dropout (like other antiwar activists). These complicated negotiations contribute to her fresh perspective on a variety of issues. She sharply critiques what she sees as feminism's unproductive refusal to understand prostitution's class basis, contending that sex work is work, labor that can be more economically viable or safer than working in a dry cleaning factory or sweatshop. Hollibaugh's writing is sharp and glittering. Take her dead-on description of the barter system she exploits with sexist intellectuals: ""I slept with men on the Left just to overhear their conversations about Marx and the foundations of capital... Sex was my tuition, and I paid it willingly."" This provocative, challenging collection could become a feminist classic. (Nov. 8)