Heather Berg, Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Washington University St. Louis talks about her Boston Review article "Freedom, not Benefits: Sex Workers are the Vanguard of Labor. The Left ignores them at its own Peril."
Heather Berg writes about sex, work, and social struggle. Her book Porn Work (UNC Press, 2021) takes readers behind the scenes to explore what porn performers think of their work and how they intervene to hack it. It tells a story of crafty workers, faltering managers, and shifting solidarities. Her second project, "Sex Workers Against Work," is an intellectual history of the sex worker left. It engages anti-capitalist sex workers' critiques of straight work, unpaid sex, and state violence and explores their experiments with alternatives.