Paid For: My Journey through Prostitution

by Rachel Moran

Overview

An astonishingly brave memoir of prostitution and its lingering influence on a woman’s psyche and life.

“The best work by anyone on prostitution ever, Rachel Moran’s Paid For fuses the memoirist’s lived poignancy with the philosopher’s conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard University

Born into a troubled family, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she was driven into prostitution to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the exploitation she and others endured on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage inherent to prostitution and the inevitable estrangement from one’s body. At twenty-two, Moran escaped the sex trade. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351989
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	606 KB

About the Author

Rachel Moran is the founder of the organization SPACE International (Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment). She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in creative writing and speaks globally on prostitution and sex-trafficking. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

On the sentence level, it is often striking, saturated with sad and angry detail and raw, effective analogy…Paid For is more polemic than storytelling. Like the work of Andrea Dworkin, both explicitly and implicitly present here, this book is about drawing blood, daring you to turn away from a vicious and vivid sexual image.

The New York Times Book Review - Irin Carmon

"Paid For is the political sword we desperately need to slay once and for all the myths and fairytales surrounding the sex trade. Sojourner Truth once said that truth is powerful and it prevails. Rachel Moran's earth-shaking book embodies just that."

Taina Bien-Aimé

"No amount of theory from those who have never been prostituted can replace the truth and power of experience. Rachel Moran's Paid For should be required reading in courses on human rights, in police training and law schools, and in sex education courses that separate welcome sex from body invasion."

Gloria Steinem

"Rachel Moran takes us where no readers have ever gone: into the deep hell of being prostituted… Anyone who believes "sex work" is chosen or a job like any other should read Paid For for its exposure of misinformation and myths alone. But the book is more: Moran writes so well that her story will scorch your heart…."

Robin Morgan

"People who are working to end sexual exploitation will take heart from her example of transformation and an insistence on basic human dignity."

President Jimmy Carter

"Rachel Moran demolishes the “Pretty Woman” myth with the stark reality of the lived experience of her young years in prostitution. This memoir makes a strong case for the Nordic model law that criminalizes the buyers whose money drives the trade that treats women as objects for sale."

Terry O'Neill

"This is surely the best, most personal, profound, eye-opening book ever written about prostitution—irrefutable proof of why it should NEVER be legalized."

Jane Fonda

"Paid For fuses the memoirist's lived poignancy with the philosopher's conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. "

Catharine A. MacKinnon

"As a survivor, I can say Paid For got to the heart of what sex-trafficked and prostituted women face on a daily basis. Rachel speaks for those survivors who can’t speak for themselves, and for those who have been lost to the life."

Vednita Carter

"Moran's thoughtful, highly readable, and provocative treatise shines a necessary light on a dark and underdiscussed topic." ---Kirkus Starred Review

From the Publisher

08/01/2015
With eloquence and grace, Moran writes about the hardships of being a homeless teenager driven to prostitution. The writing is anything but gratuitous, offering readers not a sordid, voyeur's glimpse into a titillating, glamourized lifestyle but an authentic social commentary on the adverse effects of the poverty, dysfunction, and mental illness that led her to a life of homelessness and sex work. Moran tackles her past with sincere feeling and frank objectivity, at once lamenting her unhappy childhood and descent into the underworld while providing rational criticism of the world at large for the role circumstance played in her life. This is no self-indulgent memoir, nor is it a plea for pity. It is a heart-wrenching account of desperation and naiveté that is told with a level of dignity and introspection rarely found in memoirs of this type. This thoroughly enjoyable—albeit emotionally intense—book is sure to become a must-read for social scientists and those with a passion for human interest. VERDICT A succinct and evocative memoir of the realities of homelessness and prostitution that approaches the far-reaching causes and consequences of society and life.—Kathleen Dupré, Edmond, OK

Library Journal

★ 2015-05-20
Leaving her Dublin home and dysfunctional family at 14, Moran became homeless before she turned to prostitution to survive. Her stirring memoir chronicles her seven-year journey on the streets and in the brothels and examines the costs to society and her soul. The author's experience convinced her of several things. First, she realized that prostitution is a collective experience among the women caught in this tragic lifestyle, and second, the job is never glamorous. On the second page, Moran clearly states the goal of her book: "exposing prostitution for what it really is…the illumination that comes from shining a light in dark places." Writing down her story took the author 10 years. The first section of the memoir details Moran's dismal childhood, complete with social exclusion, economic hardships, parental mental illness, and lack of social advantages. These conditions helped to create the foundation for her entry into prostitution. In the second section, the author skillfully debunks the myths perpetrated by society and the media about prostitution—e.g., the high-class hooker or the control prostitutes supposedly wield or pleasure they experience. The final section recounts Moran's struggle to escape the lifestyle and re-enter larger society. The author's writing style is restrained yet piercingly clear and forceful. In each section, she dissects the harmful effects of prostitution to herself and the women and girls she came to know. Though the physical abuse she encountered was significant and terrifying, the severe emotional turmoil has been even more difficult to bear. Today, the author still struggles with overcoming the denial of "the reality of her own experience." If at times somewhat repetitive, this minor quibble takes nothing away from the author's discussion of a subject that needs more attention. Moran's thoughtful, highly readable, and provocative treatise shines a necessary light on a dark and underdiscussed topic.

Kirkus Reviews