A pioneering manifesto from Brazil about the centrality of sex workers to feminist struggle

Putafeminista argues for a framework that Brazilian sex worker and activist Monique Prada calls “putafeminism”—a “movement born from the idea,” she writes, “that we, all people in sex work, can also constitute feminism.” Putafeminism, Prada argues, is also a chance to rethink the structure of sex work, to “identify and combat the existent oppression within.” Drawing on her firsthand experiences with sex work, movement building, and legal advocacy, Prada elucidates how sex workers’ voices are integral within larger feminist movements, and likewise, how feminist discourses can be vital to the everyday working lives of sex workers.

Published in Brazil in 2018, triggering a nationwide wave of discourse, Putafeminista combs through the major work and writing on sex work in the past century, including Virginie Despentes, Silvia Federici, and Melissa Gira Grant. Prada’s unwavering voice signals a new brand of feminist rebellion, one grounded in Brazilian sex workers’ historic tactics of advocacy and social critique—and destined to conjoin with and amplify feminist vindications worldwide.