It's actually not much of a risk to say, I don't think we should put sex workers in jail. That's a decent, normal thing you should believe. But then what are you going to do about it?

I remember being in high school in the '90s, and even then somehow hearing about the the Canadian Supreme Court's Butler decision which was meant to keep obscene material from entering Canada. The stuff being stopped at the border was almost all lesbian.

I respect people who come forward and speak, but I'm not asking most of the sex workers I interview now about their work. I'm asking them about their lives in general or their political organizing. I take pains source things pointing back to intellectual work that sex workers have produced, because that's really absent.

One person was basically saying that feminists aren't interested in criminalizing prostitutes, that they don't want to do that. I responded that whether or not they want to, that is what is happening on the ground.

Women in the past thought all they had to do was see if he comes home late, or smells like cigarettes. But nothing's really changed, right? People still cheat. They're going to do what they're going to do. But now that sex work is more private, there's that chance to have a double life.

I don't use feelings as a diminutive word. I'm trying to take feelings back. I think of everyone on the internet whose response to everything is: #Feelings! This is important, this is real, this is significant! That connects to power, too. Wanting to feel like you have power and control over your life.

We hear from sex workers who have through their own volition become media figures, or have despite their own wishes become media figures. Like Ashley Dupré, who has a sex advice column in the New York Post. You get outed and then people expect you to write a memoir because they think, what else are you going to do with your life?

Once when I told sex workers about my own sex work, it ended up building inappropriate trust with some people. But there have been events now - like covering the protests against Backpage at the Village Voice - where I've talked to sex workers who don't necessarily know that I've done sex work.