Tales of intimacy

A new book about the sex work in NZ offers first-hand insights.

- REBECCA STYLES

UNTOLD INTIMACIES: A history of sex work in Aotearoa, 1978-2008 by Cheryl Ware (Auckland University Press, $39.99)

New Zealand was the first country to decriminalise sex work, in 2003. The law recognised it as work and meant those in the industry were afforded access to the rights and safety as employees.

Cheryl Ware, a sex, gender and health historian, received a Marsden Fund grant in 2018 to work on this book, and is also the author of HIV Survivors in Sydney: Memories of the Epidemic. What both books have in common is their focus on oral histories – which Ware refers to as narratives - to explore the intimate details of people's lives, as well as showing the range of experiences as opposed to a stereotypical story. Ware frames the narratives of sex work within the social and political context of the time by reading mainstream media articles from the era, alongside community magazines and personal correspondence from the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC).