This is the England launch of Kajsa Ekis Ekman's book Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self.
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" Being and Being Bought is a riveting analysis of prostitution and surrogacy that shatters the great wall of lies about these two institutions. Brilliantly analyzing the parallels, Kajsa Ekis Ekman wages a multi-pronged attack on sexism and classism that leaves the reader with hope for change. If you’ve ever wondered how to respond to those who… Show more say there are no victims in prostitution or what to say when someone proposes surrogacy as a solution to childlessness - this book is a must-read."
— Melissa Farley, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of many articles and books about prostitution and trafficking.
Stockholm born, Kajsa Ekis Ekman writes for the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and is on the editorial collective of the anarchist magazine Brand. She has an MA in Literature from Södertörn University and is author of Skulden - eurokrisen sedd från Aten (Debt as a Weapon: The euro crisis seen from Athens, Leopard Förlag, 2013).
She has founded the network, Feminists Against Surrogacy and the climate action group, Klimax. In 1998, Sweden passed ground-breaking legislation criminalizing the purchase of sexual services which sought to curb demand and support women exiting the sex industry. Grounded in the reality of the violence and abuse inherent in prostitution—and reeling from the death of a friend to prostitution in Spain—Kajsa Ekis Ekman exposes the many lies in the ‘sex work’ scenario. Trade unions aren’t trade unions. Groups for prostituted women are simultaneously groups for brothel owners. And prostitution is always presented from a woman’s point of view. The men who buy sex are left out.
Drawing on Marxist and feminist analyses, Ekis Ekman argues that the Self must be split from the body to make it possible to sell your body without selling yourself. The body becomes sex. Sex becomes a service. The story of the sex worker says: the Split Self is not only possible, it is the ideal.
Turning to the practice of surrogate motherhood, Kajsa Ekis Ekman identifies the same components: that the woman is neither connected to her own body nor to the child she grows in her body and gives birth to. Surrogacy becomes an extended form of prostitution. In this capitalist creation story, the parent is the one who pays. The product sold is not sex but a baby. Ekis Ekman asks: why should this not be called child trafficking? This brilliant exposé is written with a razor-sharp intellect and disarming wit and will make us look at prostitution and surrogacy and the parallels between them in a new way.
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