Putafeminista

Putafeminista

$15.95

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

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Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781558613393
Publication date: 07-08-25

Translated by Amanda De Lisio and Thayane Brêtas

As long as feminism has existed as a movement in Brazil, sex workers have taken to the streets in solidarity—despite the fact that mainstream feminist discourse positions sex work, and the “putas” who enact it, as detrimental to women’s rights. In Putafeminista, activist and sex worker Monique Prada calls for feminists to retire this hypocrisy and embrace putafeminism: a working class women’s movement that rejects whorephobia and its classist, colonial dimensions.

Drawing on her firsthand experiences with sex work and movement building, Prada argues for the validity of sex work as feminist labor and tracks the innovations introduced by Brazilian sex workers to feminist internet discourse, street actions, and governmental advocacy. For readers seeking the glimmers of tomorrow’s feminism, Prada places that future with putafeminists, naming the brothel a “final frontier” for all women to gather, reform, and revolt.

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Thayane Brêtas

Thayane Brêtas received her PhD from the Global Urban Studies program at Rutgers University–Newark in New Jersey. She graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) with a bachelor's degree in law and a master's degree in contemporary legal theories with an emphasis on society, human rights, and art. Her thesis investigated the working conditions of sex workers in some of the main spaces of sex commerce in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She worked at the UFRJ’s Human Rights Laboratory and on projects at the Prostitution Policy Watch in partnership with Coletivo Puta Davida and the Brazilian Network of Prostitutes. She is based in Westfield, New Jersey and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Monique Prada

Monique Prada is the author of Putafeminista, published in 2018 in Brazil. She is a militant defender of sex worker rights, creating the blog Mundo Invisível (Invisible World) in 2012 and participating in popular debates. She also served as president for the Central Única de Trabalhadoras e Trabalhadores Sexuais (CUTS), member of the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Group, and advocated for Bill 4211/2012 by Federal Deputy Jean Wyllys, which sought to regulate the profession in Brazil. She lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil.