Book Talk: Giving Voice to Silence

The book, 'Giving Voice to Silence', is an insight- and powerful statement about the multiple meanings of transactional sex for militancy-affected people on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Understood as the engagement in sex in exchange for cash, goods, services, protection or privileges, transactional sex is a widespread, but stigmatized and therefore often invisibilized way to secure one’s livelihood in humanitarian contexts. The legal criminalization and religious as well as cultural stigmatization of non-conforming sexual practices in Pakistan aggravates this and therefore involves high risks for the people involved. Through participatory photovoice, the book seeks to visibilize the meanings of transactional sex in Pakistan’s humanitarian settings. (The above abstract is extracted verbatim from the book’s website.)