The stories of sex workers in New Zealand as they changed the world.

In June 2003, New Zealand became the first country to decriminalise sex work. Through the lived experiences of twenty-five individuals who worked on the ships and the streets, in massage parlours and as private escorts, Untold Intimacies tells the story of sex work and its transformation in Aotearoa over thirty critical years.

This history carries readers from the regulation of brothels with the Massage Parlours Act of 1978, through the struggle for decriminalisation to the legally mandated national review of the law in 2008. Drawing on new and archival interviews, the story is told through the first-hand experiences of sex workers themselves – how they dealt with police, violence and health risks, and how they organised to change their world.

Untold Intimacies presents an in-depth historical investigation into the lives of some of the first people in the world to experience the transition to the decriminalisation of sex work.

Author

Dr Cheryl Ware is a historian of sex, gender and health in late-twentieth-century Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. She is the author of HIV Survivors in Sydney: Memories of the Epidemic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) which received endorsement from internationally recognised leaders in oral history, Australian history, and histories of HIV and AIDS. Cheryl has held a Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant, a Judith Binney Writing Award and a Kate Edger Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship for her research on histories of sex work, and was shortlisted for the New Zealand Historical Association’s Mary Boyd Prize for the best article on any aspect of New Zealand history. Cheryl has conducted over 120 in-depth interviews across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and served on the executive committee of the National Oral History Association of New Zealand from 2018 to 2024. She completed Untold Intimacies as a senior research fellow at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland.

Endorsements

‘This is a serious and engaging account of our diverse sex worker histories. It captures a period that spans a tremendous change in policy and law for sex workers in Aotearoa New Zealand.’
— Dame Catherine Healy

‘This is a great book that straddles the fields of gender, sexuality, legal and social histories. It could have significant international appeal as histories of sex work are few and far between. International scholars will be able to look to Untold Intimacies as a key foundational reference.’
— Professor Noah Riseman, author of Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910

‘Untold Intimacies makes a significant contribution to New Zealand historical writing as well as the global literature on sex work. It will take its place as a significant intervention in the scholarship on the history of prostitution, sexuality, policing, violence, gender and women.’
— Professor Frank Bongiorno, Australian National University

‘This book provides a valuable contribution to scholarship in documenting the oral histories of sex workers in Aotearoa in the period 1978–2008. It offers excellent insight into this period of history that readers will learn a lot from. The storytelling is compelling and creates a sense for the reader of ‘getting to know’ participants. The stories feel authentic and are told in a way that unpacks the complexities and contradictions of the lives and experiences of its protagonists.’
— Associate Professor Lynzi Armstrong, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington