South African sex workers march for decriminalization. (Photo by Gallo Images)
The Gender Commission for Equality’s report last week supporting the decriminalization of prostitution has been covered in a variety of venues, from Sowetan Live to All Africa, SABC News and an editorial in favor of the idea in the Star. South African sex workers welcomed the GCE’s call, with sex worker run orgs SWEAT and Sisonke leading the way. “The levels of abuse that are currently being experienced and the waste of state resources that could be diverted into programmes to assist sex workers are currently being spent to prosecute and persecute them,” said SWEAT director Sally Shackleton. Sisonke Movement of Sex Workers’ spokesperson, Snowy Mampa, declared, “Sex workers are harassed by the police. They detain us for no reason, rape and rob us of our money.”
The Scarlet Alliance is continuing their campaign for sex work to be fully decriminalized in Western Australia, in response to the probable reintroduction of the 2011 Prostitution Bill, which would restrict full service sex workers’ rights via a rigid licensing scheme.
Elsewhere in Australia, a bill to decriminalize sex work in Southern Australia is currently before Parliament. In addition to decriminalization of sex work itself, the bill would make it illegal to discriminate against current or former sex workers, would offer a ‘clean slate’ to any workers with convictions, and would remove currents laws against living off the earnings of a sex worker.
In Queensland, a motel owner (who is “not a prude”) has won an appeal against a sex worker who successfully took a discrimination case against her last year after she was banned from staying or working out of her motel. The appeal comes as a disappointment to many Australian sex workers, as the original ruling was an important precedent in their ability to formally challenge discrimination based on occupation.
12 people were shot dead in a Baghdad brothel on May 14th by unidentified gunmen.
Vice Magazine interviews Rachel Wotton about Touching Base, an organization she co-founded that brings together sex workers and people with physical disabilities.
The feminist antiporn group Stop Porn Culture has sponsored a petition on iPetitions.com in an attempt to change the editorial board and title of Routledge’s forthcoming white paper publication, Porn Studies. Constance Penley, co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book, is quoted in the story criticizing the petition and invoking academic freedom.
SF Weekly concludes that “Aroused”, a new documentary on porn performers, offers more of the same hackneyed perspectives on the topic, with the filmmaker speaking for the workers and wringing her hands about the state of their souls.
“You are now no longer oppressed,” General Sun Ro announced to a band of girls and women whom his police team had ‘rescued’ from a brothel in Phonm Penh. They are free now, and if they’re over 18, they can choose which rehabilitation center they’ll be incarcerated in.
N+1 offers an insightful meditation on the filming of Kink.com’s Public Disgrace series.
Reports are coming in of banks (known worldwide for their rigorous codes of ethics, and reluctance to accept large sums of money purely for the purposes of profit-making) refusing to hold accounts for or grant loans to US adult entertainment performers for “moral reasons.”
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