Daisy Nokato of Uganda, speaking on main plenary at AIDS Conference 2014. (Photo via Elena Jeffreys’ Instagram account)
The International AIDS Conference in Melbourne featured discussion of how laws criminalizing sex work hinder efforts to prevent the spread of HIV. This Reuters story covers counterproductive global laws. A study was presented that argued decriminalization could cut the rate of infection by up to a third. Chinese sex worker activist Ye Haiyan was prevented from traveling to the conference.
Cyd Nova just made a handy list for you to hand out to your future acquaintances: Nine Stereotypes Sex Workers Are Tired of Hearing About. Yes, this is a real job and no, it is never appropriate to ask someone about their abuse history. If someone actually does that, just take the list back and save it for the next person.
“What does the Swedish model get wrong?” asks this Time column, answering that it is the treatment of women as incapable of consent and the continued marginalization of sex workers. Moreover, it announces that decriminalization is actually the answer.
T&S contributor Kenya Golden makes looking fantastic look easy. Happy #Blackout day!
The publication of the $pread book is spawning so many articles about that dearly beloved magazine! This week we’ve got one in the The Atlantic featuring a thoughtful interview with Rachel Aimee and Eliyanna Kaiser.
Community activists in Toronto are organizing in an effort to protect sex workers, injection drug users, and homeless people, from the usual brutal street clean-up efforts which accompany such public spectacles.
For sex work history fans, this article and interview on illicit sex and sex work during Ottoman and French rule of Algeria is fascinating!
Nearly one quarter of UK university students have considered doing sex work, while 5% actually do or have done sex work. Austerity cuts, rising tuition, general social moral laxness, may all play a part, although the chorus of anxious articles spawned by the study mainly blame high tuition.
One student said she is “always on her guard” when with clients. The article treats this as if that’s somehow unique to sex workers and not just, you know, part of the experience of having sex with strangers while female.
Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox in Arizona backing trans and sex workers’ rights activist Monica Jones’ appeal against false charges of “manifesting prostitution” (Photo by Leah Jo Carmine, via Monica Jones’ Facebook, courtesy of Monica Jones)
Laverne Cox supports Monica Jones’ appeal against trumped up charges of “manifesting prostitution”! We couldn’t have dreamed up a more exciting celebrity cameo in our wildest activist dreams. Catch up on Monica’s case by looking through Tits and Sass’ Monica Jones tag, and stay tuned for an exclusive Tits and Sass update on her appeal by her SWOP-Phoenix comrades.
Coverage of the Portland Cupcake Girls’ Spa Dayin the local press had a few of our readers writing in to us and other venues, infuriated. Apparently, neither the Oregonian nor the Cupcake Girls understand that strippers are not all unloved waifs and that actually, they can make themselves up and even (gasp!) pay for their own salon visits without the group’s charity. In fact, they do so consistently in order to work in a field in which their appearance must be immaculate. Read Red’s longform piece on shadowing the Cupcake Girls for more on these well meaning altruists’ fundamental misunderstandings about the sex industry.
Without even a photograph of her, it is difficult to put a face to her name. Access to the fragments of her life prior to her murder is also hindered by the stigma associated with sex work. Although the oldest profession in the world (apart from politics) it remains shrouded in secrecy and shame, criminalised in most countries and regarded with contempt by mainstream society.
