Breaking! Sex workers use internet, get sucked into popular memes! And it is unquestionably gold.
Contribute to the fundraiser to help porn performer Cytherea get back on her feet after being the victim of sexual assault during a traumatic home invasion here.
Jiz Lee will be guest editing a future issue of the Porn Studies journal on Porn and Labor. They’re soliciting submissions from now until July.
Wired explored the impact of the MyRedBook raid on Bay Area sex workers.
In questioning Saunders and King, Rudenstein stressed that they sought out Windslowe and the injections.
“What happened to the rope?” Rudenstein asked Saunders.
“What rope?” she replied.
“The rope she tied you down with to do this to you,” he said.
The online market for sex and sexualized services is growing, and it has nothing to do with the Superbowl or any other sporting events, as this Arizona State University study discovers.
Three California massage parlors were raided on suspicion of trafficking and then, though no evidence of trafficking was found, they were shut down anyway because of poor record keeping, especially around workers’ compensation. This incident once again raises the question: is this about protecting vulnerable people, or shutting down sex businesses?
Mark Stacy Spelrem, 45…wanted in connection to the assaults. He’s described as a white male, 5-feet-11 with a slim build, with short dyed blond-orange hair “that is spiked at the front and balding at the back.”
Louisiana currently requires citizens convicted of having oral or anal sex in exchange for money register as sex offenders. But the law is now being challenged. (Deon Haywood, who is quoted in the linked article, spoke on this very same issue at last year’s Desiree Alliance conference.)
A mercifully rational book review of Girls Like Us discusses the necessity of bearing responsible witness to a person’s suffering: “While Lloyd’s perspective on sexual exploitation and trafficking is important, it is only one. Inherent to the concept of critical thinking is that there are always nuances, conditions, and alternatives to consider.”
Turkish LGBT groups protest Dora Oezer’s murder in Istanbul. Her face stares out of multiple signs that demand, “Justice for Dora!” (Photo by AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda/Scanpix)
On July 2nd, 24 year old Turkish trans sex worker Dora Oezer was murdered by a client. The following Friday, a 100 plus person protest against transphobic violence, organized by Turkish sex workers’ rights organization Red Umbrella Sexual Health and Human Rights Association, was held in Istanbul, while a similar protest was held in Berlin. International sex worker community outrage over Dora’s murder and the murder of Swedish sex worker Petite Jasmine have led to plans for further Justice for Dora/Justice for Jasmine protests in eighteen European cities, six Australian cities, three North American cities, and Seoul today outside of Swedish and Turkish embassies. While most of the mainstream media has maintained silence on this topic, HuffPo UK did run a sympathetic piece, as did The Local. Stay tuned for a Tits and Sass exclusive interview with Turkish sex workers on Dora’s murder and the realities of trans sex workers’ lives in Turkey, to be posted next week.
NYC sex workers’ rights org The Red Umbrella Project and its lit mag, Prose and Lore, hit the big time with a profile on ABC News.
Occasionally, Jezebel renews our faith in it by doing things like running this great piece on copwatching escort Nicole Masterson.
Toronto police have yet to classify homeless sex worker Kassandra Bolduc’s death as a murder. Local charities and the homeless community are concerned that there have not been enough press releases urging people with information on the case to come forward.
This week, it’s Farrah Abrahams’ visit to a strip club which is apparentlybignews.
The four religious congregations that have refused to contribute to the compensation fund for residents of their former Magdalene laundries have combined assets worth €1.5 billion, the Irish Times reports.
Greece has reintroduced mandatory HIV testing—as if interning drug users, sex workers, migrants, and radicals in detention camps weren’t enough to give it that fascist vibe.
An Alwaba article on Syrian refugees in Lebanon turning to survival sex work is more nuanced than most on “the delicate line between prostitution and sexual exploitation.”
Apparently, we should legalize prostitution to fight terrorism (?) and to provide lonely men with companionship, not because, you know, sex workers might want labor rights. As the kids on the internet say, FAIL.
Bianca Baxter, RIP. (Photo via Baxter’s Google + profile)
Ballroom dance star, actress, model, and former Playboy Playmate, Bianca Baxter, aka Barbie Mizrahi, passed away on December 21st. You can contribute to the fund for her service here.
Ashley Renee Benson was found murdered in a Doubletree Inn in Portland, Oregon. Her family, whom she spent Christmas Day with, said they had no knowledge of her sex work. The police say contact with family is rare in cases like this:
“A lot of the time in human trafficking cases, the victims are not able to live one place and they’re not living apart from the criminal activity or their abusers.”
The police have quickly co-opted her into the trafficking framework, all evidence to the contrary.
A woman in Adelaide, Australia died under similar circumstances, and is suspected to be a sex worker although her identity hasn’t yet been established. The way she is being written about is already significantly different, however: she’s being described as a woman who potentially came to Adelaide to work in the sex industry, no mention of trafficking.
A woman from Queens was arrested for running a brothel and “promoting prostitution,” after being found with hundreds of condoms in her car and three younger women who admitted to being sex workers but denied being trafficked. No matter, the police were determined to fit them into the trafficking framework anyway.
A New Zealand brothel worker made history by winning a sexual harassment case against the manager of her brothel, although the IBTimes appears to find the grounds a little questionable:
What makes the case interesting is that the woman was never assaulted or raped, ripped or dismissed, trafficked or forced to do things she did not like. The victim was Williams (name changed), who worked at a Wellington brothel, and her boss used to say certain things that made her feel uneasy.
Although verbal sexual harassment is understood as harassment in most other industries, apparently nothing short of trafficking qualifies as harassment in the sex industry.
Street workers in Malawi are in conflict with bike taxis over methods of payment: according to one taxi operator, street workers use the taxis and then refuse to pay cash, offering an exchange of services instead.
Newsweek takes an unexpected (and unexpectedly pro-sex worker) look at Anita Sarkeesian’s sex work politics and her ongoing refusal to engage with sex workers around our requests for her to, please for God’s sake, stop saying “prostituted women.”
“What this tells us is that she sees men as creatures able to make sexual choices,” [Maggie] McNeil says, “but she sees women as creatures who can only have sex for traditional reasons—love, or romance or whatever. But if women are [having sex] for tactical reasons, then she sees this as somehow suspect—that a man must be doing that. Hence the [term] prostituted; someone has done this to her.”
We need to think about what these games say about not just the people who make them, but the thousands and thousands of people who buy them, for whom this depiction of sex workers as disposable victims has become normalized past the point of even seeing the horror in it. If these games are always going to exist and never change, fine. But that does not excuse our own ignorance of them. And that does not remove our responsibility to talk with other people who play games, especially young teens, about what is being depicted.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has lifted the ban on blood donations from gay men, but still requires a year long wait after having gay sex, paid sex, or sex with an injection drug user. Which, effectively, means there’s still a ban on gay men, sex workers, and people whose partners are IDUs or sex workers. I didn’t want to give you my blood anyway.
