The Week in Links

The Week In Links–April 19th

by suzyhooker on April 19, 2013 · 3 comments

Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q looking foxy for the mainstream media (screenshots from the CNN Money video)

Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q looking foxy for the mainstream media, TARDIS dress and all (screenshots from the CNN Money video)

Anti-trafficking ideologues are wringing their hands in dismay and blaming the Hawaii police for not being able to find the hordes of sex trafficking victims that surely must be out there somewhere. Yet arrests are turning up no trafficking victims whatsoever.

A Pennsylvania cop going undercover accepted a blowjob from a suspected prostitute before arresting her. He was so unashamed of his actions he detailed them in his police report, and the police department also found no problem with this officer’s behavior.

Laura Agustin is characteristically awesome on Alternet, asking why migrant sex workers need saving.

More coverage from the London Evening Standard on the Westminster Council study which demonstrated that the recession is putting London sex workers at more risk of violence. We love the fact that the image used here is one of sex workers protesting, rather than the usual cliched graphic of high heels in low lighting, and we love that members of the British government are urging the wider adoption of the Merseyside model (treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes.) We could do without the xenophobic undertones here, though–”those foreigners are taking our sex work jobs!”

Amber Dawn and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore have a dialogue in the Advocate about sex work, memoir writing, cycles of violence, and queer community.

The New Orleans Police Department want to squelch wild rumors that a missing teacher is the victim of sex trafficking Russian mobsters. If they didn’t want this sort of hysteria, maybe they shouldn’t have spread trafficking panic during the Super Bowl.

Rachel Kramer Bussel covers the Feminist Porn Awards for the Daily Beast. Courtney Trouble, Madison Young, and Tristan Taormino make an appearance.

Calling Margaret Thatcher a prostitute is insulting to sex workers, National Union of Metalworkers of SA’s second deputy president Christine Olivier told members of her union. ”It implies that they are collectively at par with the reactionary Thatcher rather than members of the working class. So comrades [from] KZN [KwaZulu-Natal] may you use another word when you refer to Margaret Thatcher,” she went on.

So it looks like women who were trafficked into domestic labor in the United Arab Emirates are running away and going into sex work. I bet anti-sex trafficking crusaders are gonna have a hard time getting their heads around that.

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The Week In Links–April 12th

by suzyhooker on April 12, 2013 · 3 comments

in The Week in Links

Campaigners demonstrate to call for the decriminalization of prostitution in Scotland (Picture by Ian Rutherford, courtesy of the Scotsman,com)

The Root and the Daily Beast ask porn perfomers whether the industry is racist—the answer is a resounding NO DUH.

A Westminster Council study shows that the recession puts sex workers under a greater risk of violence. This is yet another reason to adopt the Merseyside model in which crimes against sex workers are treated as hate crimes in court.

The Scottish Trade Union Congress forbade the Sex Worker Open University from using their site to have a Sex Worker Worker’s Rights Conference at the last minute, claiming that the Congress supported sex workers organizing but also supported the Swedish model of criminalizing clients. (Maybe we need to write a primer on how those two positions are functionally contradictory.) The Scotsman reports that this didn’t put a damper on the attendees’ protest—they protested *outside* the Scottish Trade Union Congress in opposition to the Swedish model, chanting, “Rhoda [Grant], don’t erode our rights!” (Rhoda Grant is the Labour MSP behinds the push to criminalize clients.)

Despite the usual moral panic in that regard, here’s yet more evidence that teen prostitutes are not languishing on the streets of New Zealand.

The Sabotage Times explores Brazil’s new upmarket hipster brothels. Apparently, nothing can escape being tarred by a hipster brush.

Freakonomics hosts an interview with Maxine Doogan of the Erotic Service Providers’ Union, on the term “sex work” and the disadvantages of legalization vs decriminalization.

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The Week In Links – April 5th

by suzyhooker on April 5, 2013 · 4 comments

in The Week in Links

A Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee member uses a device for detecting fake currency, made available to sex workers to check their clients’ bills (Photo by BBC News)

A Florida escort was arrested on charges of attempted murder for nearly biting her client’s penis off. It’s possible that this woman was just fulfilling a treasured universal sex worker fantasy, but I think it’s more likely there was an assault on the client’s part that we’re not hearing about.

Two teenage girls drowned in an attempt to escape a trafficking protection center in Thailand.

A bizarre French law that prohibited “passive solicitation”–which was defined as women wearing “revealing clothing” in “areas known for prostitution”–was overturned by the Senate. Now there’s some discussion of France adopting the Swedish model of criminalizing clients, which sex workers’ union Strass is opposing.

Maisonneuve attempts to parse a “fucked up paper maze” of new laws clamping down on migrant strippers coming to Canada.

Ontario street sex workers, represented by advocacy groups like the PACE society, are demanding a federal hearing by the Canadian Supreme Court, which will soon be deciding whether current laws criminalizing activity associated with prostitution are unconstitutional. They hope that their stories will influence the court to abolish these laws for good.

The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee is running a program to help Calcutta sex workers identify counterfeit bills.

Swedish police set up a dummy sex ad, then claimed the hundreds of people who responded were “more curious than interested in buying sex.” Yes, it was obviously an intellectual exercise for all of them.

A Canadian student was stopped at the border to the US twice during her travels,interrogated for hours without food or water, and ultimately refused entry because she was carrying condoms and lingerie. She was accused of being a sex worker and berated for committing adultery. Rabble.ca posted her personal account of the ordeal.

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The Week In Links–March 29th

by suzyhooker on March 29, 2013 · 2 comments

in The Week in Links

Courtesy of PHDstress.com

Louis Vutton has been accused of promoting prostitution in a promo video for its 2013 fall collection, in which models do a poor imitation of street workers on a Parisian set.

Sex work abolitionist feminist Joan Smith concludes in the Independent that the Swedish model of criminalizing clients works, based on her experience jumping in a squad car to shadow the Swedish police.Hmmm, maybe she should have asked Swedish sex workers about that?

Maggie Mcneill ponders the implications of having the protection of prostitutes dropped from the final version of the Commission on the Status of Women in Cliterati.

A new study at the University of Victoria will collect data based on the firsthand accounts of Canadian clients of sex workers. Chris Atchinson, one of the researchers involved, hopes that the study will broaden perspectives mostly informed by research focusing on street survival workers.

Police say they’ve seen no evidence to back up an NZ First MP’s claims that girls as young as 13 are working as prostitutes in South Auckland.

Psychologists finally notice the similarities between their jobs and ours in Psychology Tomorrow magazine.

Sex workers and women’s rights activists across India have welcomed the government’s move to drop the word “prostitution” as exploitation from the amended Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code.

Kate Zen asks in Policymic, “Why are sex workers left out of the women in violence conversation?”

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Week In Links–March 22

by suzyhooker on March 22, 2013 · 0 comments

in The Week in Links

Strass (Union of Sex Workers) protests the passive solicitation law in Pigalle Square in Paris on March 16th, 2013–photo by Zaer Belkalaï, courtesy of demotix.com

Renowned 70s porn star Harry Reems died this Tuesday.

Apparently, you can tell a lot about a state or country by the porn it favors. The state of Kentucky has an unexpected fondness for hentai, and Britain is into girls who can squirt. Russia has a thing for Sasha Grey.

Tomorrow there is a book release party for HERE. by Lindsey Kugler at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, OR. HERE. is a “mini-memoir” about Lindsey Kugler’s experience working as a social worker and for MyFreeCams.

Dr Brooke Magnanti takes on lies, damned lies, and prostitution statistics in a Guardian article this week.

Wilmington, North Carolina police officers get drunk and arrest escorts. Good times.

A bill has been introduced to the South Australian parliament which would decriminalize all forms of sex work, based on the New Zealand model.

African trafficking survivors fleeing from Italy to Ireland find that the government is unwilling to grant them asylum.

The fact that a Brooklyn sex trafficking survivor is escorting now apparently invalidates what she suffered before, according to the prosecution, who want to drop her case.

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