RIP Andrew Hunter, President of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) and Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers activist (photo via NSWP)
Andrew Hunter, one of the founding members of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) and the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, and a personal friend and ally of ours here at Tits and Sass, died suddenly yesterday. His radical commitment to the rights of sex workers, drug users, and HIV positive people will continue to create an impact after his passing. NSWP will be collecting and posting tributes to his life and work on a memorial page on the NSWP website, so if you have memories to share please email them to secretariat@unaids.org.
Sex work advocate Susan Davis is excited about Canada’s new prostitution ruling, but also expresses apprehension about what new laws her country’s conservative government might create.
Melissa Gira Grant wrote a short history of the red light, virtual and otherwise, at Medium: “The red light, like a review on The Ultimate Strip Club List, is a message exchanged between men.”
Still of Robin Weigert, right, and Johnathan Tchaikovsky in the movie Concussion, playing a high end escort catering to lesbian clients and her husband. (Photo by RADiUS-TWC)
We covered NYC’s new prostitution courts last week. This week, Robin Richardson of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center sent a great letter to the editor in the New York Times discussing the courts and challenging the criminalization of prostitution. In even more exciting news, the Melissa Harris-Perry Show hosted a dialogue on the courts and on sex work featuring Deon Haywood of Women With a Vision. It was a remarkable discussion, the likes of which we’ve never seen before on network television. In November, Melissa Harris-Perry will also be hosting a panel discussion, featuring Deon Haywood and formerly incarcerated activists and scholars, on female incarceration at Tulane University.
Following recent (often negative) media exposure, brothel workers in Nairobi, Kenya have taken to confiscating recording equipment such as smartphones from clients to protect their privacy.
Sex workers’ rights activists are starting to respond to Equality Now’s campaign, which we mentioned last week, condemning the UN and Global Law Commission’s recommendations to decriminalize sex work. India’s National Network of Sex Workers and the African Sex Worker Alliance have both released statements.
The Los Angeles Times ran a positive review, rife with comparisons to “Belle de Jour”, of “Concussion,” a film about a housewife turned high end escort who caters to women clients exclusively. How we wish this were actually a market that existed in the real world. One thing, though: as our contributor Lori Adorable notes in her tumblr, “Just FYI: I often insist on meeting my clients in public first, and it is not really that unorthodox and definitely just for business. Try harder, people who review media about sex work.”
Ed Sheeran, who won prizes for a shitty song about a sex worker, said of Miley Cyrus ” I think encouraging young people to twerk might be a bad thing. It’s a stripper’s move. If I had a daughter of mine, I wouldn’t want her twerking.” If we had a daughter, we wouldn’t want her listening to Ed Sheeran.
A Bangkok police official defended the role of sex workers by claiming they reduced rape, angering local sex workers’ rights organizations. Chantawipa Abhisuk, director of the Empower, responded saying, “The belief that prostitution can help reduce rape cases in society is just a misunderstanding. There are still many rape cases in our society and they are usually perpetrated by someone close to the victims, not by some total stranger.”
“The women are not a blight on the community, they’re an asset,” Braithwaite said, adding that the committee is not working to get rid of the women, but rather to work with them and make them feel safe…
“This community is not about gentrification, not about stopping (the women),” she said, adding that they are all “fibres of our community.
Part of making them feel safe is looking for support services, food, and health outreach spaces that the workers can access, as well as shelters where needed, and continuing with community education, so that residents are aware of issues facing the women. The police force is also involved, having changed its focus from one of persecution to one of support and safety planning.
Petite Jasmine (Photo via her Facebook page, courtesy of Rose Alliance)
Today marks on year since the murder of Petite Jasmine. Reading about her life and death is the most powerful argument we know against the Nordic Model.
Cool, some tourist filmmakers are fundraising to shoot a documentary in Dallas strip clubs. “The project ‘was started because the strip club and stripper industry was one of the few areas I felt created clear camps — men and women,'” OK!
An interesting twist to opposition to Canada’s bill C-36: “A Saskatoon man whose money was stolen by people posing as licensed adult services workers says the federal government’s proposed prostitution bill will give ‘free reign’ to such thieves, or even human traffickers, by preventing people from going to the police.”
the World Cup has hardly been the boom she hoped for, and that many tourists have come from Latin American countries with weak currencies and haggle over prices lower than what a Brazilian would pay. “The tourists have even less money than we have,” she said dryly.
Pictures have been released of two men wanted for questioning about the assault and robbery of two different prostitutes working in midtown Manhattan. (Yes, the article is tone deaf and offensive—yet the Gothamist’s rewrite manages to be even more so—but look at these pictures if you work in New York!)
