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2018’s Best Writing and Reporting on Sex Work

photo via Elvert Barnes

How August Ames’ Suicide Is Changing the Porn Industry by Tina Horn
After the tragic death of August Ames left workers reeling, a sprawling industry realized it needed to do better.

Don’t Ask Sex Workers to Solve the Problems of Violently Angry Men by Gaby del Valle
Sex workers are not ethically obligated to fuck the unfuckable.

The New Orleans Police Raid That Launched a Dancer Resistance by Melissa Gira Grant
After a week of police raids and a failed human trafficking investigation, the dancers of NOLA drew a line.

Stormy Daniels’ strip club arrest highlights how evangelical Americans are criminalizing sex work by Susan Elizabeth Shepard
Strip club laws have nothing to do with protecting women and everything to do with appeasing the Christian right.

Columbus Officer Was Under Investigation When He Shot and Killed Donna Dalton by Melissa Gira Grant
Dalton’s murderer had already received eight complaints against him.

Stormy Daniels Isn’t Backing Down by Amy Chozick
“Part of what has made Daniels such an effective adversary to Trump is that she seemingly can’t be humiliated or scandalized. She doesn’t have a carefully crafted image or a political base to maintain. Threaten to leak her sex tape? ‘I’ll leak all of them, and you can have as many as you want for $29.95,’ she says.”

Abused then arrested: inside California’s crackdown on sex work by Sam Levin
Homeless Black and Latinx women were targeted.

Donald Trump Played Central Role in Hush Payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal by Joe Palazzolo, Nicole Hong, Michael Rothfeld, Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Rebecca Ballhaus
Stormy Daniels was right.

A Stranger Truth by Ashkok Alexander  Ashkok explains how as the leader of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s campaign against HIV he depended on one of the most threatened and marginalized communities—India’s sex workers—to help snuff out the country’s HIV crisis.

The Week In Links: February 15

FE_DA_130214_coco3Former porn star Coco Brown is training to be an astronaut. And no, journalists, it is not so she can have sex in space.

In “Thank God” news, a Washington judge permanently blocked a three-time felon and current inmate’s request for personal information attached to the licenses of over 200 area strippers. The inmate described himself as a “an advocate for the industry” who needed the info in order to make the women famous through his use of social media. Yeah, Asshole, that’s exactly what a lot of sex worker stalkers want to do: out them to the world, permanently, online.

Atlanta is working to ban prostitutes and their clients from areas of city once they’ve been convicted of multiple arrests. Georgia’s Supreme Court has a history of allowing such bans if they’re “reasonable, or aimed at rehabilitation.”

The recent arrest of Kink.com CEO Peter Acworth has reignited controversy over the way his business is run. (It’s not the first time the issue has come up.)

Sasha Grey on why she left porn: “I just knew that it wasn’t a smart business decision to keep working for other people.”

The independent contractor vs. employee battle continues to be waged in strip clubs across the country with a Kansas court providing the most recent landmark of ruling that strippers are entitled to unemployment insurance. The strip club will not appeal.

Also in Kansas, police are trying to find the man responsible for the murder of at least two prostitutes and the attempted murder of a third.

Hey, Here’s Some Good News

 

Stop destroying the Constitution and America and the flag and the United States covered in a flag, prostitute-haters!

The US Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional to require that international AIDS outreach organizations denounce prostitution in order to receive federal funds. Predictably, the government conflated sex work with sex trafficking in its demands that organizations sign an anti-prostitution pledge. (Hence its name; it’s not called an “anti-trafficking pledge.”)

The reasoning for the ruling was as follows:

Compelling speech as a condition of receiving a government benefit cannot be squared with the First Amendment.

Right on. Thanks, Second Circuit! (Except for you, Justice Straub, for encouraging that the Supreme Court take this on so the ruling can be overturned.)

More information about PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)  and the anti prostitution pledge can be found here. And an early account of how the case unfolded can be found here.

Gender Critical Feminism is Fascism

 

Meghan Murphy was booted from Twitter recently for spewing transmisogynistic and anti-sex work garbage. Cue: Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! Meghan Murphy as an individual human person is a complete joke, having edited Feminist Current for nearly a decade, a site consisting of random pepperings of George Soros conspiracy theories muddled together with the language of feminism. Nonetheless, her “gender critical” ideas are gaining traction among so-called feminists and fascists alike, and that’s the part that worries me.

Many “gender critical feminists”—aka TERFs and SWERFs—have aligned themselves with violent allies, proclaiming, much like the alt-right does, that “men aren’t women” and “sex work isn’t a thing.” In a pitiful blog post with endless martyred complaint about her locked Twitter account, Murphy whines:

While the left continues to vilify me, and liberal and mainstream media continue to mostly ignore feminist analysis [sic] of gender identity, people like Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro (and hundreds of right wingers and free speech advocates online), and right wing media outlets […] have attempted to speak with me and understand my perspective […] the left seems to have taken to ignoring or refusing to engage with detractors or those who have opinions they disagree with or don’t like [while] the right continues to be interested in and open to engaging.

Raise your hand if you see a lucrative YouTube rant about “Red Pilling” on the horizon!

The alliance between “gender critical feminists” and the alt-right has been forged on mutual bigotry: hatred for trans people and sex workers. “Gender critical feminists” are willing to sacrifice access to medical care, abortion, and self-determination in their alliance with the alt-right for the sole purpose of harassing, doxing, and generally inciting violence against trans people and sex workers.

Historically, factions of white feminism have flirted with fascism, from the overt racism of the Suffragists in the US to the Christian Temperance Movement here and abroad.

It’s time to give serious consideration to the fact that these factions are still alive and well.

Jason Stanley recently described fascism as having three distinct and alarming qualities: a mythic past, cultural division, and a targeted attack on truth. The alt-right exemplifies these qualities, from “Make America Great Again,” to the carefully cultivated division between “patriots” and The Other and ruthless attacks on the press wherein oppressors suddenly lay claim to victimization. Let us not forget that Hitler wrote an entire book about his “struggle,” detailing the myriad ways he believed himself oppressed.

Gender critical feminism is helping to perpetuate a mythic past, cultural division, and a targeted attack on truth, and it’s time for all the Meghan Murphys of the world to be exposed as the fascist bootlickers they are.