WNYC did a segment on transgender and sex worker self-defense training with Daisey Lopez and Sempai Elena, “THE self-defense instructor for New York sex workers.”
“We Got This: A Zine about Screening, Safe Calls & Buddy Systems For Safer Indoor Sex Work” has been released by Born Whore/Juliet November. It’s a PDF pamphlet that compiles a lot of valuable safety information.
Eliot Spitzer made life harder for sex workers and is remorseless about it, Melissa Gira Grant reminds us.
Sydney Leathers went HAM on the male ego (and talks about being a sugar baby) in this astonishing piece for XOJane.
Gnarly concern trolling in the wake of the murders of sex workers: “Show me a child who deserves to grow up a heroin addicted street sex worker. No one gets to choose their parents.” Thankfully Tracy Connelly’s actual family speaks here, and her partner here.
Oh my word, sex workers get married and have kids.
University of British Columbia professor Becki Ross did a short Q&A on why sex work should be decriminalized.
Hugo Schwyzer told a reporter that teaching his “Navigating Pornography” class was “a dangerous ‘trigger’ that lead him to stray from his marriage.”
Lovelace, the biopic that covers a short time in the Deep Throat star’s life, is out. Sarah Nicole Prickett at Artforum: “What’s at surface a morality play is beneath it a submission to tropes.” Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir: “It’s a strange outcome: She lacked clear agency in her life, and remains an unreadable cipher in the fictional version of her life story.”
A broader look at Hollywood’s portrayals of porn: “The 5 Ways Hollywood Gets Porn Wrong”
Alicia Vera (interviewed here by Kat about her stripper photography) had a beautiful excerpt of her photo essay about her friend, sex worker Eden, up at NPR.
The FBI’s prostitution sting, touted by the agency as rescuing child prostitutes, also arrested far more consenting adults. It’s also likely those “rescued” will be routed into the justice system where they may well end up worse off.
Edinburgh sex workers are worried that the closure of saunas where some of them work will force them into dangerous situations.
Review boards can suck internationally; these Hong Kong sex workers were extorted by sex141.com.
A sex work NGO is taking Russia’s Ministry of Justice to court after it refused to register them.
Wonder how the UK’s porn filters will work? They won’t. Although The Daily Show’s John Oliver thinks they might: