Author: Robin D

Robin D has been involved with SWOP since 2008 and Prax(us) (now closed) since 2011. She's a big believer in "meatspace" collective activism, building community/community organizing, and coalition-building. She obsessively shares articles about sex workers' rights and other social justice issues, and can spend an embarrassing amount of time on the internet, which is both magical and poisonous.

SESTA’s Growing Threat To The Sex Worker Internet

You can always count on a corporation to look out for its own interests. An existential threat to their business model will even trump the good PR that comes from beating on everyone’s favorite marginalized punching bags, sex workers). So, until recently, major tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Google opposed SESTA,the Stop Enabling… Continue reading SESTA’s Growing Threat To The Sex Worker Internet

Big Mother Is Watching You: The Swedish Model Goes Stateside

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz.

In the fifth installment of her column, Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists and officials, Robin D.  outlines the major figures promoting the End Demand/Swedish Model phenomenon in the United States.  When the Sex Purchase Ban passed in Sweden in 1999, prostitution was legal there. Proponents of the Swedish Model in the… Continue reading Big Mother Is Watching You: The Swedish Model Goes Stateside

Activist Spotlight: Bonnie On Violence And Endurance

Bonnie at the Different Avenues office in D.C. (Photo by PJ Starr)

Content warning: This interview contains graphic descriptions of police violence and rape, imprisonment, and domestic abuse. Bonnie is a veteran sex workers’ rights activist who has done outreach work in the D.C. area since 2001. She was a HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) client who lived on the streets in Maryland. Later, she was inspired… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Bonnie On Violence And Endurance

Big Mother Is Watching You: The Polaris Project & Rhode Island

Donna Hughes. (Screenshot from video presentation, "Analysis of Human Trafficking Cases in Rhode Island, 2009-2013")

For her fourth installment of Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists and officials, Robin D. takes a look at the major advocates of the 2009 re-criminalization of indoor sex work in Rhode Island, where it had previously been protected by a legislative loophole. She also outlines heavyweight anti-trafficking organization Polaris Project’s… Continue reading Big Mother Is Watching You: The Polaris Project & Rhode Island

Big Mother Is Watching You: Hollywood Edition

(Screenshot from a video by Jada Pinkett-Smith's anti-trafficking organization, Don't Sell Bodies)

For her third installment of Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists and officials, Robin D goes to Hollywood to check out do-gooder celebrities and the whorephobic campaigns they run. Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan were key players in NGO fraud Somaly Mam’s ascendence in Hollywood. Mam… Continue reading Big Mother Is Watching You: Hollywood Edition