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The Week In Links-June 14th

Terri-Jean Bedford
Terri-Jean Bedford, right, carries her signature riding crop while walking with sex workers’ rights advocate Valerie Scott in front of Ontario Superior Court in Toronto on Tuesday, October 6, 2009. They are two of the three women at the center of the Bedford v. Canada case, which challenges the constitutionality of prostitution related Canadian laws. Hearings for the case began yesterday morning in Canada’ Supreme Court. (Photo by The Canadian Press/Darren Calabrese)

Yesterday hearings on Bedford v. Canada, a case challenging the constitutionality of  laws that ban “bawdy houses”, “communication for the purposes of prostitution”, and “living off the avails of prostitution”, began in Canada’s Supreme Court. Sex workers and their supporters took to the streets in several Canadian cities last Saturday to call for the decriminalization of prostitution in anticipation of the hearings. Viviane Namaste, a professor at Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute, spoke as an official intervenor, explaining that the current laws can actually result in an increase in violence against sex workers. Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young, leading the court challenge, urged the court to set aside moral considerations and stick to the core legal issues. Young is representing the three women at the center of the case: retired dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, former sex worker Valerie Scott and Vancouver sex worker Amy Lebovitch. Several groups spent the day rallying on the steps of the Supreme Court, where more than 100 people showed up to express their opinions. On one side, supporters of sex workers formed a small sea of red umbrellas as Bedford held court in a folding chair, in a leather jacket and carrying a riding crop, stating, “This is going to be the day of reckoning here in Ottawa.” Valerie Scott also addressed the crowd:“Sex work has always been a legal occupation in Canada. The bawdy house law prohibits us from working indoors. But the communicating law prevents us from working outdoors. This puts us in an impossible situation. We cannot respect the dictates of one law without violating the dictates of another.”

In honor of the occasion, several pro-sex work op eds appeared in Canadian papers this week: Huffington Post Canada offered one by Nikki Thomas of Sex Professionals of Canada detailing why the End Demand/Swedish model system of criminalizing clients is a bad idea. The Star published a piece by Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective lauding New Zealand’s decriminalization of sex work and one by feminist professor Angela Campbell supporting the case against Canada’s prostitution laws. The Tyee posted an excerpt of ex-street sex worker Amber Dawn’s autobiography, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir, which tells the story of the beginning of the Canadian movement supporting decriminalization.

A Tulsa area street sex worker faces charges of resisting arrest, assault and battery on a police officer, and public intoxication complaints in addition to her prostitution charge, after she kicked one of her arresting officers in the groin.  Can’t think of much to say in this case beyond offering our fond congratulations.

AB 67, Nevada’s Prop 35 anti-trafficking copycat bill, was signed into law this week. SWOP Las Vegas and other orgs such as ACLU Nevada voiced concerns about the potential for violating human rights and wasting limited resources ensnaring innocent people as sex traffickers given the bill’s overly broad definitions and removal of certain defenses for the accused.

In a federal class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel, a settlement with Louisiana was finalized that will remove from the sex offender registry approximately 700 individuals who had been required to register solely because of a Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS) conviction, usually earned through a street sex work conviction. Deon Haywood, of Louisiana sex workers’ rights org Women with a Vision, is quoted in the article.

The Week in Links: May 27

A Stockholm sex worker was kicked out of school—meaning banned from taking classes, not banned from teaching—because of her (legal) work. This on top of the news that European students are increasingly entering into or considering entering into the sex industry.

Kristen Davis aka the Manhattan Madam is claiming that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the (former) IMF head recently charged with attempted rape, used her services in 2006. Meanwhile, the heinous defense lawyers for Strauss-Kahn have announced their intent to look for a history for sex work in the accuser’s past, based on the suspicion that she might be HIV positive.

Speaking of HIV, it looks like not all sex workers in the Philippines are infected with it which is a big shock to health officials: “This […] has shattered the traditional belief that HIV-AIDS only infects sex workers and homosexuals.”

Underneath this journalist’s cliched and banal opening (“selling her body”? Really?) is a very sweet story about sex workers helping one another receive sex education and health counseling.

The Week In Links—March 21

Belle Kmox
Haters gonna hate. Belle Knox, via her Tumblr.

The 58th meeting of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women took place in New York over the last two weeks, and on Wednesday hosted a sex work panel, “Sex Work is Work: Making the case for the promotion of health and economic rights of sex workers.” It was sponsored by the American Jewish World Service (which published this pamphlet on sex workers’ rights last year), the Urgent Action Fund for Women, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.

It seems the recent outing of Duke student Belle Knox has revealed that porn workers are REAL PEOPLE, just like you and me! They come from a variety of backgrounds and have mixed feelings about their work, just like you and me! Knox has taken this whole ordeal in stride, appearing in front of America’s panel of Certified Pearl Clutchers—the ladies of  The View. She wrote this column for XOJane, in which she opines that, yes, one can be a sex worker, a kinkster AND a feminist.  And now other porn performers are talking, too: talking about how hard it is to talk about working in porn.

The Week in Links: May 20

400 South Korean sex workers rallied against police crackdowns, with some protestors even attempting to set themselves on fire. (Thankfully, none were successful.)

This charming article reveals groundbreaking research from the University of Arkansas. Apparently, it’s big news that some prostitutes are educated, make a “rational decision” to go into the biz, and aren’t spending all their money on drugs. Who knew?

A primary school teacher in the U.K. who was outed as a dominatrix was allowed to keep her job—the teaching job, that is. Unlike Melissa Petro, who had left the sex industry years before becoming a teacher and subsequently being fired, “Mistress Saffron” was working both jobs at the same time when her double life was revealed, but was still let off with a written reprimand.

Australian sex workers deserve better than the Swedish model: “Those proposing the implementation of the Swedish model in the ACT are showing wilful ignorance to the harms of criminalisation, and are ignoring sex workers’ actual needs.”

The Week In Links: April 29

As bodies continue to be uncovered in Long Island, LI sex workers arm themselves for work. Meanwhile, local police keep “cracking down” on prostitutes, claiming that their press for arrests was in place before the serial killer gained national attention.

Audacia Ray offers a concise critique of the so called “superheroes” of New York who are pledging to protect prostitutes from the Long Island serial killer with their martial art skills. Everything about their approach and the media surrounding it is, frankly, a bunch of unhelpful paternalistic bullshit.

A photo has been released of the Seattle man charged with raping and torturing a sex worker. Police are asking other victims to come forward. .

Brooke Magnanti (Belle De Jour) addresses the obfuscation and hysteria that dominates discussions of  trafficking, porn, and sex work.

Hawaii is considering two different bills to suppress prostitution, neither of which is well-considered.

A former stripper is suing a Detroit strip club for firing her after she refused to perform sex acts on customers. Check out the video; the plaintiff uses the term “modern day sex slaves” but doesn’t provide any evidence of coercion and instead talks rampant drug use by her fellow dancers and ends with a moral plea to protect women from stripping altogether. The strip club owner admits there’s drug use at his club, but points out that there’s drug (ab)use in many professions.

Dickish Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame is running for mayor of Miami on the platform of requiring strippers to buy work permits. (“Fellas, relax,” he tells the customers. Because god knows dudes spending their expendable income shouldn’t be the ones paying more when you can tax the women trying to make a living.)

Police are looking into unsolved prostitute murders across the entire country in attempt to connect them with a recently charged serial killer suspect from Reno. Joseph Naso is charged with murdering four women. The media is speculating that some of those women were prostitutes but the police won’t confirm.