“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.
Bad boys! Whatcha gon, whatcha gon, whatcha gon do? That awkward moment when the chief of police gets arrested for soliciting a prostitute.
Strip club regulations are so weird. San Diego police raided a strip club to check for “business permits and work cards.” The raid concludes with police officers taking invasive photographs of the dancers. So, what are the dancers going to do? They’re going to sue their asses, that’s what. And a second club has come forward to complain about the SPD’s tactics.
Tits and Sass contributor Tara Burns helps New Inquiry readers figure out if they’ve been sex trafficked in this handy dandy quiz. So glad we can further simplify the choice/coercion dichotomy in time for April 1st!
People Magazine profiles Rajib Boy, a Kolkatan sex worker’s son selected to participate in a Manchester United soccer training camp in England: “I am not ashamed of being a sex worker’s son…[My mother] is my main source of inspiration.” The article goes into how Indian sex workers’ rights organization Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee coaches local Kolkatan children and holds a soccer tournament every two years with children participating from over fifty different red light districts around the country.
A former basketball coach accused of sex trafficking was freed after a month in jail because prosecutors concluded he had been entrapped by police. Gee, some of us wish we had that defense available to us when we were arrested by undercover cops posing as clients!
Wah wah. Honolulu police can’t have sex with prostitutes anymore after all.
oh yeah is that the problem, Nick? Maybe stop helping cops, then.
Virulently transphobic and whorephobic radical “feminist” lawyer Cathy Brennan was at it again this week on twitter, intensifying her campaign of terror against trans women by threatening to out trans sex workers. One trans sex worker whom Brennan has victimized told Tits and Sass, “She has a webpage for me on her…site, where I sit alongside male rapists and murderers, and she accuses me of misogyny. She has collected information from various social media profiles of mine, and [g]ives links so her followers can harass me. She has collected all this information together with what she believes to be my real name. I fully believe if I were ever to say on twitter I had found a job outside sex work she would attempt to contact them [a]nd show them my adultwork profile. The irony of her being anti sex work yet in a position where she would make any other job impossible [for the sex workers she outs] is particularly bitter. She only ever picks on people without the resources or backup to challenge her. She’s a bully, and seems determined not to stop until some one is dead. Maybe not even then.” Thankfully, twitter has once again suspended Brennan’s accounts.
The former White House official behind twitter account @NatSecWonk, who notoriously ridiculed the D.C. National Security community, is allegedly also behind infamous escort client twitter account @DCHobbyist. Sic semper hagglers!
In the wake of being raped and beaten by a client, a sex worker in California fights discrimination in victims’ aid.
The Somaly Mam Foundation, named for Kristof’s partner in the Cambodia raid, has come under scrutiny for fraud. This feature in Cambodia Daily talks about woman who was coached by Mam to lie about her trafficking victim history in a documentary. This Metafilter post collects several stories about the questionable financial practices within the foundation, which participates in the unlawful arrest and detention of Cambodian sex workers.
You know what’snews this week? Justin Bieber groping a stripper’s ass. Hands to yourself, Bieber. The stripper in question later tweeted, “I’ve Danced For A lot Of Celebrities And They Normally Don’t Phase Me But Justin just Had Me In Shock !” No, we don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, either.
The University of York’s student paper, Nouse, and the Huffington Post still seem surprised that students often use sex work to fund their education. Yawn. Meanwhile, the former chief constable of the South Wales police spoke out in support of a new study into the extent of student sex work in Wales at Swansea University. We yawned yet again at ex-chief constable’s Barbara Wilder’s specious distinction between students and those OTHER sex workers: “[T]hey [the prostitutes Wilder encountered before] were mainly people who had drug addiction or had mental health problems or in really desperate desperate financial situations. They were often driven into it with no choice. Whereas with students we think we are dealing with a different set of circumstances. They are intelligent, starting their lives.”
Ex-porn performer/current anti porn activist Alexa Cruz/Vanessa Belmond sharedher story on British TV show Date My Porn Star, claiming that, ““[n]obody really wants to date a porn star, stripper or escort. Also the whole family thing and having kids, I’m like ‘who’s gonna have kids with an ex-porn star.’ ” Many of our partners and children would disagree.
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, Astitva Sansthan, and other Calcutta sex workers’ rights organizations protest an anti-trafficking law that criminalizes their brothel clients.
The biggest news for sex workers this week was, of course, California, where voters passed two new pieces of legislation invasive of sex workers’ privacy. voted to pass Proposition 35, the frightening anti-trafficking bill that may make sex offenders of a whole lot of people, and Los Angeles County voters passed Measure B, which would require porn performers to use condoms.
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.
