The Week In Links—October 4th

The Week in Links

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October 4, 2013

Still of Robin Weigert, right, and Johnathan Tchaikovsky in the movie Concussion, playing a high end escort catering to lesbian clients and her husband. (Photo by RADiUS-TWC)

We covered NYC’s new prostitution courts last week. This week, Robin Richardson of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center sent a great letter to the editor in the New York Times discussing the courts and challenging the criminalization of prostitution. In even more exciting news, the Melissa Harris-Perry Show hosted a dialogue on the courts and on sex work featuring Deon Haywood of Women With a Vision. It was a remarkable discussion, the likes of which we’ve never seen before on network television. In November, Melissa Harris-Perry will also be hosting a panel discussion, featuring Deon Haywood and formerly incarcerated activists and scholars, on female incarceration at Tulane University.

Following recent (often negative) media exposure, brothel workers in Nairobi, Kenya have taken to confiscating recording equipment such as smartphones from clients to protect their privacy.

Sex workers’ rights activists are starting to respond to Equality Now’s campaign, which we mentioned last week, condemning the UN and Global Law Commission’s recommendations to decriminalize sex work. India’s National Network of Sex Workers and the African Sex Worker Alliance have both released statements.

The Los Angeles Times ran a positive review, rife with comparisons to “Belle de Jour”, of “Concussion,” a film about a housewife turned high end escort who caters to women clients exclusively. How we wish this were actually a market that existed in the real world. One thing, though: as our contributor Lori Adorable notes in her tumblr, “Just FYI: I often insist on meeting my clients in public first, and it is not really that unorthodox and definitely just for business. Try harder, people who review media about sex work.”

Ed Sheeran, who won prizes for a shitty song about a sex worker, said of Miley Cyrus ” I think encouraging young people to twerk might be a bad thing. It’s a stripper’s move. If I had a daughter of mine, I wouldn’t want her twerking.” If we had a daughter, we wouldn’t want her listening to Ed Sheeran.

A Bangkok police official defended the role of sex workers by claiming they reduced rape, angering local sex workers’ rights organizations. Chantawipa Abhisuk, director of the Empower, responded saying, “The belief that prostitution can help reduce rape cases in society is just a misunderstanding. There are still many rape cases in our society and they are usually perpetrated by someone close to the victims, not by some total stranger.”

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The Week in Links—January 16th

The Week in Links

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Red

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January 16, 2015

tumblr_ni9fxx13TT1qgalzuo1_1280 — Fees and fines are illegal, kids. (Photo courtesy of Red)

The Willamette Week broke the news that I, Tits and Sass Week In Links editor Red, and my fellow dancer Amy Pitts are suing my former strip club this week after months of tedious and stressful settlement negotiations. Shorter and less informative video clips on the suit can be found here and here, but probably the best coverage so far is this New York Daily News story, which makes more meat puns than I would normally find decent.

Alaskan sex workers are raising money to go to Juneau to lobby the Alaskan legislature. You can support their campaign and learn about their efforts here: Nothing About Us Without Us!

Bengals defensive back Adam Jones was ordered to pay over $12 million for his part in a fight and shooting that broke out at the Vegas strip club, Minxx. Jones made it rain, dancers started fighting over the money, and eventually shooting broke out, injuring three people, including one security guard who was paralyzed from the waist down.

New MTA safety ads warn against pole dancing in subway cars: “Poles are for safety, not your latest routine.”

Tits and Sass contributor Naomi Sayers responds brilliantly to an interrogation around C-36 and the assumption that it protects sex workers, while outlining sex work activists’ next steps in a post-C-36 Canada.

Nigerian full service sex workers are offering three days of their services free if General Muhammadu Buhari wins the upcoming presidential elections in February. Clever reverse Lystrata tactic!

Porn actor Jiz Lee writes that people should be as concerned with ethical porn consumption as they are with ethical porn, since illegal distribution not only allows consumers to not pay for workers’ products, it also allows producers to evade the very safety standards set in place to protect performers.

Benjamin Frederickson worked as a HIV positive sex worker in the Midwest and New York for years, documenting his life and his work with Polaroids that are now being shown in an exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York until February 28th.

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The Week In Links—April 4

The Week in Links

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suzyhooker

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April 4, 2014

Claudette, Swiss intersex sex worker and grandfather, immortalized by Malika Gaudin Delrieu's photography: "I have the sex of the angels, why would I be ashamed of it?" (Photo by Malika Gaudin Delrieu via the Huffington Post) — Claudette, Swiss intersex sex worker and grandfather, immortalized by Malika Gaudin Delrieu’s photography: “I have the sex of the angels, why would I be ashamed of it?” (Photo by Malika Gaudin Delrieu via the Huffington Post)

Amnesty International will be debating their policy on sex work this weekend at their annual meeting in Chicago. (You can sign this petition supporting an Amnesty policy change in favor of decriminalization here.) Unfortunately, the only article we could find on the event is littered with quotes like this one: ” “Virtually all people who prostitute themselves were first prostituted as children…,” [Illinois Attorney General Lisa] Madigan said.” Hmm, wanna cite a source for that, Ms. Attorney General?

Katha Pollitt takes vengeance on our friend Melissa Gira Grant for daring to criticize her valorization of Lean In feminism by lambasting Grant’s new book, asking, “Why Do So Many Leftists Want Sex Work To Be The New Normal?” Maybe because they’re actually listening to us sex workers? (And there aren’t quite so many of them—as far as we’re aware, sex work is still criminalized in the U.S.) Pollitt also managed to very mistakenly characterize Tara Burns’ piece for The New Inquiry as the work of someone too privileged to speak for “the women at the heart of this debate: those who are enslaved and coerced—illegal immigrants, young girls, runaways and throwaways.”

Speaking of Melissa, this subtly whorephobic Telegraph interviewer sure is frightened of her: “Melissa Gira Grant can be quite scary…her fist strikes the table. Every interviewer she has spoken to…has asked her how she became a sex worker—and she’s angry about it. ‘Why do you want to know?” she demands, blue eyes icy with rage. “Why is this important to you?’ ” Those ex-sex workers demanding their right to privacy—they’re terrifying!

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending $398,213 on a project studying whether paying male Mexican sex workers for being free of sexually transmitted diseases will increase condom use. Ummm, the results of this research are pretty inevitable, aren’t they?

HuffPo profiled photographer Malika Gaudin Delrieu’s work on Claudette, proud intersex sex worker and senior citizen.

Vice Magazine made us roll our eyes with a piece entitled “Young Native Girls Are Being Sacrificed To The Canadian Sex Trade.” Mmmm, smells like white savior complex. Noticeably absent are quotes from Indigenous sex workers’ rights activists like Naomi Sayers or Jessica Danforth.

Today is the last day to take this Red Umbrella Fund survey on funding for sex worker organizations. The RUF plans to use the survey’s results to advocate for more and better funding opportunities for sex workers’ groups and networks.

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The Week In Links–May 3rd

The Week in Links

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suzyhooker

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May 3, 2013

Albert Yau from the org Midnight Blue joins a May Day rally in Hong Kong to promote the rights of male sex workers. (photo by Ernest Kao)

Sex workers from Kolkata took to the streets for May Day, demanding legalization and changes to the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act. Mexican sex workers also held a march in Mexico City.

Several prominent sex worker organisations have been denied permission to intervene in the Supreme Court Bedford v. Canada appeal on June 13th. In a press statement from Maggie’s, Stella and POWER, Canadian sex worker coalition spokesperson and Stella director Émilie Laliberté stated that “The Supreme Court of Canada’s unwillingness to take the voices and perspectives of sex workers into account — in a hearing on laws with a major impact on their safety and dignity — is incomprehensible to us.”

A MSNBC op ed piece illustrates the Obama administration’s folly in defending the PEPFAR anti-prostitution pledge before the Supreme Court by profiling the reduction in HIV rates one Nairobi clinic created by offering sex workers free STD treatment and condoms and encouraging them to unite to enforce condom use with their clients. Meanwhile, NGOs anxiously await the Court’s ruling on whether to abolish the pledge on 1st Amendment grounds.

In this month’s installment of white-slavery hysteria, an 18 year old Colorado woman reported missing in February has been found living unharmed in California, but family members are continuing to claim that she has been coerced into sex work. Although police who interviewed Ms Furlong have stated that she is living in Venice Beach of her own free-will, her parents remain convinced that she is a “a scared victim of trafficking,” and have requested police assistance to return her to Colorado. These concerns have been backed by the National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation, who argue that trafficking victims are often “coerced to believe their families are bad”. Ms Furlong herself has stated that “everybody can leave me alone because I’ve been fine and I am fine.” Here’s hoping everybody does just that.

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The Week In Links—May 22

The Week in Links

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Red

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May 22, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-05-22 at 12.11.07 AM — Courtney Stodden. (Photo courtesy of JPAvocat)

Courtney Stodden’s “sex tape” got released early, but really, as Dr Chauntelle Tibbels points out, it’s porn, making this the most official sex work Stodden has ever done. The 20 year old got married at 16 to that creepy guy from the X-Files and won all our hearts with her unabashed gold-digging ways. Welcome to the club, Courtney.

Attention, New Zealand workers: A sex worker was attacked in Christchurch last week. In a heartening example of what legal rights can do, the Prostitutes’ Council was able to issue an alert to its members and police are investigating the crime.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: noted sex worker hating, transphobic academic Sheila Jeffreys is retiring.

A couple of DEA agents were busted for illegally running a strip club in New Jersey. They didn’t disclose their purchase of the club to the agency, which said that the club made the DEA a potential target for blackmail.

Alex Tichelman was sentenced to six years in prison after she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the heroin overdose death of her client, Google executive Forrest Hayes; the criminalization of both drug users and sex workers were contributing factors.

rabble.ca has decided in favor of retaining Megan Murphy’s writing on the site and using it in the future, finding that it is not actually too violent against sex workers, transphobic, or racist. They’d know better than we do, I suppose.

In the latest update on 8 Minutes, Ariana Lange reports on the interactions between the show’s producers and the overburdened, unequipped Houston resources they sent sex workers to. Elijah Rising’s Cat French told Lange of Kevin Brown “…he went off the goddamn rails.”

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