The Week in Links—December 20th

The Week in Links

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December 19, 2014

A graphic Amanda Brooks made to illustrate the devastation abusive client Percy Lawayne Isgitt wreaked on her and Jill Brenneman. (Image via Amanda Brooks' blogs, courtesy of Amanda Brooks.) — A graphic Amanda Brooks made to illustrate the devastation abusive client Percy Lawayne Isgitt wreaked on her and Jill Brenneman. (Image via Amanda Brooks’ blogs, courtesy of Amanda Brooks)

You can contribute to longtime sex worker activists Jill Brenneman and Amanda Brooks to help them pay their medical expenses using the email abrooks2014@hush.com through Giftrocket. Brenneman and Brooks were abused and terrorized by a client over a span of two and a half years—they discussed their devastating story with Tits and Sass co-editors Caty and Josephine earlier this week.

Amber Batts is suffering the results of Alaska’s new anti-trafficking laws, which have resulted in her being charged with eight counts of felony sex trafficking for running an escorting agency. She’s been offered a plea bargain which would require her to register as a sex offender for life even after serving 10 to 25 years in prison. Batt’s best chance against the conviction that would ruin her life is a good lawyer, but her lawyer just quit because she was unable to pay. Donate to her legal fund at crowdrise.

Mistress Anja, a pro-domme in Singapore, talks about how she got into her work and why she stays in it (because it’s a job that pays extremely well, spoiler).

Melinda Chateauvert, Savannah Sly, and Tits and Sass’s own Maggie Mcmuffin are interviewed in this article about Seattle SWOP’s symposium for December 17th, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Melissa Petro and Tits and Sass contributor Tara Burns wrote powerfully about the themes of the day, Petro for Al Jazeera and Burns for Vice. Missy Wilkinson also did a write up of SWOP-NOLA’s December 17th march in New Orleans for Gambit.

First the Swedish model and now mandatory testing: bill C-36 has passed in Canada and one public health organization there is advocating legalization, regulation, and mandatory testing, all for sex workers’ own good of course. The Canadian Public Health Association has taken the stance that legalization and regulation would create the safest climate for sex workers, allowing for the creation of

conditions that enable sex workers to access necessary health services and sexual health education initiatives to promote safer sex practices.

Although the CPHA’s paper outlining its stance uses some good language, it also has some baffling misstatements, claiming that sex workers have a higher instance of HIV and sti infection, for one. A higher instance than whom is left unsaid, but for the most part we have much lower rates of infection than the civilian population.

The Guardian asks how exactly Canada’s laws on prostitution managed to make a full 180 in one year.

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The Week In Links: April 22

The Week in Links

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suzyhooker

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April 22, 2011

The New York Times personality profile of the Long Island killer, who called at least one of his victim’s families to taunt them about her murder.

There’s a strange, ominous posting on a Long Island message board threatening one of the women found dead.

Seattle police ask for information about “bondage room” rapist who kidnapped a prostitute, offer amnesty to sex workers with information.

La Salle University student paper goes topless when administrators ask them to put a story about a professor who hired strippers “below the fold.” The professor has been suspended.

Business Insider makes much ado about a stripper who snuck into Google. The CEO of the company that made Farmville has been granted a restraining order against her.

“In my 20s I danced to “Like a Prayer” as a stripper without once thinking of the irony” “Madonna, my partner in aging” by Christine McDonald.

The infamous “Duke stripper” has been charged with the murder of her boyfriend.

A former member of 98 degrees (a ’90s boy “band,” in case you’ve forgotten) will be working at Chippendale’s.

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The Week In Links–May 31st

The Week in Links

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suzyhooker

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May 31, 2013

Dear Rhoda Grant, Stop trying to rescue us from cash-money, thanks. (Image via Comically Vintage) — Dear Rhoda Grant, stop trying to rescue us from cash-money, thanks. (Image via Comically Vintage)

Brooklyn prosecutors advised local police to stop confiscating condoms as evidence of prostitution.

Labour MSP Rhoda Grant lodged a Members Bill to criminalize the purchase of sex in the Scottish Parliament. The Daily Record reports the sobering revelation that a public consultation on the proposed Purchase of Sex Bill found almost 80 per cent of respondents would back it. Sex workers’ rights org SCOT-PEP put together a press release maintaining that Grant has “ignored the overwhelming evidence from renowned academics, unbiased experts and international bodies warning of the dangers of her proposed legislative approach, as well as the lived experiences of sex workers themselves.”

A new app for Iphone and Android allows people to conveniently snitch to the The Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission if they suspect underage drinking, drug abuse, overserving, prostitution, or gambling at restaurants and bars.

Nepal’s Supreme Court accused a prominent anti-trafficking group of detaining a woman against her will so she could undergo counselling for being a lesbian. What about all the sex workers similarly detained in the group’s ‘rehabilitation centers’?

South African MPs ponder decriminalizing prostitution.

Marion Cottilard’s Cannes festival offering, The Immigrant, features yet another saintly ho. Weren’t we done with that theme after Dostoevsky?

Nevada brothel workers talk back in response to LinkedIn’s decision to ban prostitutes from the site.

A Connecticut woman was arrested for prostitution after calling police to report abuse from her pimp.

A bill that would have mandated condom use in all Californian porn shoots was squashed in committee this week.

The Economist points out what many of us know from grim experience in a piece on the sex trade in Britain: contrary to common wisdom, vice industries are NOT recession proof.

Zimbabwe’s police have launched a crackdown against sex work in streets and bars, often arresting women for simply walking alone at night unaccompanied. Zimbabwean women’s rights groups have filed a formal protest against these practices with the Ministry of Home Affairs.

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The Week In Links—June 27

The Week in Links

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Red

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June 27, 2014

The front page of myredbook.com post-seizure (screenshot)

In a terrible blow for Bay Area sex workers, the sites MyRedbook.com and SFRedbook.com were shut down by the FBI, accused of money laundering and facilitating prostitution. Redbook was one of the few free advertising sites left where sex workers could advertise, talk to and screen clients with a degree of distance.

Steph Key, a member of the Australian Parliament, is trying for the third time to make decriminalization a reality in South Australia.

Some brothels in the Dolly district of Surabaya are still running, despite being officially “shut down” last week.

Operation Cross Country, a five-day nation-wide trafficking sting, yielded 168 child victims, many of whom had never been reported missing, and far more adult workers. The children, who are primarily runaways, many of whom weren’t reported missing by their families, will be returned to their families where possible or placed in foster care. In at least one instance a driver was also arrested on charges of conspiracy and promotion of prostitution.

Anne Elizabeth Moore and Leela Corman did a comic strip about what anti-trafficking NGOs really do for Truth-Out’s series Our Fashion Year.

Toronto’s Maggie’s Sex Worker Action Project is raising funds to battle C-36.

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The Week in Links—August 8th

The Week in Links

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Red

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August 8, 2014

Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox in Arizona backing trans and sex workers' rights activist Monica Jones' appeal against false charges of "manifesting prostitution" (Photo via Monica Jones'Facebook) — Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox in Arizona backing trans and sex workers’ rights activist Monica Jones’ appeal against false charges of “manifesting prostitution” (Photo by Leah Jo Carmine, via Monica Jones’ Facebook, courtesy of Monica Jones)

Laverne Cox supports Monica Jones’ appeal against trumped up charges of “manifesting prostitution”! We couldn’t have dreamed up a more exciting celebrity cameo in our wildest activist dreams. Catch up on Monica’s case by looking through Tits and Sass’ Monica Jones tag, and stay tuned for an exclusive Tits and Sass update on her appeal by her SWOP-Phoenix comrades.

Coverage of the Portland Cupcake Girls’ Spa Day in the local press had a few of our readers writing in to us and other venues, infuriated. Apparently, neither the Oregonian nor the Cupcake Girls understand that strippers are not all unloved waifs and that actually, they can make themselves up and even (gasp!) pay for their own salon visits without the group’s charity. In fact, they do so consistently in order to work in a field in which their appearance must be immaculate. Read Red’s longform piece on shadowing the Cupcake Girls for more on these well meaning altruists’ fundamental misunderstandings about the sex industry.

Despite the fact that the former head officer was sexually assaulting the very women he was supposed to be helping, the Hamilton trafficking unit carries on, making fake dates with workers through online ads and attempting to rescue them. No charges have yet been filed in the past year and a half, though the former head, rapist Derek Mellor, faces a continued disciplinary hearing in September.

Sex workers in Jakarta have returned to work with the end of Ramadan, a fact that the Public Order Agency finds less than thrilling.

“We will address the issue soon. We hope both streets will soon be free of sex workers,” he said.

Sounds like he has a solid and not at all abusive plan.

The Economist makes an argument for decriminalization that, essentially, boils down to a pro-gentrification (“get the seediness off the streets”) point.Worlds collide when the interests of white male privacy and sexuality come up.

Margaret Corvid writes about some of the prices incurred by the loss of the fourth wall, as internet presence and accessibility becomes mandatory for many sex workers. Tighten your privacy settings, y’all.

MediaUpdate pays tribute to Nokuphila Kumalo, the sex worker assaulted and murdered by South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa.

Without even a photograph of her, it is difficult to put a face to her name. Access to the fragments of her life prior to her murder is also hindered by the stigma associated with sex work. Although the oldest profession in the world (apart from politics) it remains shrouded in secrecy and shame, criminalised in most countries and regarded with contempt by mainstream society.

Mthethwa’s trial begins in November.

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