Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers purports to reveal “the truth about what the average performer looks like, what they do on film, and how their role has evolved over the last forty years”, using information gathered from The Internet Adult Film Database (and without talking to any actual sex workers, conveniently).

In New Zealand, a bill that would ban street-based prostitution in parts of Auckland is currently before a parliamentary committee. If passed, the bill would give police powers of arrest, the power to stop and search vehicles, and would allow fines of up to $2000 for street workers and their clients. The bill has been lobbied for aggressively by unhappy local residents and conservative community organisations. The New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective opposes the bill, saying it “makes a scapegoat of street-based sex workers and would leave them more vulnerable to violence.”  In a submission to the committee, one street-based worker commented “This is my life.  Please don’t make it any harder on me.  I’m only trying to get by.” Sex work (including street work) was fully decriminalized in New Zealand in 2003.

Melissa Gira Grant reliably produces more brilliant work–this time, a piece on the history of sex work in the US and the forces that conspired to criminalize it.

The Indian government has decided not to recriminalize sex work, by not defining voluntary sex workers above the age of 18 years as victims of trafficking in their new definition of the criminal offense.