Let’s be prepared for more articles like this one about sex surrogates as The Sessions, the film about quadriplegic writer Mark O’Brien’s relationship with the woman he hired to teach him sex, prepares for a wide theatrical release. People who have been on the internet for a long time might remember reading O’Brien’s amazing first-person account.
Gawker has a massive profile of porn gossipmonger/the guy who helped take down Porn Wikileaks, Mike South.
April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman–can we trust them with the Lusty? (Photo by Nick Gripton on Flickr, image via Eater)
The Lusty Lady’s vacant space will be reopened by Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield, who own the cafe next door, as a cocktail bar which “will pay homage to what the Lusty Lady was…the wonderful seediness, and the dying breed of seediness.” Apparently, “initial design ideas include…a riff on peepshow windows ‘wherein a customer inserts a dollar and then a window opens to reveal a bartender—instead of a stripper.’ ” Holy hipster gentrification, Batman.
Rebecca Woodard, one of Eliot Spitzer’s escorts, was pimped by the city of New York: “Manhattan prosecutors insisted she continue seeing clients while working undercover—and then forced her to turn over all of her earnings and gifts.” Oh, and Spitzer wanted to pretend to be a self-defense instructor testing a student by attacking her. Yay gubernatorial role play.
Former Chicago cop Steven Mandell was secretly taped vacillating over which strip club owner he should murder in order to most easily take over their business. Decisions, decisions.
Honduras Redtrasex, the Network of Sex Workers of Honduras, demand justice for the murder of four local sex workers on December 30th, when five Centre City San Pedro Sula sex workers were shot, including one heavily pregnant woman. One woman survived and is in the hospital in stable condition. RedTrasex’s statement also noted another recent sex worker murder on December 15th.
Melissa Gira Grant lists her picks for 2013’s Best Sex Work Writing. Tits and Sass is honored to have so many of our posts, as well as outside posts by our contributors and co-editors, included.
New regulations came into effect on January 1st in Saskatchewan which allow bars in the province to feature strippers. Anticipating this provincial change in liquor law, Saskatoon’s city council voted to isolate strip clubs in heavy industrial zones, legislation in the same spirit as the adult services bylaw they passed in July 2012, which requires escorts, massage parlor owners and anyone working in adult entertainment to get a business license. More tut tutting and talk ABOUT sex workers from city officials without any input FROM sex workers is covered in the Star Phoenix.
Meanwhile, new federal Canadian laws which went into effect on Dec. 31st ensure that labor market opinion applications from employers seeking to hire foreign workers in the sex industry will no longer be approved. These rules come almost seven years after the federal Conservatives first promised to put an end to the “Liberal strippergate,” in which temporary work permits were issued to hundreds of exotic dancers by the previous government. “Strippergate,” seriously? Hiring migrant workers is somehow a scandal worthy practice?
Glenn Kessler is on a roll debunking the hysterical claims of prohibitionists, and this week he slams the “average age of entry into prostitution is 13” stat with four Pinocchios.
In the latest example of anti-trafficking laws destroying futures rather than saving lives, we have two Oregon teens, one of whom is expected to be sentenced to four years in federal prison, after which she can’t access FAFSA or expect most jobs to hire her.
So, if disabled men also pay for sexual services, what happens to them when paying for it becomes a crime? Good question!
Last week’s episode of Carte Blanche, a South African reality show, introduced Gita November, site co-ordinator for South African sex work organization SWEAT, without any condemnation and in fact called her “inspirational.”
The production team behind 8 Minutes says they weren’t expecting the independent sex workers they got, which is still no excuse for how they treated them—and, as the article notes, they weren’t equipped to help trafficking victims either, so it’s just good all around that the show got cancelled.
Last week was the annual Red Umbrella March, which carries new urgency in Vancouver as Canadian workers face End Demand repercussions, although Vancouver police have stated they will not be enforcing the new law.
Faisal Riza, a queer sex worker in Indonesia, is doing harm reduction outreach and education among Indonesian sex workers. Although the climate in Jakarta is less oppressive and homophobic than in the past, it’s an ongoing struggle.
Sex workers from all over Europe, many representing hundreds of thousands of workers in unions, gathered in Lyon to lobby for decriminalization and against the End Demand model, which threatens their lives as well as their livelihoods.
Half of the $17000 fundraising goal for Angelia Mangum and Tjhisha Ball has been met.
Our very own Tits and Sass contributor Peechington Marie’s and Meli Machiavelli’s fundraiser for murdered Black dancers Tjhisha Ball and Angelia Magnum is at its halfway point of $8,000. Please donate to help them reach their goal and allow Ball and Magnum’s families to afford their burials.
Jada Pinkett Smith holds forth on stripping: it’s wrong. Unlike donating money to ethically dubious and educationally useless Scientology schools, obviously.
Despite the title “Confessions of a Geylang Sex Worker” (mistranslation or deliberate obfuscation?) this article is actually about a study of sex workers in Singapore, heralded as unusual for its discovery of the fact that sex workers are charging different rates to different ethnic groups based on their perceived willingness and ability to pay.
RedUP investigated New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts to predictable-yet-disheartening results: despite the high-minded assurances of New York’s Chief Judge, the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts have failed to be the “great leap forward” that he promised. Instead the same racial profiling and racism endemic to the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy plagues the trafficking court, along with the same cool unconcern for the potential life-ruining consequences of arrest, and the inadequacy of the therapy and life skills workshops offered.
This is kind of neato—The Star Tribune has a blog called “Yesterday’s News” where it digs up old-timey newspaper articles, photos and ads. This week’s feature made the front page of the Minneapolis Tribune on May 9, 1953: Darlene LaBette Varallo, an “esoteric dancer”, was jailed for disorderly conduct. Two follow-up articles detail the handling of the evidence (“two little rhinestone-studded cones, a few lengths of gauze, a fringe and a pair of black net tights”) and the trial, which was complete with a lie detector test and testimony where the defendant explains that she was only guilty of a wardrobe malfunction:
SHE DESCRIBED her dance as a “can-can” plus a mixture of “a shuffle, ball hop, kick, twirls.” She denied Sullivan’s charge that she had bent over and shaken parts of her anatomy at the audience.
“You can’t bend over when you dance or you lose your equilibrium,” said Darlene, who testified she has danced since the age of 3 and was an Arthur Murray instructor for two years.
She said she certainly was wearing state’s exhibit F (the brassiere) when she began to dance but had to discard it because a strap broke. She also denied removing the state’s exhibit E (a tasseled fringe) from its original position around her – ah – middle.
