Upon the publication of her book, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labor Markets and the Rescue Industry, anthropologist Laura Agustín became a hero to many sex worker activists. Her research cuts through the usual moral hysteria and emotionality invoked by the idea of trafficking to radically revise discussions about migration and sexual labor. Both her blog (linked above)… Continue reading “There Can’t Be Numbers:” An Interview With Laura Agustín, Part 1
Category: Politics
Quote of the Week
I hear a lot of supporters of the Swedish model say that the legislation does not target sex workers because we are not the ones who are criminalised by the laws. To me, this buys into a long history of treating sex workers like we exist independently of community, clients, family and other human beings.… Continue reading Quote of the Week
Going Negative In The Champagne Room Fails
Remember the worst, most offensive political ad ever made? We talked about it last month, and it seems to have helped catapult Janice Hahn right into office. Alexandra Petri’s take on why that might have been suggests (quite sensibly) that most of the eyeballs on web ads belong to young liberals:
Hey, Here’s Some Good News
The US Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional to require that international AIDS outreach organizations denounce prostitution in order to receive federal funds. Predictably, the government conflated sex work with sex trafficking in its demands that organizations sign an anti-prostitution pledge. (Hence its name; it’s not called an “anti-trafficking pledge.”) The reasoning for… Continue reading Hey, Here’s Some Good News
Kat Takes a Stroll Through @aplusk’s Twitter Feed
I’ve been trying to make sense of Ashton Kutcher’s recent twitter feed. After the Village Voice article came out on Friday, he just started firing off tweets that sounded a lot like how an upset tween would respond if #killjustinbieber was trending, and not so much like the CEO of a nonprofit. I’ve been doing… Continue reading Kat Takes a Stroll Through @aplusk’s Twitter Feed