When Will It Be #TimesUp For Rapist Cops? #MeToo And Sex Workers

Content warning: This piece contains general discussion of sexual assault and state violence.  Last week, Time Magazine published a story about sex worker exclusion from the #metoo phenomenon. Sex workers are a criminalized population vulnerable to sexual assault, composed of people oppressed in many intersectional ways, so the inaccessibility of this newly popularized movement against… Continue reading When Will It Be #TimesUp For Rapist Cops? #MeToo And Sex Workers

SESTA’s Growing Threat To The Sex Worker Internet

You can always count on a corporation to look out for its own interests. An existential threat to their business model will even trump the good PR that comes from beating on everyone’s favorite marginalized punching bags, sex workers). So, until recently, major tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Google opposed SESTA,the Stop Enabling… Continue reading SESTA’s Growing Threat To The Sex Worker Internet

Top Six Reasons Melania Trump Should Get Involved In Anti-Trafficking Campaigning

With every new presidency comes the expectation that the First Spouse will adopt a cause that is considered sufficiently non-controversial in nature. So as the doomsday clock ticked ever faster towards the Trump inauguration at the end of 2016, people not only speculated about which nightmarish regressive agendas Donald would make a waking reality while… Continue reading Top Six Reasons Melania Trump Should Get Involved In Anti-Trafficking Campaigning

We’re Not Crazy For Doing This: Sex Workers With Mental Illness

"Patients Waiting To See A Doctor, With Figures Representing Their Fears" by Rosemary Carson (via wikimedia)

Most people have some form of a lurid narrative about drugs, exploitation, childhood abuse, and mental illness come to mind when they imagine the life of a sex worker. However, sex workers’ relationships to their identity are far more complex and difficult to characterize than that trite narrative allows for. When it comes to sex… Continue reading We’re Not Crazy For Doing This: Sex Workers With Mental Illness

Diversion Programs Are For Cops

(Photo by Flickr user IceBone)

There is significant debate within our sex worker community about whether LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) programming, a pre-booking diversion program for low-level drug and sex work related offenses, is a good or bad thing. The first LEAD program launched in Seattle, Washington in 2011, with private funding from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations,… Continue reading Diversion Programs Are For Cops