The Week in Links—June 12th

  Vincent Musetto, writer of the greatest headline in New York Post history—HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR—died on Tuesday. The fact that 225 Haitian women being forced to resort to transactional sex with UN peacekeepers to obtain food, medicine, and other needed items comes as a scandalous surprise makes me worry about the naivete of… Continue reading The Week in Links—June 12th

The Week In Links—June 13

A march organized by Honduran sex workers' rights organization RedTraSex Honduras (Photo via upsidedownworld.org)

  Honduran sex workers marched for recognition and protection, protesting the murder of sixteen Honduran sex workers since September of last year. Canadian sex workers keep it cute: “Jesus had love for Duke Ellington too!”: Tabatha Southey’s cute-but-cogent rebuttal of the current debate around the Nordic model is a must read. Vanessa D’Alessio puts Canadian… Continue reading The Week In Links—June 13

“Dragged Off By The Hair”: An Indian Sex Worker Recalls a Raid

VAMP members after the raid (Photo by Dale Bangkok, courtesy of Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers)

Sitting in a warm room in Phnom Penh with several other women from the Asia Pacific region, Kamalabai Pani, a sex worker and a board member of Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP, Prostitutes’ Collective Against Injustice) in India, became visibly upset when discussion turned to the efforts of U.S.-led feminist groups to discredit several United… Continue reading “Dragged Off By The Hair”: An Indian Sex Worker Recalls a Raid

Equality Now, Or Else?

Meena Seshu (via her twitter)

While Western-led feminist groups such as Equality Now continue to conflate consensual sex work with trafficking and violence, where do sex workers themselves  fit into concepts of feminism and gender equality, especially if they live in countries like India? “When you are coming from a place like India, you have the whole caste system, stigma… Continue reading Equality Now, Or Else?

Activist Spotlight: Carol Leigh on Sex Worker Sinema and Challenging the Anti-Trafficking Discourse

Carol Leigh, aka Scarlot Harlot, was the first sex workers’ rights movement celebrity I ever met. I’d been escorting for only a few months when she came to speak in my area, and I identified deeply with her writing in my dogeared copy of the 1980s edition of Sex Work. I was struck immediately by her… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Carol Leigh on Sex Worker Sinema and Challenging the Anti-Trafficking Discourse