Amy Paul, an Ottawa sex worker, was found murdered in a local hay field this Tuesday after her family reported her missing on September 9th. Meanwhile, Amber Smith, another local sex worker who was reported missing two days after Paul, was found safe. SWOP-NYC and SWANK challenge Sudhur Venkatesh’s fallacious “research” on sex work, in which… Continue reading The Week In Links—September 20th
Tag: Audacia Ray
An Excerpt from Prose and Lore, Issue #2 (2013)
Prose & Lore is the Red Umbrella Project’s literary journal, which collects memoir stories about sex work in two issues per year (Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer). The stories are original to Prose & Lore, and about 75% of the authors in each issue are previously unpublished. Many of the contributors participate in RedUP’s memoir workshops and drop-in writing… Continue reading An Excerpt from Prose and Lore, Issue #2 (2013)
The Week In Links-June 14th
Yesterday hearings on Bedford v. Canada, a case challenging the constitutionality of laws that ban “bawdy houses”, “communication for the purposes of prostitution”, and “living off the avails of prostitution”, began in Canada’s Supreme Court. Sex workers and their supporters took to the streets in several Canadian cities last Saturday to call for the decriminalization of… Continue reading The Week In Links-June 14th
The Week In Links–April 26th
This week was a big one for sex work related news, as the Supreme Court heard arguments this Monday about abolishing the PEPFAR anti-prostitution pledge–which forces NGO recipients of government aid to oppose prostitution–on the grounds that it suppressed free speech. Melissa Gira Grant contributed two articles in the Nation on the issue. The New… Continue reading The Week In Links–April 26th
Activist Spotlight: Audacia Ray, on Telling Stories and the Tricky Politics of Inclusion
Audacia Ray is perhaps most renowned in the sex workers’ rights movement for her longtime editing of the now sadly defunct $pread magazine. But as a sex workers’ rights movement activist, Audacia has really been everywhere and done everything: blogging for years about her sex working experience as Waking Vixen; publishing her book, Naked on… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Audacia Ray, on Telling Stories and the Tricky Politics of Inclusion