Tag: robin d

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

Activist Spotlight: Bonnie On Violence And Endurance

Bonnie at the Different Avenues office in D.C. (Photo by PJ Starr)

Content warning: This interview contains graphic descriptions of police violence and rape, imprisonment, and domestic abuse. Bonnie is a veteran sex workers’ rights activist who has done outreach work in the D.C. area since 2001. She was a HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) client who lived on the streets in Maryland. Later, she was inspired… Continue reading Activist Spotlight: Bonnie On Violence And Endurance

Big Mother Is Watching You: Hollywood Edition

(Screenshot from a video by Jada Pinkett-Smith's anti-trafficking organization, Don't Sell Bodies)

For her third installment of Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists and officials, Robin D goes to Hollywood to check out do-gooder celebrities and the whorephobic campaigns they run. Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan Susan Sarandon and Meg Ryan were key players in NGO fraud Somaly Mam’s ascendence in Hollywood. Mam… Continue reading Big Mother Is Watching You: Hollywood Edition

Big Mother Is Watching You: Mistresses of the Universe

(Carceral Feminist Cat meme by Melissa Gira Grant)

Welcome to Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent  anti-sex worker activists, most of them women. This new feature is brought to you by Robin D.,  veteran activist with SWOP-Denver. Today’s Mothers are a pair of powerful heiresses and philanthropists who, of late, have focused their efforts on influencing policy affecting sex workers. … Continue reading Big Mother Is Watching You: Mistresses of the Universe

Nicholas Kristof’s Sweatshop Boner

(Image by Scott Long, courtesy of Scott Long)

The Cambodian garment industry’s factories often serve as the canonical example of sweatshops. Women toil away in them for long hours with low pay and awful, unsafe working conditions. There are regular mass faintings due to poor ventilation, chemicals such as insecticides and shoe glue, long hours, and lack of access to health care. There… Continue reading Nicholas Kristof’s Sweatshop Boner