With thanks to members of SWOP-USA Laws that criminalize HIV exposure are supposed to benefit public health, but in practice are extremely harmful to public health and to the targeted HIV-positive individuals. Sex workers are highly vulnerable to these laws, which sometimes target HIV-positive prostitution specifically. Many require forcible HIV testing, and sometimes they simply… Continue reading Outdated Fear: Criminalizing HIV+ Sex Workers
Tag: UNAIDS
A Sex Worker’s Open Letter to the Australian Media
After the Sydney Morning Herald published an editorial promoting the Swedish model of criminalizing sex workers’ clients, exploiting the murder of Australian street sex worker Tracy Connelly to further an anti-sex worker agenda, many sex workers responded to the piece by writing to the news outlets that printed or re-printed it. Jane Green wrote a… Continue reading A Sex Worker’s Open Letter to the Australian Media
The Week In Links—January 3
The Lusty Lady’s vacant space will be reopened by Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield, who own the cafe next door, as a cocktail bar which “will pay homage to what the Lusty Lady was…the wonderful seediness, and the dying breed of seediness.” Apparently, “initial design ideas include…a riff on peepshow windows ‘wherein a customer inserts… Continue reading The Week In Links—January 3
The Week in Links–March 1st
Vice mag contributor Helen Rimmel did a photo essay on South Mumbai sex workers who are peer teachers on HIV, STDs, and women’s rights in the community. Ignore Rimmel’s offensive attempts at a narrative—“Life in the red light districts is…pretty much like living in a giant toilet bowl full of syringes and awful people”—and enjoy the photos… Continue reading The Week in Links–March 1st