Anti-trafficking ideologues are wringing their hands in dismay and blaming the Hawaii police for not being able to find the hordes of sex trafficking victims that surely must be out there somewhere. Yet arrests are turning up no trafficking victims whatsoever.
A Pennsylvania cop going undercover accepted a blowjob from a suspected prostitute before arresting her. He was so unashamed of his actions he detailed them in his police report, and the police department also found no problem with this officer’s behavior.
Laura Agustin is characteristically awesome on Alternet, asking why migrant sex workers need saving.
More coverage from the London Evening Standard on the Westminster Council study which demonstrated that the recession is putting London sex workers at more risk of violence. We love the fact that the image used here is one of sex workers protesting, rather than the usual cliched graphic of high heels in low lighting, and we love that members of the British government are urging the wider adoption of the Merseyside model (treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes.) We could do without the xenophobic undertones here, though–“those foreigners are taking our sex work jobs!”
Amber Dawn and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore have a dialogue in the Advocate about sex work, memoir writing, cycles of violence, and queer community.
The New Orleans Police Department want to squelch wild rumors that a missing teacher is the victim of sex trafficking Russian mobsters. If they didn’t want this sort of hysteria, maybe they shouldn’t have spread trafficking panic during the Super Bowl.
Rachel Kramer Bussel covers the Feminist Porn Awards for the Daily Beast. Courtney Trouble, Madison Young, and Tristan Taormino make an appearance.
Calling Margaret Thatcher a prostitute is insulting to sex workers, National Union of Metalworkers of SA’s second deputy president Christine Olivier told members of her union. “It implies that they are collectively at par with the reactionary Thatcher rather than members of the working class. So comrades [from] KZN [KwaZulu-Natal] may you use another word when you refer to Margaret Thatcher,” she went on.
So it looks like women who were trafficked into domestic labor in the United Arab Emirates are running away and going into sex work. I bet anti-sex trafficking crusaders are gonna have a hard time getting their heads around that.
CBC profiles Hamilton sex workers’ rights organization Big Susie’s and the Canadian Supreme Court’s deliberation over whether to strike down Canadian prostitution laws, which forbid brothels, dungeons, and solicitation, as unconstitutional. The Star spotlights the Feminist Coalition’s support in the struggle to abolish these laws.
The information in the Ugly Mugs intiative (a national British bad call list for sex workers) is being used by police to identify serial killers and rapists. Sex workers have reported 250 crimes and it is thought the information has already helped secure at least eight convictions.
A Guardian reporter goes undercover as a maid in a Chinese run brothel in London to write about migrant sex workers’ lives. To quote the headline, one brothel worker says it for all of them: “I regret not working in the sex trade as soon as I got here.”
Human Rights Watch offers a nation wide update on the struggle against police using condoms as evidence.
An important story we missed earlier: a couple of months ago, the Atlanta City Council was considering banning people who have been convicted of prostitution from certain parts of the city, and perhaps banishing them from the city all together upon repeated offenses. Thankfully, they’ve since dropped this idea and are instead forming a task force on prostitution.
Clay Nifokurk writes in Rabble.ca about the documentary “Scarlet Road”, which follows sex worker Rachel Wotton and her disabled clientele, and about her own experiences doing sex work with disabled clients.
Dr. Brooke Magnanti is the voice of reason once again, explaining why the government of Goa’s attempts to ban the building of a Playboy club have nothing to do with protecting women.
University of Ottawa researchers published a three year study on third parties in the sex industry. They discovered a variety of roles for third party workers as drivers, security, agents, receptionists, web designers, event planners, location providers, and managers, and a variety of power dynamics between them and sex workers. According to sex workers they interviewed, third parties provide useful and important services that increase their safety, security and wellbeing, so Canadian laws criminalizing third party work only endanger sex workers.
A study on migrant sex workers in New Zealand has found that they are not victims of traffickers and the vast majority of them are drawn by the money. To which we respond with a loud “DUH.”
17 women have been ‘rescued’ from a ‘prostitution ring’ in India only to be incarcerated in a trafficking “rehab center.”
A whole bevy of articles express surprise about Silicon Valley sex workers using tech–Square! Twitter! Tumblr! And heavens to betsy, rich tech workers are spending their money on local sex workers, leading these sex workers to make millions! At least there’s some great footage and pictures of Kitty Stryker and Siouxsie Q.
I want that Tardis dress.
You’re not the only one.
Re: the police having sex with a sex worker and then arresting them…god, that’s so dismaying. What’s worse is I’m pretty sure they’re doing it in my state too.