The publication of the $pread book is spawning so many articles about that dearly beloved magazine! This week we’ve got one in the The Atlantic featuring a thoughtful interview with Rachel Aimee and Eliyanna Kaiser.
Community activists in Toronto are organizing in an effort to protect sex workers, injection drug users, and homeless people, from the usual brutal street clean-up efforts which accompany such public spectacles.
For sex work history fans, this article and interview on illicit sex and sex work during Ottoman and French rule of Algeria is fascinating!
Nearly one quarter of UK university students have considered doing sex work, while 5% actually do or have done sex work. Austerity cuts, rising tuition, general social moral laxness, may all play a part, although the chorus of anxious articles spawned by the study mainly blame high tuition.
One student said she is “always on her guard” when with clients. The article treats this as if that’s somehow unique to sex workers and not just, you know, part of the experience of having sex with strangers while female.
“Shouldn’t student sex workers be supported instead of stigmatised?” asks this article, quite reasonably.
You haven’t seen handwringing until you’ve read this article about the hitherto unbemoaned threat of global warming: it will force women to become sex workers.
Hundreds of foreign sex workers protested the potential adoption of the End Demand approach in France.
This study, in fact, says that 98% of full service French sex workers are against the penalization of clients. English translation by errrbecca.
Rick’s Cabaret settled for $15 million, ahead of the next court date, which gives you an idea of just how much they’re saving by illegally classifying dancers as independent contractors!
“We believe it is in the best interest of shareholders to resolve this case now, to eliminate uncertainty and the ongoing cost of litigation,” [RCI Chief Executive Eric] Langan said.
The FBI’s press release on the Cincinnati man found guilty of trafficking women is quite long, but doesn’t disguise the fact that his actions could also have been adequately described as the more longstanding crimes of false imprisonment, assault, and pimping.
In an echo of what studies on sex work in Sweden have found, outreach groups in Canada say sex work isn’t disappearing, it’s just moved indoors.
A New Zealand man has been charged with removing his condom while having sex with a full service sex worker, which is against the safe sex law included in the 2003 Prostitution Reform Act.
Pretty much everyone—conservatives, Christians, sex workers, your average agnostic civilian—is united in hatred of 8 Minutes, that new reality show on A&E about “rescuing” sex workers in eight whole minutes.
After Mamamia’s frankly embarrassing distress about and bemoaning of Pretty Woman, Australian sex workers took to Twitter with the hashtag #FacesofProstitution to share their lived experiences and realities. More on that from the BBC.
Here’s a well-researched op-ed from Jamaica on the inevitable by-products of criminalized sex work.
Indian activists and community service organizations came together at Vikalp Sangam, meeting in a new context for a fresh exchange of ideas.
More on Scottish dominatrix Laura Lee’s challenge to End Demand in Northern Ireland.
Apparently it’s a week for hysterical handwringing: according to this article, sex work in Limerick, Ireland is run by organized crime. They say that about Portland too, with about as much basis in reality.
A new exhibition in Canberra, Australia displays historical sex work artifacts and memorabilia, including:
“…a series of hilarious but seriously intended cartoons that the ACT government commissioned Canberra Times cartoonist Geoff Pryor to do. Each cartoon (‘It has the government logo in the corner’ Henderson pointed out) was hung in every brothel where every client would see it and get its message. One cartoon promises a leering client something ‘very special’ if he tries to have sex without a condom and the next panel reveals that the something very special will be his being kicked out, stark naked, on to a Fyshwick pavement in the dead of night. In another, a client who has shown up in an unclean, and unhygienic state is being told that, no, he can’t have sex with one of the girls but might like to try his luck with Millicent, the brothel’s foul (and foul-tempered-looking) goat.”
The Huffington Post got wind of the “quality control” opening in that German brothel and couldn’t resist writing about it. They denied themselves some obvious puns but you can practically hear the snickers.