Have you heard about the new regulations on porn made in the United Kingdom? You know, the oddly specific rules that have banned pissing and whipping and squirting and jazz hands and weird mustaches? They’ve at least inspired the coolest protest ever. Three words: MASS FACE SITTING.
Speaking of dumb laws in the UK, Britain’s established its first “prostitution free zone” in Hull County. Problem is, according to Vice Magazine, is that initiative just won’t work. Yet just down the street Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson vows to keep sex workers protected.
Maple syrup. Hockey. Cute accents. Canada has a lot of awesome stuff, including a corps of like-minded activists calling for the repeal of the country’s most recent cruddy prostitution bill, C-36. Even Premier Kathleen Wynne (Ontario) voiced her concern, stating the law is unconstitutional and will do little to keep sex workers safe. Further, local police departments have complained that they have received no instruction or directives on how to enforce the new law. One Edmonton police officer called the law “useless.”
This is a really terrible idea:
A&E has greenlit a provocative new reality series in which a man tries to convince prostitutes to quit their jobs. EW has learned exclusively that the network has ordered eight episodes of 8 Minutes (working title), a series featuring cop-turned-pastor Kevin Brown surprising escorts in hotel rooms and offering to rescue them from a life of trading sex for cash. In each episode, Brown has eight minutes to make his case.
This is still a terrible headline that was changed from “Autopsy suggests dead hooker was fleeing Long Island killer” to “Autopsy finds no drugs in dead hooker’s system, suggests she was frantically running from Long Island serial killer.”
Canada’s NOW Magazine says it “will stand with sex workers against discrimination” and even acknowledges the ad dollars the sex industry allows the publication.
The Economic Times reports on the struggles Indian sex workers, especially trans workers, still face even as HIV “wanes” in India.
Media critic Anita Sarkeesian has rightfully criticized the way sex workers are treated in video games while thoughtlessly ignoring the way she herself treats sex workers.
Sex work in Latin America: “The sex trade still occupies a strange gray area between legal and illegal — it isn’t exactly either, and that ambiguity forces tens of thousands of women to totter through the shadows of society, where they’re vulnerable to all sorts of mischief.”
Another day, more coverage on a crappy trafficking bill that will harm the people it’s supposed to protect, this time in Ireland. The bill, sponsored by Lord Maurice Morrow, will criminalize clients. Why-oh-why do politicians love these laws so much when we all know that they also LOVE sleeping with escorts?
This clumsily written story details the difficulties Australian brothels face in the “modern sex trade.” One brothel owner says the recent spate of sex worker-related violent crimes have contributed to their economic decline.
The Yangon Region of Myanmar is getting a little closer to legal sex work, so that’s pretty cool.