A team of academics at Concordia University in Canada are developing a video game to counteract C-36. The objective: to make money as a sex worker and survive.
The sex workers in Freetown, Sierra Leone are earning a small percentage of what they used to because of the Ebola crisis. Their customers are afraid that they may be infected. In addition, many of them no longer have their second jobs, so competition between them has become more severe, encouraging their customers to haggle more.
Kristin Davis, AKA The Manhattan Madam, has a few things to say as she begins her prison sentence:
I did not work with anyone who was forced to be an escort. But this would not be the case if prostitution was legalized everywhere. And if we legalize prostitution under the auspices of controlling the sex industry to keep it safe, we will end up fundamentally controlling the women working in the industry.
Sex workers in Canada say C-36 is affecting their incomes, although not lessening their need for money! There’s this gem of a quote from a former sex worker who supports C-36, saying that she’s never met a prostitute who got into it because it was her career goal. Let’s just imagine if that was a requirement for the legality of other jobs. McDonalds would never have another employee. School toilets would have to become self-cleaning. All toilets would have to become self-cleaning!
Writer Noah Berlatsky just keeps them coming lately! This week it’s an article pointing out the ways that the desire for a sensational narrative obscure the mundane realities of sexual harassment, assault, and exploitation, including state involvement and the absolute ubiquitousness of routine violations.
Charles Lewis, an adult entertainment consultant, has set up a new association to bring “structure” to the Barbados’ sex industry. I am now accepting bets on whether this will be at all beneficial to anyone but business owners and management.
Molly Crabapple writes about New York’s trafficking courts for Vice.
A parish priest in Ghana is trying to start a halfway home to offer housing to homeless sex workers.
Despite the headline, this article offers nothing to back up the police claim that the murderer of Belinda Pereira may have spoken about the murder out of guilt; rather, it uses that baseless assertion to segue into discussing the “marked decline” in violence against sex workers after Ireland’s 1993 Prostitution Act, which made paid sex between consenting adults legal, and the new End Demand law and its probable effect on sex workers’ safety.
Sex worker Princess Kora is doing a series of videos mocking Anita Sarkeesian:
“People who are sick and tired of what Feminist Frequency stands for came together and enjoyed the exact opposite—a sexually liberated, libertarian-leaning, pro-freedom-of-speech woman delivering the product that she promised.”
Women call escorts too!
More shameful clickbait from Slate about the latest in sex work boomtowns: Perth, Australia. While the quotes from the workers make it worth a read, be warned: it’s boiling over with poorly veiled judgments about the relative attractiveness of the workers, poorly researched claims about the industry, and ends by giving the most text space to Sue, the madam of the well-known brothel Langtrees, who offers this horrific bit of insight while posturing as being supportive of her employees:
“I always say to the girls, the first time you say to the gentleman, ‘Honey I don’t like that. No.’ The second time you sit up and say, ‘I said no, if you do it again, end of booking.’ Third time you put on a towel, walk out, and give them the envelope back.
By the time the madam comments that, “…they are selling part of their soul,” the reader is about as ready for this nauseating mess to be over as the writer apparently was, for she chooses to end with that. Now that’s what I call unbiased reporting!
Some woman told a class of seventh graders that they too can be trafficked, along with a lot of other ill-informed nonsense.
Suzi Godson illuminates recent lies about the size of the UK’s sex industry, and why such claims were made (funding, obviously).
After a porn performer recently tested positive for HIV, Nevada health officials are considering adopting the same regulations that brothels employ, requiring:
…each patron to wear and use a latex prophylactic while engaging in sexual intercourse, oral-genital contact or any touching of the sexual organs or other intimate parts of a person.
Thailand’s attempts to live up to (or down to, as it were) U.S. demands with regard to trafficking is only making things worse for everyone, especially undocumented migrant workers and trafficked people. According to this story, “Tougher laws and increased legal powers to combat human trafficking have led to increased corruption.”