The International AIDS Conference in Melbourne featured discussion of how laws criminalizing sex work hinder efforts to prevent the spread of HIV. This Reuters story covers counterproductive global laws. A study was presented that argued decriminalization could cut the rate of infection by up to a third. Chinese sex worker activist Ye Haiyan was prevented from traveling to the conference.
Porn performers aren’t the only ones getting screwed over by banks: the owner of strip clubs Scores and Penthouse Executive Club is suing Deutsche Bank for $1 million after the bank reneged on a $17 million loan when it discovered the nature of his business.
As part of its “Consolidated guidelines on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care for key populations” (key populations being men who have sex with men, prisoners, injection drug users, sex workers, and transgender people) the WHO has announced that countries wishing to increase access for these populations need to remove the legal and social barriers preventing access, including decriminalizing sex work. “The global fight against HIV and AIDS will not be won by relegating segments of the population to the shadows,” said John Berry. The WHO was guided in forming these recommendations by the actual target populations themselves.
Cyd Nova just made a handy list for you to hand out to your future acquaintances: Nine Stereotypes Sex Workers Are Tired of Hearing About. Yes, this is a real job and no, it is never appropriate to ask someone about their abuse history. If someone actually does that, just take the list back and save it for the next person.
“What does the Swedish model get wrong?” asks this Time column, answering that it is the treatment of women as incapable of consent and the continued marginalization of sex workers. Moreover, it announces that decriminalization is actually the answer.
The Washington Post asks, “Do Dating Aps Have a Prostitution Problem?” Did the Washington Post have a slow news day problem?
Sex work gave this woman financial stability and the ability to buy a house for herself and her daughter. “Sex work doesn’t define me. I am like any woman you know.”
Decriminalization would help prevent the spread of HIV, repeat sex workers, as well as protect against other abuses.
This serial rapist of sex workers has been caught and sentenced to 17 years.
Sex workers evicted from the Kandapara brothel have relocated to a variety of different hotels and businesses to continue working, reportedly shocking the Committee to Prevent Anti-Social Activities who apparently thought that, deprived of a safe space to work, the sex workers would just disappear.
It’s a scary time to be a sex worker. Tara Burns documents the ongoing effects of the war against us.
The closure of MyRedbook will probably force more workers onto the streets.
The war isn’t just against sex workers though; taken collectively the past few months have seen strikes against the bodily and economic autonomy of a variety of marginalized groups.
Some sex workers in Zimbabwe look to God for protection, knowing they can’t expect it from anyone else.
Conservative MP Goguen’s questioning of a former sex worker—asking whether she was “expressing herself” when she got raped—is just one facet, and not even the most brutal one, of social and governmental lack of regard for the safety and well-being of sex workers.
This same lack of regard allows sex workers and marginalized women to be the targets and victims of sexual violence which goes unpunished, which C-36 will only exacerbate.
It’s been a year since Tracy Connelly was murdered and her community came together for a memorial service for her and 67 other victims of male violence in the past year. The anniversary highlights the vulnerability of street workers, as well as their sense of community and shared loss. Opened just before Connelly’s murder and fueled by it, Peta Griffin’s new play Ugly Mugs looks at violence against sex workers and violence against women more broadly.
Sex workers in Swindon now have other options besides jail if caught; Swindon will be offering diversion programs for workers and clients and an outreach worker has received a grant to do street outreach from a van at night.