Season Two of True Detective maintains the original’s fixation on sex workers. I’m wary, but love me some Tim Riggins, so I’ll be watching!
Tits and Sass contributor Juniper Fitzgerald is the latest in a chorus of voices pointing out that the current trafficking hysteria is just history repeating itself.
Children from families in poverty are also people with agency, struggling to get by just like the rest of us, often exploited by the very social service organisations assumed to be helping them: this and other revelations at the link:
“It made me wonder how someone can go to school every day while coming down off methamphetamine, having been out doing sex work the night before – and never have that picked up by anyone at the school?”
Some of the participants told Ms Thorburn they had been abused by organisations set up to assist them, with claims of sexual exploitation and sexual assault. This resulted in them returning to the streets and shunning any further assistance.
More on that, and a little more.
File this one under grotesque abuses of power: Guards at the detention center on Nauru paid the asylum seeking female inmates for sex, circulated videos of the acts among themselves, and then claimed it was all square because prostitution is “legal in Australia.”
Bree Olson does have a point: when we’re outed, there’s nothing left for us but the sex industry. Don’t expect those feminists who talk about rescue to have your back—the silence will be deafening.
Sex workers in Karnataka, India, are among some of the most marginalized groups there, although there are ongoing efforts to organize, unionize, and confront the stigma against them which keeps them from accessing services.
A Russian woman working in Dubai who was attacked and robbed by four men had to enter a guilty plea because apparently she got put on trial along with her attackers.
Our own co-editor emeritus Charlotte Shane has a lot of great advice for anyone thinking about hiring a sex worker:
Your sex worker isn’t there because of their lust for you, or even their like for you. They’re there because it’s their job. Interrogating them about their own tastes, proclivities, and the authenticity of what they wanted you to believe was an orgasm is boorish and will cast a sour pall over the proceedings. “What do you want to do?” is one of the most groan-worthy things you can say to a sex worker, because odds are they want to be texting their friends, watching a Bravo marathon, or fucking the person they’re dating instead of you.
The man accused of murdering Ting Fang, the sex worker who was killed over New Year’s, is finally going on trial in July.
Unsurprisingly, (because how many sex industry managers manage to avoid the money-saving ethical pitfalls offered by the lure of “independent contracting”?) Barbara Ann Berwick was apparently not a very good phone sex line boss. And yet that doesn’t detract from the legality of her claims against Uber! She’s definitely in a position to know.
This is certainly one way to handle HIV outreach education, although it still removes the onus from the client, who is, after all, the main disease vector.
Bay Area sex worker and columnist Siouxsie Q is taking her show Fish Girl to the Big Apple! It runs at Brooklyn’s Brick Theatre June 24th-28th.
The Stranger makes up for this month’s shoddy piece on cam models with Conner Habib’s “If you’re against sex work you’re a bigot.” Enough said, really.