Bubbles said it first, but the documentary that “exposes” exploitation in amateur pornography production, Hot Girls Wanted (now available on Netflix), has some problems. Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals offers some constructive criticism of the doc and suggests what points it should also have covered.
Speaking of, what is that agent’s job from Hot Girls Wanted like, anyway?
A Portland sex worker art show/book launch party for the $pread Magazine Anthology got some local press. The show, $pread The Love, the brainchild of our own Tits and Sass Week In Links Editor Red and other Portland sex worker activists, was held yesterday.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes about how the JVTA heedlessly replicates the War on Drugs for Politico; something Melissa Gira Grant reported on a couple of years ago. Politico then ran a rebuttal letter with seven signers. They’re pretty illustrious: Tracy Sefl, is a senior campaign adviser to Hilary Clinton, and, of course, Autumn Hanna VandeHei is married to Jim VandeHei, cofounder and executive editor of Politico.
Sex workers in Zimbabwe aren’t using digital currency because it’s hip and high-tech, they’re using it for their safety.
I’ll bet there are more than a few sex workers in Ottawa that are downright tickled to see Justice Peter MacKay, the man that gave them Bill C-36, quit his job.
It’s a noble attempt, but there’s still so much fail in this mansplainy story about TER that I don’t even know where to begin: there’s the part where the author calls an escort’s job “her universe,” and the part where he likens escort reviews to burger reviews (stop comparing us to food, writers!).
What are things like at the only strip club in Saskatchewan? Not great: “In the real world, most laws drafted to protect women have one thing in common: they seldom do.”
Stoya writes about what porn performers don’t talk about: money. “Much more frequently the lack of transparency regarding pay leads to newer performers undervaluing themselves and their work.”
Hot diggity dog, this “undercover sex sting” nabbed 22 sex offenders and a whole ton of escorts! Because grown men meeting kids from the internet and grown men meeting grown women for sex are both equally reprehensible, right?
The Nicaraguan Supreme Court is training a pilot group of sex workers as judicial facilitators.
Just when you think European soccer can’t possibly get any more racist, it does! Sex worker edition.
Much Loved, a Moroccan film about the country’s sex industry (which is now banned there), is believed to have inspired the country to publish its first ever study of the industry.
Frustrating news from South Africa: the trial of Zwelethu Mthethwa, an artist who has been accused of murdering a sex worker (some of the evidence includes footage of the incident and witnesses) has been postponed yet again.
Having some mixed feelings about Sue Lee, a woman who does outreach work in Swindon, England. It’s hard to get past the patronizing tone of the article she wrote detailing her work, especially when so congratulates herself with this observation: “Historically, sex workers have been viewed as loose women with no morals, but things have really moved on – they are victims who need support.” But ultimately, it seems she’s doing her best to protect women who need help the most.
This rousing op-ed coincides with Tuesday’s International Whores’ Day:
Sex workers are seen to incite or deserve violence because of the nature of their work. When transgender Mayang Prasetyo was murdered in Queensland last year, theCourier-Mail not only dehumanised by using the incredibly offensive ‘she-male‘, it also repeatedly iterated she was a “prostitute”, as if that somehow validated her death. When I posted online about a client attempting to assault me a week ago, a man commented “your fault dumb bitch” – as a sex worker, I suppose, I have forfeited any right to complain about sexual assault because sex workers are ‘unrapeable’.
One can only shake one’s head at this obnoxious piece of voyeuristic journalism in which the reporter embarks on meeting those mythical sex workers that went to college. It just gets worse after a lead that goes a little something like this:
Did you know that 38% of British sex workers have university degrees? When I heard this, I decided that I wanted to talk to some of the girls in the UK sex industry who had choices. Who hadn’t had their passports nicked, but still chose to entertain men for cash on their Fridays instead of partying with their mates or gritting their teeth and getting a bar job.
The Guardian featured a story on the diversification of the Nevada legal brothel industry as a response to the recession— “survival-of-the-freakiest.” The writer does express some tedious surprise at the fact that a “small town brothel,” Sheri’s Ranch, “employs a PR man and a madam who sounds like she attended Stanford Business School.” (Also, he makes extra sure the reader knows he wasn’t a client: “There would be no special massage for me.)
Do these Silicon Valley “sex therapists” have sex with their clients? One wonders.