The Week in Links–March 1st

Vice mag contributor Helen Rimmel did a photo essay on South Mumbai sex workers who are peer teachers on HIV, STDs, and women’s rights in the community. Ignore Rimmel’s offensive attempts at a narrative—“Life in the red light districts is…pretty much like living in a giant toilet bowl full of syringes and awful people”—and enjoy the photos of these heroines.

Somebody finally did it! A Cincinnati man arrested for soliciting an undercover officer is challenging the case, based on the assertion that making prostitution illegal is unconstitutional.

The Salvation Army calls sex workers cum receptacles now, apparently. Sex isn’t work, and it’s definitely not what God made you for, ladies (unless you’re having babies). Jury is still out on whether this is better or worse than being called a toilet.

In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Pivot Legal Society and Sex Workers United Against Violence are handing out pocket-sized cards to spread the word about the Vancouver Police Department (VPD)’s newly declared Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines. The new approach mandates that police prioritize sex workers’ safety, and these cards remind sex workers of their new rights re: the police.

In this weeks “sex workers saying typically intelligent things about their own lives” section, stripper memoir writer Ruth Fowler is exhausted by whorephobic, classist, and racist feminists, and Tits and Sass contributor and SWOP-LA director Jessie Nicole writes about the urgent problem of a dearth of sexual assault survivor resources for sex workers.  Jezebel features Dylan Ryan’s piece in The Feminist Porn Book, and Born Whore takes well meaning but myopic sex worker allies to task.

Someone should be asking why anyone would wear that clunky alert watch those allies made for street sex workers. We should be finding a way to mass distribute the Aphrodite Project’s sexy GPS equipped platforms for street sex workers with alarm system and problem client blog.

Susanne Moller, spokeswoman for the Danish Sex Worker Organization, speaks out in a Copenhagen Post opinion piece about oppressive laws governing the sex trade.

A Miami-Dade prosecutor loses his job for flashing his badge in a strip club to get freebies. So fall all douchebags.

A 2012 report released jointly by the UN Development Program (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNAIDS presses for the decriminalization of sex work across Asia and the Pacific so that HIV prevention and treatment programs reach sex workers more effectively.

Sex workers fear that Turkey’s gradual closure of its state-run brothels poses risks to their health and safety.

A new Italian documentary claims late Italian actress/porn performer Moana Pozzi was a KGB agent. Really?

An Irish escort agency web company is outraged at the way it was depicted on the program Prime Time Investigates, complaining to the Broadcast Authority that the show did not include the  “views of any sex workers’ organisations or persons who chose to sell sex” and that it “violated the privacy of innocent parties, most seriously the privacy of numerous sex workers (or potential victims of trafficking) by recording and filming them without their permission”.

After giving testimony before a Dail committee,two sex workers tell the Independent that it doesn’t seem like the Irish government understands how prostitution works now. Meanwhile, other sex workers are still being denied the chance to testify on the question of whether to criminalize clients, while anti-prostitution organizations get ample say.

RH Reality Check posted an excerpt from Research For Sex Work, on violence against indigenous Canadian sex workers.

The Domino Effects offers a guide to retirement planning for the adult industry.

Salon goes after the double standard that forced Miss Delaware Teen USA Melissa King to give back her crown this week because of her porn past.

Smug ABC News reporters record bar owner Arthur Benjamin discussing his sixteen year old girlfriend and other underage women he employs for sex work at his bar in the Philippines, then help authorities bust him. One wonders, however, if ABC News is willing to provide these women with alternative employment.

Students, or ”sugar babies”, who do sex work should be working in brothels rather than relying on online prostitution organizations, a former Canberra sex worker says. The whiff of paternalism here is a bit strong.

Research in Germany finds that legalized prostitution does not lead to an increase in human trafficking.

More sex work coverage in Vice magazine: Porn star Stoya  on how porn chicks avoid getting preggers. “Duh, the same way other chicks avoid getting pregnant,” she begins, rolling her eyes.