The Week In Links—May 30th

Sex workers in Mumbai are starting a school for sex workers, run by sex workers.

Somaly Mam steps down a week after Newsweek officially revealed what inquiring journalists had long known: Mam fabricated her past as a trafficked woman and paid other women and girls to tell juicy lies to the public. Newsweek covered Mam’s resignation as well, but Anne Elizabeth Moore asks the questions Newsweek skipped over at Salon.

Siouxsie Q wrote about the California condoms bill for SF Weekly, while Bianca Jarvis thinks that Truvada (pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV) might be the future for condomless porn. Are serious liver problems really more appealing than condoms?

Sex workers protested the auction house Strauss & Co after an employee commented that the murder charges against Zwelethu Mthethwa, who is about to go on trial for murdering a 23 year-old sex worker, could really increase the value of his art. Strauss & Co kept it classy with a belated apology.

The grandmother of an X Factor finalist is getting her own tv documentary, “My Granny the Escort,” about her experiences as, well, an escort.

Policy Mic lists 11 documentaries about sex work that will change the way “you” (civilians, presumably) think about sex work. Late last week they also featured this article from Tits and Sass contributer Cyd Nova: 9 Lies We Have To Stop Telling About Sex Work.

Sex workers in Marondera, Zimbabwe face an increasingly tough economy, with common payment being either $1 or a beer.

St James Infirmary is about to celebrate fifteen years of providing services to sex workers, including STI testing, primary care, transgender hormone care, needle exchange, counseling, food, and clothing, to the sex workers of the Bay Area.

The Sex Workers’ Opera premiered last night; inspired by Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, the Sex Workers’ Opera is a new project which lets sex workers tell their story through performance and music.