Brooklyn prosecutors advised local police to stop confiscating condoms as evidence of prostitution.
Labour MSP Rhoda Grant lodged a Members Bill to criminalize the purchase of sex in the Scottish Parliament. The Daily Record reports the sobering revelation that a public consultation on the proposed Purchase of Sex Bill found almost 80 per cent of respondents would back it. Sex workers’ rights org SCOT-PEP put together a press release maintaining that Grant has “ignored the overwhelming evidence from renowned academics, unbiased experts and international bodies warning of the dangers of her proposed legislative approach, as well as the lived experiences of sex workers themselves.”
A new app for Iphone and Android allows people to conveniently snitch to the The Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission if they suspect underage drinking, drug abuse, overserving, prostitution, or gambling at restaurants and bars.
Nepal’s Supreme Court accused a prominent anti-trafficking group of detaining a woman against her will so she could undergo counselling for being a lesbian. What about all the sex workers similarly detained in the group’s ‘rehabilitation centers’?
South African MPs ponder decriminalizing prostitution.
Marion Cottilard’s Cannes festival offering, The Immigrant, features yet another saintly ho. Weren’t we done with that theme after Dostoevsky?
Nevada brothel workers talk back in response to LinkedIn’s decision to ban prostitutes from the site.
A Connecticut woman was arrested for prostitution after calling police to report abuse from her pimp.
A bill that would have mandated condom use in all Californian porn shoots was squashed in committee this week.
The Economist points out what many of us know from grim experience in a piece on the sex trade in Britain: contrary to common wisdom, vice industries are NOT recession proof.
Zimbabwe’s police have launched a crackdown against sex work in streets and bars, often arresting women for simply walking alone at night unaccompanied. Zimbabwean women’s rights groups have filed a formal protest against these practices with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Two women implicated in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, ‘prostitution ring’ currently on trial in Manhattan took the stand yesterday to defend their alleged father-son ‘pimp’ team — Vincent George and Vincent George Jr. — against charges of sex-trafficking, touting their excellent employee benefits. According to The New York Post, the women received furnished homes, cars, ski trips to Vermont, Florida beach vacations, and, in one case, four years of fully funded maternity leave. The New York Times chimes in with some tiresome copy about pimp brainwashing and the not-so-heartening observation that “[t]he case is part of a shift in law enforcement that seeks to treat prostitutes like victims instead of criminals.”
A Proposition 35 copycat bill, Assembly Bill 67, which blurs the line between sex trafficking and sex work, is gaining momentum in Nevada.
Some great pro-sex workers’ rights op eds appeared this week: one in the American Prospect championing arguments against the anti-prostitution loyalty oath before the Supreme Court, and quoting Meena Seshu of Indian sex workers’ rights org SANGRAM, and one by feminist human rights worker Francoise Girard in the Globe and Mail, advocating for a decision to abolish prostitution related laws in Bedford v. Canada.
A group of sex workers and activists are pressing for better access to healthcare and reforms across the Asia-Pacific region with the ultimate goal of decriminalizing sex work.
In response to Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto’s comments last week that Korean and Chinese sex slaves were necessary to Japan’s WWII war effort, Reuters profiles Masayoshi Matsumoto, a 91-year old war veteran and Christian pastor who has made it his life’s mission to speak out about the injustice of the war and the suffering of women forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.