Sixty French celebrities, including Belle De Jour star Catherine Deneuve, signed a petition to protest a bill in France Parliament that would impose fines on the clients of sex workers. Thus, admirers of Deneuve can continue their fangirling without the bite of political guilt. Meanwhile, France 24 puzzles over the resounding silence around the issue in Parliament, and Al Jazeera interviews Manon, a representative of French sex workers’ rights organization STRASS, and Melissa Gira Grant on sex workers’ POV on the proposal. STRASS members were slated to hold an open meeting with legislators on Thursday, though, until now, French sex workers were not consulted by lawmakers on the topic. (Is anyone surprised?)
Apparently, times are tough for us all over Europe—in Germany, the country’s most prominent “feminists” have launched a campaign against legalized sex work.
Here’s some coverage on the three day Scarlet Alliance National Forum in Sydney earlier this week.
Has Jenna Jameson returned to adult films? The fabulous Miss Jameson sets the record straight.
Singaporean trans sex workers speak out at the International Congress on AIDS Asia Pacific.
Karen Wirth presented the latest in trafficking hysteria in the NY Times yesterday, dashed with the pretense of scientific rigor. The Atlantic joined in with a piece entitled “It’s Not Just Justin Bieber: Travel Websites Are Fueling Sex Tourism.” Much dark side. Such gritty, hard hitting reporting. Wow.
Shilpa Samaratunge answers the question, “Is sex work work?” with a resounding yes in Sri Lanka’s Groundviews. The leftist journalist also interviews three wheeler drivers, who play an important role in the country’s sex trade by maintaining connections between sex workers, their clients and the locations in which sexual exchanges take place.
In light of all these recent stories about how us sex workers just lurrrv the Affordable Health Care Act, here’s an interesting piece on how an Argentinian stripper, Annabelle Battistella alias Fanne Foxe, inadvertently doomed Nixon’s Health Care Reform Act in 1974.
A Scottish strip club, the Burke and Hare, is offering customers “guilt-free” lap dances by donating the proceeds of the performances to charity. Though, many of our favorite customers would argue that their lap dances are already guilt-free. Furthermore, the article leaves the question of how dancers are compensated for this non-profit work unanswered.
Reuters profiles the business of street sex work in Rio’s working class Vila Mimosa district.
A St-Laurent, Montreal resident was convicted of sexually assaulting two escorts after a week of deliberation by the jury that heard the case. (We thought you might appreciate hearing about justice actually being served by the criminal justice system.)
The District of Columbia momentarily owned a strip club this week when the District’s Office of Tax and Revenue seized the Stadium Club, a gentleman’s club and the home of reality show Strip Club Queens, in order to pay off its owner’s debts.
Ex stripper and reporter Sarah Tressler, who was fired from Hearst’s Houston Chronicle last year after the paper found out about her moonlighting as a dancer, filed an EEOC complaint and landed a job at another Hearst paper, the San Antonio Express-News, is leaving the Express News now to work on a book.
Salon interviews Sallie Tisdale on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary reissue of her book on pornography and personal sexual development, Talk Dirty To Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex. Tisdale talks about how the internet hasn’t changed sex as fundamentally as we all seem to think.
Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter has decided to appeal the Tax Review Board’s ruling that a tax on lap dances is out of bounds.
Kathleen Hanna, in an interview in Rotten Tomatoes: “I don’t think it’s sex positive to be a stripper. I think of it as a way to, you know, put food in your mouth and be an artist and pay for college.”
Former Australian High Court judge Michael Kirby questions the application of criminal law to HIV non-disclosure and criticizes the criminalization of sex work in many Asia Pacific countries.