Darren Vann, the man accused of targeting sex workers and killing seven women in Indiana, says he messed up by killing his last victim, Afrikka Hardy in Hammond instead of Gary. (True remorse.) S.E. Smith asks how a convicted sex offender was able to murder at least seven women over the past few decades. Gary Ridgeway could answer that for her. And our own Tits and Sass contributor, Peechington Marie, explains how Vann’s sex worker victims are stigmatized and erased by the media because they don’t fit the good victim profile on the Ebony Magazine site.
Olga Galkina, a St. Petersburg lawmaker, has drafted a bill that would give clients a choice between fines or arrest if they’re caught seeing sex workers, with the fines and jail time increasing if they know the person was forced into sex work, and best of all, an option that would forgive and forget the infraction if the client marries the sex worker. Galkina says that she favors legalization of prostitution and is using this bill to start a public conversation on the issue.
File this one under Civilians Being Obnoxious Idiots About Sex Work: two former New School students have started the world’s first “poetry brothel,” where:
….writers could present their work in a more vibrant, visceral setting. They would dress up, invent alter egos, and sell not their bodies but their poems.
A 19-yearr-old Chinese backpacker is looking for generous “temporary boyfriends” to fund her travels: they pay for her trips to their cities and her expenses while there and in return “they get a whole night with me, my undivided attention, and a chance to show themselves off in the company of a truly beautiful girl.” Haters say if she was getting cash rather than a trip we would all know what to call her, but I think we already do: thrifty.
A former police officer who abused his power in order to force sex workers to have sex with him has been sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Strippers at Sapphire Gentleman’s Club is Las Vegas won legal recognition of their employee status on Thursday, and the case is now back in the District Court to decide how much the approximately 6,500 dancers who work there are owed.
Siouxsie Q. talks about Facebook’s short lived legal name policy and the reality that pseudonyms keep us safe.
CNN goes inside the world of a feminist stripper and hears that “it’s hot and empowering.” Sex workers the world over who’ve been trying to break free of that word cringe in unison.
In the wake of her rebirth and the creation of her new anti-trafficking organization Somaly Mam breaks her silence to defend herself. Some things are too good to last.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary admits they have very little to go on in hunting down the group of men who’ve been gang raping sex workers in St. Johns. The fact that they’ve done very little to inspire sex workers to trust them may have a lot to do with this. The Safe Harbour Outreach Project, a sex worker support group which was the group to issue the gang rape warning rather than police, repeats that the assailants are local men, not foreign workers as has been reported in several articles.
Vancouver police are looking for the man who assaulted and stabbed an East Vancouver sex worker this week.
Tom Osrin, a well-known cyclist from Cape Town, South Africa, has been charged with assaulting a sex worker. Other sex workers have come forward to support her claims with their own stories of his violence toward them.
Lisa Ling, the host of CNN’s This is Life, recently visited a bunch of strip clubs and found that “they aren’t just for men.”
The new head of India’s National Commission for Women supports legalizing prostitution:
“The legalisation of prostitution, what it will actually lead to, is easier control over the situation in which paid sex takes place,” Kumaramangalam told the Indian channel NewsX last week.
“Thereby you could do a lot more with regard to the plight of the women who are in sex work and also the health aspect of sex work and the violence which is often associated with commercial sex work.”
Sex workers corrected her, saying they want decriminalization, not legalization.
Inside Philanthropy covers the 60k grant to RedUP for its programs helping to support sex workers who want to leave the industry.
T-Pain really was in love with a stripper!
Meanwhile, Usher has some whorephobia going on in his new anthem to strippers: “Just because you work on the pole, doesn’t make you a ho.” Thanks for the support!
2001 Odyssey is teaming up with BitCoin so that virtual visitors don’t have to miss out on making it rain.
Mychal Denzel Smith suggests lessening the burden on police officers by decriminalizing sex work and drugs.
The debate over the Swedish model spreads to the UK.
Ugly Mugs writes to the Impartial Reporter on behalf of Northern Ireland’s sex workers as the Assembly of Northern Ireland passes the Swedish model as part of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill.
A man who raped a sex worker in West Reading, England, has been sentenced to a lengthy term in jail while his co-attacker is still sought.
Whittlesea, home to the bingo hall that had the brilliant idea of adding male and female strippers to the mix, makes news again as the council investigates whether the bingo hall breached its permit. Scandal.
More on the Oakland, CA ordinance requiring landlords to evict sex workers.
In its inimitable fashion Cosmopolitan Magazine has come out with a “Remember to vote!” video featuring male strippers. It’s even more terrible than their lesbian sex tips.
Tyson Beckford is starring in a new movie about male strippers.
Police in Ohio issued a warning: “We are not ‘wearing great costumes’ nor are we ‘the strippers.'”
The Oregonian did a biographical piece on Tempest Storm this week: the intense and not-really-on-point title is taken from decades old dramatics between Storm and her husband’s ex-wife. There are many pictures and a video with anachronistic sound.
“To rescue trafficking victims is one thing; to treat sex workers voluntarily being paid by clients is quite another”: on the immorality of the rescue industry in Southeast Asia.
Truthout picks up on the inefficacy and racism of New York’s trafficking courts.
Newspapers in New Zealand and Australia are claiming that the internet (!) and dating aps are affecting full service sex workers, apparently not realizing that OKCupid’s been around for a few years, the internet even longer.
Sex workers in New Zealand do report there’s currently a lull happening.
An atheist stripper found god after five different cancellations of her abortion appointment and has devoted herself to saving other sex workers.
Noah Berlatsky at Reason.com thinks the US should not import the Swedish model.
Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky talk about expanding the world of their comic Sex Criminals. Will this mean better representation for sex workers?