The Week in Links—October 3rd

Our very own Tits and Sass contributor Peechington Marie’s and Meli Machiavelli’s fundraiser for murdered Black dancers Tjhisha Ball and Angelia Magnum is at its halfway point of $8,000. Please donate to help them reach their goal and allow Ball and Magnum’s families to afford their burials.

Jada Pinkett Smith holds forth on stripping: it’s wrong. Unlike donating money to ethically dubious and educationally useless Scientology schools, obviously.

That’s fine though, because Usher and Juicy J love us.

Kate McGrew, the sex worker on the Irish reality show Committed, was called “revolting” during a phone interview; this op-ed disagrees, but does think she should quit her job. Civilians and their feelings about sex work, amirite?

The European Union’s sudden interest in what shadow economies are adding to GDP explained: besides bragging rights, higher GDP’s keep debt and deficits “within the EU’s prescribed targets.”

Despite the title “Confessions of a Geylang Sex Worker” (mistranslation or deliberate obfuscation?) this article is actually about a study of sex workers in Singapore, heralded as unusual for its discovery of the fact that sex workers are charging different rates to different ethnic groups based on their perceived willingness and ability to pay.

RedUP investigated New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts to predictable-yet-disheartening results: despite the high-minded assurances of New York’s Chief Judge, the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts have failed to be the “great leap forward” that he promised.  Instead the same racial profiling and racism endemic to the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy plagues the trafficking court, along with the same cool unconcern for the potential life-ruining consequences of arrest, and the inadequacy of the therapy and life skills workshops offered.

C-36 is destined for a legal challenge, for whatever comfort that’s worth.

Thirty-two employees were cut from Brisbane sexual health clinic Biala House last year, forcing sex workers to take sexual health checks to general practitioners (who may or may not be comfortable with sex work and familiar with the sexual health needs of sex workers). Australia’s Prostitution Licensing Authority says that lack of comfort with GPs will result in many sex workers leaving the legal system (which requires that full service sex workers receive health checks before getting their certificates) for off-the-books sex work that doesn’t require invasive and embarrassing health checks with judgmental medical staff.

The Independent concern-trolls student sex workers: are they trading safety for a debt-free future? They also misspell Brooke Magnanti’s pseudonym, Belle de Jour.

Jane Green takes apart this incredibly condescending op-ed from last week’s Guardian, saying:

But if you truly want to know about sex workers’ lives, here’s a hint. Listen to them, we have a lot to say. We are not silent and we fight daily for better labour rights for our community. We appreciate good allies who listen and don’t attempt to speak on sex workers’ behalf. Good allies respect our autonomy and don’t make assumptions about us, but find out what the facts are – from sex workers.

California tried to make condoms inadmisable as evidence and failed; however, the final bill does require “a court to state explicitly that the presence of condoms is relevant to the individual case before prosecutors can use them as evidence of prostitution,” in the hope that these extra steps will deter law enforcement from confiscating and arresting on the basis of condom possession.

Sex workers in Mlolongo, Kenya, want to be treated as human beings deserving of respect, despite the dangers of their job.  And the dangers are real: sex workers in Kenya have a 29.3% HIV infection rate, one of the higher rates (for sex workers, who tend to have lower rates than surrounding populations) in the world and higher than Kenyan injection drug users.

The struggling South African economy is hitting sex workers hard, raising tension and putting them at a negotiation disadvantage with clients.

The Daily Beast hits its daily quota of noxious whorephobia with this post on Belle Knox and “the mainstreaming of adult stars.” The dismissive tone is odd, coming from a former sex worker, but the post overflows with mystifying statements like, “This Ivy League coquette didn’t just go from stripping to porn” and “A hundred girls before her have entered porn to pay for college but very few graduate.” Because most porn performers began as strippers, and the attrition rate for college students who do porn is a known factor! No.

This post by Jillian Keenan is somewhat redemptive, beginning with the obvious “Sex Workers Don’t Deserve to Be Raped” and seguing into all the ways that criminalization and stigmatization make sex workers vulnerable.

The Daily Dot takes it even further: We need to start caring when sex workers are murdered. The Dot points out,

We must start thinking of sex work as a job like any other job. We must start thinking of sex workers as people. And we must start caring about the things that happen to them, the same way we care about the things that happen to other women, or else their deaths will be met with the same response that met Tjhisha Ball’s and Angelia Mangum’s brutal, untimely passings: a terrible, twisted silence.