The Week In Links: September 14

We are sad to say goodbye to dedicated sex worker rights activist Robyn Few, who passed away yesterday morning. Few was a co-founder of the Sex Workers Outreach Project-USA and one of the original organizers of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

The Atlantic ran a brilliant review of After Porn Ends, a documentary on the porn industry and the difficulties of leaving it. “Really, based on this documentary, the problem porn workers encounter seem like problems lots of workers encounter: abusive working conditions, inadequate (or more often non-existent) pensions, and lack of options… it’s not necessarily different in kind from the antipathy and contempt that workers in general face.” Thank you.

Jezebel published two good pieces by sex workers this week: Robin Hustle (nice nom de plume, by the way) wrote about coming out to your family as a prostitute, and porn star Stoya wrote about sexual harassment.

A Houston judge has ordered strip club Treasures, recently raided for drugs and prostitution, to implement some changes. Some, like extra bouncers and cameras, miiiiiiight change things. Others, like having dancers wear full butt bottoms and telling customers to tuck in their shirts, seem like a stretch.

Arlington strip club owner Ryan Grant plead guilty to charges he hired a hitman to kill Arlington mayor Robert Cluck and a city attorney. The guilty plea is unsurprising as the man he asked to find hitmen was a DEA informant.

The former First Lady of Germany, Bettina Wulff, is suing Google because their autocomplete function suggests that she is an escort or prostitute.

A Vancouver Island dance studio is now offering children’s pole dance classes. Some people think this is weird and creepy, but dance instructor Kristy Craig says that “children who practice the pole are no more likely to become strippers than they are firefighters.”

Activists in Sydney convened outside their local Parliament House last Friday to protest a new licensing system for sex workers, which would make it tougher for people to work legally within the province of New South Wales.

A Jamaican newspaper published a refreshingly non-judgmental profile of a local sex worker who is also a mother of five children.

Ari Graynor (who recently played a phone sex operator in For a Good Time… Call) will be playing a sex worker again, this time on Broadway. The Performers opens in late October and is a comedy focused on the lives of four fictional porn stars.

Susannah Breslin talks with the porn community on Mitt Romney’s interest in obscenity laws. Meanwhile, mayoral candidate in the Bosnian city of Zenica is using porno clips to draw people to his campaign Web site.