Week in Links recently linked to the new book Male Sex Workers; the Advocate featured an excerpt from it this week.
The new documentary Invisible follows former sex worker Richard Holcomb as he does HIV/AIDS outreach with male sex workers in Providence, Rhode Island.
Despite the lurid hysteria and funding opportunities offered by the specter of sex trafficking, labor trafficking continues to be the largest form of trafficking and the most ignored.
A sex worker in Mumbai has been arrested, accused of strangling and igniting a cop who came to her door, allegedly looking for repayment on a loan he made to her. Given the notorious brutality and extortion Indian police treat sex workers to, it seems fair to suppose there is more to this story.
Ignore the capslock CONFESSIONS of the title, this is a short but even-handed look at a woman who traveled from China to Singapore with the deliberate intention of doing sex work. Does this mean she trafficked herself?
Tits and Sass contributor Naomi Kwe is quoted in this article on the ignored connections between #ImNotYourRescueProject and #ImNotNext, pointing out the silent whorephobia that ignores the link between violence against indigenous women and the rights and safety of sex workers.
Maxime Durocher, a male sex worker, went before the C-36 committee to tell them he doesn’t need saving.
In a brilliant move, Terri-Jean Bedford has apparently compiled a list of high profiled clients from sex workers across Canada.
Belle Knox is starring in a new documentary series about her life; Salon doesn’t take too much of a hand-wringing tone reviewing it, and says:
She is more critical of her work when she’s on camera than she has been in her writing. ”People are probably going to get mad at me and say that I’m being exploited, but porn is like any other job,” Weeks says. “It’s labor, and I think that liking it is irrelevant.”
Austria may follow Switzerland’s lead in creating sex boxes, or drive-through brothels, for street sex workers. The drive-through brothels have been a success in Switzerland, offering bathrooms, showers, alarm buttons, and onsite social workers.
Sex workers in Kenya have been organizing for years, educating and supporting each other and demanding recognition and support of their human rights.
Sex workers in Western Australia are asking for recognition of their rights and for decriminalization, citing New Zealand and New South Wales as successful examples.
Bangalore has set a record among India’s mega-cities for number of prostitution arrests; unlike cities like Mumbai or Kolkata there is no red light district for sex workers and police have been making a concerted attempt to arrest street workers in what the Karnataka Sex Workers Union says is police abuse of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, which allows police to blackmail sex workers.
Here is more on the New Delhi “Single Windows” initiative, which creates a one stop shop for low income and marginalized populations to get necessary documentation like birth certificates, IDs, and ration cards.
The government of Zambia is urging people to respect sex workers and their human rights, since, regardless of the illegal status of their work, sex workers are humans too.
A new study researches how and why disabled men hire sex workers.
The UKNSWP’s bad date alert system, Ugly Mugs, just won a Third Sector award; in two years it’s been used by over 2000 sex workers and has secured the convictions of at least 16 serial offenders.
The owners of Ireland’s biggest sex work site, Escorts Ireland, are moving the company to greener, more legal, and more tax friendly pastures in Spain.
Despite a ten year battle against the sex industry, sex work in Ho Chi Minh City is flourishing.
The BBC has a non-story about how hard it is to say goodbye to the money sex work offers; it does contain one valuable observation toward the middle that sex workers are largely very savvy about how they enter and exit sex work according to their needs.
Charlotte Rose, the Devon sex worker from a few Week in Links ago, is running for Parliament.
Whatever their differences, both sides agree there need to be changes to C-36.