Equality Now and other abolitionist groups campaigned against the UN’s recommendation to decriminalize sex work. Don’t read the articles linked unless you have a strong stomach. Melissa Gira Grant documented a particularly exasperating twitter exchange with Equality Now’s Rachel Moran on her blog, in which Moran claimed that “‘sex workers’ don’t exist.” Scott Long also provides some valuable context.
The New York Times belatedly discovers camming. Sadly, the article feels the need to quote Kathryn Griffin. Luckily, Sienna Baskin of the Sex Workers Project is also on hand to lend some perspective.
Stoya gives her two cents about the Great Porn Condom Debate in Vice Magazine.
The law firm of Outten and Golden LLP just filed a lawsuit on behalf of dancers against the strip clubs New York Dolls, Flashdancers and Private Eyes. Dancers who have worked at these clubs and want to join the lawsuit should call Outten and Golden at 212-245-1000.
Of course you want to know how weird government regulations led to Portland’s vegan strip club.
Sex workers created a twitter phenomenon this week with the hashtag #banfreebies, satirizing societal attitudes about sex work by flipping them around and using them to moralize against non-transactional sex: “Freebies think being a freebie is empowering or it’s their choice. But that’s just false consciousness.”
African sex workers’ rights group SWEAT alerted local police that a group of about thirty five children, aged nine to twelve, were being kept in a brothel in Guateng. But when the police finally decided to act on the report they went to the wrong house. By the time they figured out this blunder and went to the correct address, there were no children on site.
New York will establish a special court for sex trafficking and prostitution. Perhaps the court will offer better options than incarceration, but Lori Adorable responds on her tumblr, saying, “Providing more social services for individuals in the sex industry who are there by force, coercion, or choice would be fabulous, but that’s not what happening here…You mean to say that the criminal (in)justice system will FORCE those in the sex industry into treatment, rehab, and other lines of work while denying them any agency they do have. Doesn’t sound so compassionate anymore, does it? Sounds more like the fascist, racist ‘social hygiene’ shit that it is.”
A stripping history is apparently no obstacle to a security clearance.
The Brooklyn prosecutor who had a starring role in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s expose of Backpage, the Village Voice’s online personals section, has resigned amid charges she sat on evidence that would have saved a sex-crimes suspect from spending eleven months in jail.
A Bolivian sex worker was sentenced to house arrest for continuing to work while HIV positive.
A U.S. Marine master sergeant faces a preliminary hearing in Oahu on charges of unpremeditated murder in the killing of Ivanice Harris, a Las Vegas escort who was visiting Hawaii to celebrate her 29th birthday.
“Proposed legislation in France may outlaw sex work. French sex workers’ rights organization STRASS released a video of their annual conference in response, in which street-based sex workers, migrant sex workers, women who have been working for thirty-five years or more, male sex workers and trans* sex workers speak of their need for rights, not rescue.
Anti-sex worker group Equality Now wants to give Milano School students course credit to profile and surveil sex workers’ rights groups and activists for them in a “confidential work” project. They sheepishly took down the page detailing these plans yesterday, but luckily Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers activist Andrew Hunter took screen caps and posted them on his tumblr.
The Nottingham Women’s Conference excluded the Sex Workers’ Open University and other sex workers’ rights activists, framing the exclusion as a ticketing issue. The Sex Workers’ Open University responded in an online statement.
Sex workers’ rights organization SCOT-PEP condemned the outing of a sex worker in the front page of the Scottish Sun this week.
The Atlantic covers the sex trafficking of children and survival sex work among Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
The Foundation for Democratic Initiatives and Development (FDID) called on state institutions to address the complex health and safety needs of commercial sex workers in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Here’s more on the ground breaking Irish survey we linked last week.
And here’s a piece in the Toast we missed last month by longtime sex worker ally Nine on how Swedish whorephobia contributed to the death of Petite Jasmine.