Every Sex Worker, A Human Rights Defender

That is the tagline for the first ever African sex worker-led conference, which is happening next week in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here’s a little bit of information about the conference grabbed from the PDF of the conference announcement: The conference will include sex worker-only activities in order to form friendships and create solidarity, as well [...]

Pompeo, Stirring up the Kettle on Rent Boys and Methheads

After being given ample content on rights work, the relation to workers of other genders, and the ins-and-outs of racist and sexist discrimination and policing by a number of New York’s working boys, Joe Pompeo pulled a Jessica Pilot  in the New York Observer with “The Hipster Rent Boys of New York.” Not a word [...]

Changing from within or not?

So I went to a Sex Trafficking panel led by the interfaith group at UCSC. The panel was comprised of a nun, a man, and a cop from the San Jose Police Department, whose position is being in charge of the human trafficking cases for the south bay counties, to include Santa Cruz and Monterrey. [...]

Time for Change in Fight Against Human Trafficking

With a new administration in the White House, many sex workers and their allies are looking to the Obama administration with high hopes that we can effect substantive change towards acknowledgement of sex workers’ human rights. Melissa Ditmore has a new article over at RHRealityCheck.org:  The Right Time for  Change in the Fight Against Human [...]

Press Conference: Protest Prostitution Charges against Activist

It would be great if the folks in the San Francisco Bay area could show up to court in support of Shelly Resnick, who was charged with prostitution.  Here is the press release:   For Immediate Release: Jan 24, 2009 Event: Press Conference: San Francisco Transsexual Activist Falsely Accused of Prostitution Location: 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco [...]

Reno Says No To Brothels

To answer a question I had, it turns out that Reno and Sparks have no interest in bringing legal brothels into their city. Reno is a family community. If degenerates want legal hookers, they have to drive a whole nine miles away. That keeps the sex and family separate — as it damn well should [...]

Is this Slanderous?

I read on S.M. Berg’s blog that Robyn Few, Norma Jean Almadovar, and Margo St. James were convicted on pimping charges.  Is this correct?  If not, it’s slander.  Robyn’s conviction was for conspiracy to commit prostitution across state lines, and the word “pimping” does not appear in this charge.     Here is a link to the blog [...]

The Modern Hooker Has A Dream

I’ve been loving The Modern Hooker and her comics (and her randy Twitter presence) — this is today’s strip, and so apt:

Legalizing Las Vegas Brothels

My knee-jerk reaction to this news is: so the state is suffering. They decide they want to make money off the backs of sex workers? How is this not exploitative? I also want to know exactly how they plan on taxing one business but not other businesses as Nevada is known for being a business-friendly [...]

Survivors, trafficking and Piggybacking politics

One of the things that strikes me about the prohibitionist movement and resonates is their use of torture, of trafficking victims, of survivors of many varying types of abuse as a piggyback for political goals. Even if the intent is well meant, at what point can personal and professional agendas move ahead of the victims [...]

One thing Obama can ignore in his first week in office

(In light of the continuing debates about how US sex workers understand trafficking, I’m crossposting this from my personal blog.) Nicholas Kristof has been issuing ad-hoc Presidential guidance on the sex trade for years now. The archive of his editorial column in the New York Times serves as a record of his proposals. In 2004, [...]

A “Prostitution Free Zone” for the Inauguration

It was just one month ago that sex workers from around the United States converged on Washington, DC for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Now, with the excuse of preparing for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, “portions of downtown [DC] have been declared a ‘Prostitution Free Zone’ for the Inaugural [...]

Trabajo sexual y derecho al trabajo – Sex work and the right to work

Are there people here who speak spanish or work with people who do? On the assumption that there must be I’m adding this link to a new article of mine in Spanish, originally published last month in an onlineLatin American journal called CiudadaníaSex, SexCitizenship. It’s about the concept of sex work as a basis for rights [...]

Know Your Rights For Sex Workers, Part 2

This is the second part of the Know Your Rights! workshop series. Here we go over what happens after you’ve been arrested and how to create an Emergency Response Plan.

New Report Examines the Use of Raids to Fight Trafficking in Persons

On Friday, January 9th, The Sex Workers Project, at the Urban Justice Center in New York City, released a new report, Kicking Down the Door, that analyzes the use of “rescue” raids in the fight against human trafficking. The report “summarizes findings from interviews with 46 people with experience of such raids, including service providers [...]

Sex Workers: Once again, what’s best for us?

As you may or not may be aware, under the auspices of a woman named Jacqui Smith, the UK is considering a law that will criminalize the purchase of sexual services, namely, men who participate in, as they call it in the UK, “kerb crawling” (street based work). As usual, the evidence Smith is basing [...]

Cambodian sex workers speak out.

Aproase, an amazing sex worker group in Cambodia and part of the APNSW (which just won a Human Rights Watch award) built an amazing video, that made featured video status at change.org, called ‘Caught Between the Tiger and the Crocodile’.  You can check it out right here:   UPDATE (1/9/09 3:30PST): Sorry I’m a moron.  Aproase [...]

Tomorrow court support in SF.

Tomorrow January 7th, 2009 8am in the morning, Shelly Resnick, a well known Transexual activist and Sex Worker has a court date for the illegal solicitation of prostitution in San Francisco. Law enforcement came to her house a couple of months ago and hit her with a citation for 647 (b) . I know that [...]

Post from Robyn Few of Sex Workers Outreach Project.

By robynfew I find myself going back to the video that Serpent created about the National DC March. Each time I cry. I was crying everyday for awhile, I mean months, but finally that has stopped. So I find it a bit annoying that I am crying so much now. I must admit that I [...]