Investigative reporter Michael Tracey looks at the anti-trafficking industry. In the wake of the moral panic and conspiracy theories surrounding the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, about whom much still remains unknown, politicians on both the right and left as well as NGOs have exploited the ever-expanding concept of “sex trafficking” to characterize virtually all commercial […]
When originally erected on a street corner in Sydney’s red-light district of Darlinghurst in 1995, the statue of “Joy” provoked local controversy and was subject to vandalism, including a hammer attack by an outraged mother who thought it looked like her daughter. It was removed two years later, but has now been reproduced in more […]
With support from Irish sex worker organizations, parliamentarian Ruth Coppinger has introduced a bill to repeal key provisions of Ireland’s Sexual Offenses Act 2017, which decriminalized the selling of sex, but outlawed its purchase or the keeping of brothels. Sex workers have argued that the bill has failed in its intent to reduce the prevalence […]
Finnish MP, Anna Kontula, who has served as a leftist deputy in Finland’s parliament since 2011 and has championed sex worker rights consistently, revealed in an interview with a Finnish newspaper that she had herself been a sex worker since the age of 16. “I wanted to make a living and this was a pretty […]
Using the techniques of oral history, Cheryl Ware’s recently published book Untold Intimacies: A History of Sex Work in Aotearoa, 1978-2008 (Auckland University Press) tells the engaging personal stories of female and male sex workers in the periods both before and after New Zealand became the first country to effectively decriminalize the practice nationwide in […]
For all my sex work scholars and aficionados out there…you’ve just been gifted a treasure trove of research! Norma Jean Almodovar is a former Los Angeles traffic officer turned sex worker turned sex work activist and founder of the nonprofit International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture, and Education (ISWFACE), and her personal archive of […]
Parliamentarian Julius Malema, head of the pan-Africanist Marxist party Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa, has endorsed decriminalizing sex work at a Women’s Day rally, linking this move to a broader agenda of protecting women from violence. Whether this will provide new impetus to the long-stalled bill proposed by the South African cabinet in 2022 […]
A recent study published in the Sexuality and Culture explored sex workers’ relationship to body image. Although sex work can ofcourse lead to sexual objectification, the study found that sex work can also act as a productive enabler of body positivity. Participants in the study described experiences of receiving positive feedback about their bodies from […]
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld a law criminalizing third-party benefits from sex work, despite a lower court ruling that the law jeopardized sex worker security. The case concerned the conviction of two men in Alberta who were drivers for an escort service and provided protection for the escorts if something went wrong. READ THE […]
Womxn: Working is a recently produced documentary that examines sex work activism in South Africa. Sex work is still criminalized in the country and this important work assesses the damage these archaic laws continue to deal sex worker communities, denying them their rights and freedoms. Directed by Shanelle Jewnarain, the film applies an important feminist […]
