Topic: Prostitution

Sex workers are not criminals

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 03/08/2010 - 8:44am
Women working in the sex trade need protection, not prosecution – which is why soliciting should be decriminalised
 
 
While Thierry is a sex-worker activist and Cath is an anti-prostitution one, believe it or not we do have some common ground: both of us are trade unionists, for instance, and both of us identify as feminists.
 
Obviously our analyses on prostitution/sex work are also very different. But despite our different opinions, there's one thing we do agree on: sex workers shouldn't be criminalised.

Committee organizes sex work seminar

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 10:30am
Posted By Expositor Staff
 
Sex Work 101 is the title of an upcoming workshop sponsored by the Sex Trade Resource Empowerment and Education Team committee of Brant-Haldimand-Norfolk.
 
The workshop will take place at the Brantford Polish Hall, 154 Pearl St., from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on April 8. The cost of the seminar is $20 to be paid at the door.
 

Prostitutes peddle co-operative brothels to protect sex workers

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 1:23pm
by Trevor Scott Howell, Fast Forward Weekly
 
At 42, Susan Davis has worked in the sex trade for more than half of her life. She’s been raped more than 15 times since she began selling her body 24 years ago — once allegedly at knifepoint by convicted serial killer Robert Pickton. As well, a fellow prostitute she knew was mutilated and murdered by a john.
 

Column: Prostitution forum lessened risks

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 1:16pm
, Exponent Online

At the top of last Friday’s front page, the Wisconsin State Journal elected to run a story detailing the arrests of 57 men for soliciting prostitution on Badger Road in Madison. The arrests were a result of an eight-month investigation, led by officer Jeff Pharo, of a Web site that hosted a discussion forum for customers of Madison prostitutes. From the Web site, Pharo was able to gather valuable details about the men, including vehicle descriptions and soliciting habits.
 
I am not one to skip out on a toast, but if somebody raises one to the Madison police fulfilling their duty to protect and serve, my glass is staying down. I do not take issue with the work of individual officers; in fact, Pharo’s ingenuity is to be commended. But I do take issue with arresting these 57 men and, directly or indirectly, shutting down the offending Web site.
 
By bringing an end to the existence of the forum, the police force is actually exacerbating the problems that people list as inherent to the prostitution industry. As criminologist Tim Holt points out in the Wisconsin State Journal article, users of these forums shared knowledge of prices, available services and potential risks, including sexually transmitted diseases.
 

Delta Woman

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Wed, 02/24/2010 - 10:55am
by Jimmy Fowler, Fort Worth Weekly
 
This week’s ”Stage” feature is a profile of veteran North Texas actor-director Phyllis Cicero, who helmed Jubilee Theatre’s current production of Endesha Ida Mae Holland’s autobiographical play ”From the Mississippi Delta.” Holland grew up desperately poor in Greenwood, Mississippi in the 1950s. She became a prostitute, a streetfighter, and a thief before she volunteered to help register Southern black voters in the 1960s. Soon she was a full-time civil rights activist and, years later, a professor and playwright.
 
“From the Mississippi Delta” – also available as a memoir — is impressive because Holland speaks unflinchingly about her own motives and she refuses to embrace the victim label. This terrific 1992 feature from “Ebony” reflects that candor. She reveals that she turned to prostitution not out of coercion, but because it was, in her mind, the lesser of two evils – she refused to destroy her body and spirit with crushing mindless labor in the cotton fields. She also admits to an early ambivalence about the African-American civil rights movement – until the Klan entered her life with tragic force. Holland’s not widely celebrated as a major civil rights figure today, but the extraordinary details of her life and work are worth revisiting.

Sex trade an open book during Games

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 9:49am
Wendy Stueck, The Globe and Mail
 
Cherry Kingsley's life story is an open book.
 
Until the end of the month, Ms. Kingsley will be part of a “living library” put together by Atira Women's Resource Society, a non-profit housing agency in the Downtown Eastside.
 
Ms. Kingsley, 39, is, on occasion, a sex-trade worker. She prefers that term to prostitute. She's a mother and an injection drug user who's currently on methadone. She's a former foster child who cycled through more than a dozen homes when she was growing up in Ontario. She's been a spokeswoman for prevention of child abuse.
 

German prince, if governor: legalize, tax California prostitution

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 2:35pm
News, MonstersAndCritics.com
 
Los Angeles - Prince Frederic von Anhalt, the eccentric eighth husband of Hollywood diva Zsa Zsa Gabor, has formally registered as a candidate for governor of California.
 
Von Anhalt, whose campaign website pictures him in full royal regalia, epaulets and medals, travelled from his Los Angeles home to the state capital Sacramento Wednesday to sign up with election officials.
 
He has vowed to legalize prostitution and marijuana and help fill California's empty state coffers by taxing both.
The 66-year-old German-American citizen is to date the only independent candidate to replace Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the native of Austria who must step down at year's end after serving the maximum of two terms.

Database set up for sex trade workers

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 8:47pm
 
Work is underway to set up a database on sex workers in Red Deer in case their high-risk lifestyle leads them to harm.
Jason Taylor, harm reduction co-ordinator with the Central Alberta AIDS Network Society (CAANS), said members of the newly formed Sex Work Support Network have taken training to collect identifying information from local sex workers — such as height, weight, tattoos, scars, names, next of kin and even dental work and DNA samples like hair follicles — “just in case something were to happen.”
 

Banks: Turning women to sex slaves

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 11:16am

By. The Nigerian Compass

SHE is young, educated and beautiful. Miss Matilda Roberts (not real names), 25,  is any man’s dream girl. She enjoys a mouth-watering salary and welfare package. She dresses well, rides one of the best and latest range of automobiles and the envy of her less endowed and less privileged peers. But that is where it ends.

Unfortunately Miss Roberts is a banker. She has a target to meet monthly, quarterly and yearly. The target she must meet, either by hook or crook, including warming the beds of “high value clients,” some old enough to be her father, to be able to maintain such “fat” accounts and meet her target.

Marches honour missing, slain women

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 9:31am
CBC News
 
Thousands of Canadians marched in memory of murdered or missing women on Sunday, part of Valentine's Day rallies held in Vancouver, Calgary and other centres across the country.

Judith Trimble, who waited inside a church gymnasium in southwest Calgary for the march to start, held a picture of her daughter, Cara Ellis.