Last week I found myself at the House of Lords in London, discussing what the BBC World Service means to the world. The World Service stands for accuracy in reporting, a lot of very clever people said, it represents fairness and impartiality, it tells it like it is. So I was thrilled to see that the Beeb welcomed in the Chinese New Year with a celebration of Whores.
Other signs that it might be a good year: this peculiarly sensible opinion piece about sex trafficking hysteria from Kate Mogulescu of the Trafficking Victims Advocacy Project. I have to say that when I read the headline on the op-ed page of the New York Times on Saturday:
The Super Bowl and Sex Trafficking
my heart rather sank. I always find those “where there are sports fans, there will be sex-slavers” stories particularly hard to swallow at the breakfast table. This piece, though, points out not just the data-free hysteria-by-rote that we’ve become accustomed to, but the harm that it does to sex workers in general, and trafficked sex workers in particular.
新暗 娼 的 年 快乐!
Thanks to The Independent and Don Dickerson.