Meena Saraswathi Seshu was a well-to-do Indian do-gooder who was determined to save India’s sex slaves from their evil traffickers. To her immense credit, illustrated in this nice profile in The Lancet, (pdf here), she changed her mind when she learned the facts. Not so the US Congressman who tried to bully her organisation SANGRAM [...]
After I heard David Cameron promise to make policy that went with the grain of human nature, I suggested that Britain’s sex workers should vote Tory. I wasn’t joking, though I haven’t had that much luck convincing friends in the business. Now, though, George McCoy has given us a proper analysis of candidates’ position on [...]
It looks as though the effort to throw more sex workers and clients in jail in Illinois will fail, at least in this legislative session. What better way to celebrate than by coming to a party in Chicago on Saturday night. Wear your best gold thong, and be ready for 90′s hip-hop up the wazoo. [...]
I’m in Chicago for the month of April, just as the Illinois state Senate tries to increase the penalties for buying and selling sex. The bill (which passed the House unanimously last month) will make it a felony to buy sex, so that any vet, doctor, lawyer etc convicted of the crime will lose their [...]
Another thumbs down for the Swedish model. Not the leggy blonde, not even Sweden’s moralistic approach to the sex trade. This one is the Swedish research model, which has managed to turn the fascinating subject of on-line rating of hookers by Brazilian punters into something indescribably dull. Actually, that may not be fair. I think [...]
Yesterday, I sat at the TED conference in California and watched David Cameron pledge to make policies that support prostitutes. He didn’t say it in those words, exactly, but he did promise firmly to make policy that “goes with the grain of human nature”. That would be a massive change for the UK: Labour’s old [...]
Christmas in London — what better way to celebrate than carol singing in the streets of Soho with singers from Westmister Abbey and the International Union of Sex Workers? The Rector of St Anne’s parish in Soho swished out in front in long robes and fuschia beret but it was this banner, carried by Nico [...]
What’s unsustainable about paying fo sex? I guess it depends on what your budget is, and how randy you are. As Copenhagen turns its thoughts green, its mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to Copenhagen hotels urging climate conference delegates to: ‘Be sustainable – don’t buy sex’. In response, the city’s sex workers are offering free [...]
Epidemiologists don’t often hit the headlines. While forensic scientists are celebrated in endless mini-series, the bug hunters merit just the occasional, mercifully long forgotten film (anyone remember Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak? I thought not). As a job, it’s just not very sexy, and most of us who plod away at it keep our wild sides [...]
Finally, a major paper has bothered to deconstruct the mythical numbers that are bandied about to justify the UK government’s idiotic conflation of sex work with sex trafficking. The fact that raids on over 800 brothels didn’t net any traffickers doesn’t mean that there isn’t anyone in the UK selling sex against their will. But [...]
Last week, I was trying to explain Britain’s sexual and cultural politics to a friend newly-arrived from Canada. That meant trying to explain why nice, left-wing feminists like Harriet Harman are using their political party conference speeches to send men to a website that advertises and rates sex workers. It’s like this. Ms Harman, who [...]
Writing in the Guardian, Cath Elliot trumpets the unanimously warm reception for a new attempt to lock men up for buying sex. She’s proud of her own contribution to the debate, she says, though the hyperlink she gives for that contribution simply takes us to a remark about the International Union of Sex Workers which [...]
It’s an exciting day in the UK. While you’d be forgiven for thinking that all MPs worry about is their expenses, they’ll in fact spend this afternoon debating the policing and crime bill, which deals with airport security, public drunkenness. Oh, and prostitution. It seems that home secretart Jaqui Smith has been listening to sex [...]
In belated recognition of May Day, I give you these sensible words from sex workers in India, courtesy of my once-long-ago employers, Reuters. Funnily enough, one of the very first stories I ever wrote for Reuters was about sex workers in a time of economic meltdown. It was also the first to draw a response [...]
Hookers, cops, abolitionists, health workers — we’ll be getting hot and heavy tonight at a debate on the sex trade. More specifically, a discussion of how best to tackle the small but vicious portion of the industry that consits of women (and men and transgenders? though we don’t seem to think of them as “victims” [...]
The Colombian President says we’ve lost the war on drugs. So does his predecesor. And his Mexican counterpart. Not to mention Harvard economists. Oh, and the editors of The Economist. Is it conceivable that the United Nations and the US government, that have for so long dug their heels into the mud of prohibition as [...]
Many people are thrilled that the Bush Years are almost over. Few more so than sex workers, who have essentially been declared not to exist under the administration’s HIV funding rules. Though many are disappointed that Mark Dybul will stay at the helm of PEPFAR for a while, some of us hope that he’ll do [...]
Regular readers of the New York Times are used to columnist Nicholas Kristof banging the drum against sex slavery, especially in Cambodia. This time, he’s making an argument that sounds like it might have come from The Wisdom: hit traffickers in the pocket and they’ll stop doing it. He’s both right and wrong. I believe [...]
The Royal Geographical Society has seen it all. From Darwin arguing 100 years ago that we are descended from apes to Germaine Greer arguing last night that it is wrong not to pay for sex. The debate was organised by IQ2, and the house was packed with the great and the good of London’s chattering [...]
Still on the theme of rescue, hear it from Cambodian sex workers themselves: If one were looking for an unexpected ray of light in this dreary tale it would be in the testimony from the sex worker who was raped by six policeman. Nothing light about that, obviously. But the fact that she was able [...]
