Brazilians are world chart-toppers in several things, among them football, HIV prevention, and enthusiasm for sex. There’s also a transsexual culture that is perhaps more vibrant than in any other country outside Asia. But people are still a bit squeamish about putting those things together, as the embarrassment of mega-footballer Ronaldo has shown.
A great deal has already been written about the death, perhaps suicide, of Deborah Jane Palfrey, aka the DC Madam. Ms. Palfrey was convicted two weeks ago of running a prostitution ring that met the needs and desires of honchos in Washington. A couple of the honchos involved lost their jobs as a result of [...]
A fashion designer turned massage parlour owner in Indonesia has come up with an inspired solution to the problem of unsafe sex: he’s padlocking his girls in to their trousers. Paul Watson of the LA Times spoke to Franky Setiawan, owner of Doghado Massage Parlor, who came up with the chastity pants. Setiawan “says he [...]
Australia’s abuzz with reports of price fixing for strippers. The owners of Sydney strip clubs Bomshells and Sex Bombs are paying strippers more than rival club Adult Fire; Adult Fire has told a Federal Court that the two higher-paying clubs have conspired to raise payments to workers to drive it out of business. Hmm. Most [...]
This video, not to be taken tooooo seriously (though the science is spot on), is the product of a rainy afternoon with the incomparable Candy Gourlay. Check out Candy’s wit, wisdom and illustration at Notes From the Slushpile
Between the downfall of New York governor Elliot Spitzer and the renewed debates about whether the US should use PEPFAR money to strong-arm opposition to prostitution, we’ve been buzzing a bit lately about the conflation of the sex indsutry and human trafficking. A Crime So Monstrous, a new book by Benjamin Skinner, is adding to [...]
As the US tabloids trawl New Yorks’s cleavages for signs of Spitzer, I offer this cheat sheet from Matt Bors. (Click to enlarge.) If I had Matt’s graphic talents, I’d want to do one for politicians in other countries, too. Because let’s face it, there are whole categories missing that are of prime importance to [...]
This morning The Guardian published an opinion piece (Sptizer’s True Folly), in which I argued that we should promote laws which differentiate between the exchange of sex for money between consenting adults and the exploitation of children and unwilling workers. Here was one of the responses, from kathyw: Oh, please. These women (and the transgendered [...]
The New York Times runs “all-sex-workers-are-victims” op-eds. The sex workers, blogging in force at Bound, Not Gagged and elsewhere, beg to differ. They also provide some practical policy guidance. Here, for example, is a list of policy goals from Jill Brenneman of Sex Worker’s Outreach Project East. • Decriminalization of all aspects of sex work [...]
One in four teenaged girls in the United States has a sexually transmitted infection, according to anew study from CDC. Only half of those girls are sexually active. Among those who have ever had sex, STI rates are 40%. We don’t know how that compares with past rates in the United States, because this kind [...]
Scott Swensen suggests the following Prostitution Pledge for Politicians. As an American politician I will stop all hypocritical, self-righteous moralizing and judgment of the lives of others. I pledge to support legislation that treats all humans as equals and ensure that foreign assistance dollars intended to stop HIV/AIDS are allocated using the very best public [...]
So New York’s Democrat governor Elliot Spitzer admits to having been a naughty boy. He wanted to have sex with someone who wasn’t his wife, and pay for it. Tut tut. Paroxysms of delight from his enemies at The Wall Street Journal and comment about Spitzer’s staying power and other analysis many other places besides. [...]
International sex workers’ rights day passed with little comment — I spent it surrounded by rent boys in Bangkok and saw little celebration. I could have a rant about this, but The Curvature has said most of it for me.
Want to know why nice girls sell sex? I’ve trawled through hundreds of academic papers pontificating about the motivation for selling sex, I’ve listened to quite a bit of gender-jargon from self-righteous feminists, and I’ve been sjubjected to too much of the sexploitation rhetoric from right-wing religious relics. But I’ve rarely seen a more straight-forward [...]
After huddling late into the night, US politicians have come up with a compromise. They’ll spend more money on innnocent victims of AIDS, but none to protect those wicked people who sell sex for a living. The US congress house of representatives House Committee on Foreign Affairs agreed to spend an astonishing US$ 50 billion [...]
A week ago, the President of William and Mary college Gene Nichols lost his job. The last straw in a haystack of sins: he supported a show of art by sex workers on campus. This drew outrage from all the usual suspects, and they have been gloating at his dismissal. Organisers and studentsraised their voices [...]
Check out this new line of footwear for girls on the game. Sexy, fashionable, and with GPS mapping technology. Roll over James Bond — Q never did as much for you! (Lifted with thanks from the Daily Dish)
Singapore wants its citizens to take more responsibility for their sexual behaviour, Bloomberg reports. “We’re trying to find a way essentially to ask them to be responsible for their own actions,” said Koh Peng Keng, the Health Ministry’s senior director of operations.” “Them”, in this case, is people who do daft things like have unprotected [...]
Poor women in Manila are petitioning the courts so that they can get their hands on contraception, according to a Reuters report. Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza issued an executive order discouraging modern contraception in 2000, and the casualties have been piling up ever since, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights — more deaths [...]
