Women caught in the sex industry find new life through Nea Zoi, a partner organisation, which reaches out to sex workers in Athens.

[Nile Post] The survey, conducted across 12 districts, was presented at Makerere University's School of Public Health, shedding light on the urgent need for targeted interventions to address the HIV epidemic among this vulnerable population.

A human trafficker who lured women from Thailand and forced them into the sex trade is jailed

Rebecca Moore, 25, is found guilty of her role in the murder of Sacad Ali in Sheffield on 9 March.

UPDATE: MSPs have voted that Grant's bill will have to go to consultation and will not be fast-tracked. Which is good news. But the fight is not over, and expect more to come when the consultation hits.

At the same time that the Moratorium 2012 campaign kicks off in London, spearheading a common-sense approach to sex work, there appears a bid in Scotland to try to make prostitution illegal. Just to recap: soliciting, running a brothel, and kerb crawling are already illegal (as too are trafficking and sexual exploitation of children). Exchanging sex for money at this point is not. Not yet.

Labour MSP Rhoda Grant claims "Scotland should become an unattractive market for prostitution and therefore other associated serious criminal activities, such as people trafficking for sexual exploitation, would be disrupted." Grant is, unfortunately, badly informed and wrong. I'm going to keep this one short and sweet because the points are pretty straightforward...

Scotland does not have a sex trafficking epidemic

Sex trafficking is the excuse frequently given these days to harass and criminalise sex workers. Problem is, it's not remotely the "epidemic" they would have you believe. If you're not already up to speed on the whys and wherefores, I highly recommend reading Laura Agustin's work on this. Or if I may be so cheeky to suggest you could also buy my book. 

Specifically, it is not happening in Scotland.  “In Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a conviction for human trafficking,” said police constable Gordon Meldrum. Meldrum had previously claimed research “proved” the existence of 10 human trafficking groups north of the border, and 367 organised crime groups with over 4000 members. “We had one case which was brought to court previously but was abandoned. My understanding is it was abandoned due to a lack of evidence, essentially.” Strange how the evidence seemed to disappear precisely when someone was asked to produce all these fantasy baddies, isn't it? 

It's not only Scotland where the trafficking hype falls flat though: investigation throughout the UK has comprehensively failed to find any supposed sex trafficking epidemic.

Not convinced by the evidence? Then consider this: criminalising sex workers and their clients removes the most reliable information sources police have for investigating abuses. Police don't have a great track record on this: In interviews by the Sex Workers Project with 15 trafficking survivors who experienced police raids, only one had been asked by law enforcement if she was coerced, and only after she was arrested. SWOP-NYC make this case clearly.

Criminalising sex work has been shown in Scotland to make criminal activity worse

Criminalisation has all kinds of effects on the behaviour of sex workers, but unfortunately, none of those effects are good. Fear of police forces sex workers to get into clients’ cars quickly, and possibly be unable to avoid dangerous attackers posing as clients. When vigilantes and police roam the pavements, sex workers wait until the wee hours to come out, making them more isolated and vulnerable to harm.

Such an approach can also result in a transfer of activity from streetwalking to other ways of getting money. High-profile crackdown results in repeated arrests of prostitutes, which translate to fines that sex workers, now burdened with criminal records, are unable to pay except by more prostitution or by fraud, shoplifting, and dealing drugs.

Take Aberdeen, for instance. From 2001 onward, the city had an established tolerance zone for sex workers around the harbour. That ended with passage of the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act in 2007. In the following months the city centre experienced an influx of streetwalkers and an increase in petty crimes.

Quay Services, which operates a drop-in centre for streetwalkers, reported that sex workers became more afraid to seek assistance, and the number of women coming to the centre dropped to “just a handful”. There was also evidence that displacing sex workers led to more activity in the sex trade, not less – convictions for solicitation tripled.

This kind of ‘crime shuffling’ takes prostitution out of one area and dumps it on another. It only resembles an improvement if you fail to look at the full picture.

Prohibition never works

There is a lot of talk in the political sphere about the need for “evidence based policy”. This means rejecting approaches that are moralistic and manipulative. Sex workers have suffered the tragic consequences of prejudicial social attitudes that lead to bad policy. The prohibition approach has not worked. It will never work. The people who endorse this view are putting people in danger and should not be guiding public opinion any longer. Disliking sex work is not a good enough argument to justify criminalising it. Is there any public interest served by preventing adults from engaging in a consensual transaction for sexual services? No, there is not.

Bit like the war on drugs: making the business profitable only to criminals, awaiting the inevitably grim results, then claiming that it’s the drugs themselves, not the laws, wot caused it. Few reasonable people believe that line of argument when it comes to drugs. Why does anyone believe it when it comes to sex?

Moral disapproval is a bad basis for policymaking. I don't find the idea of taking drugs at all appealing, but I don't assume my own preferences should be the basis for law.

The condescension heaped on people who do sex work is embarrassingly transparent. All this mealy-mouthed, 'oh but we want to help them, really’. How’s that again? By saddling people with criminal records and taking away their children? Do me a favour.

As well as the happy prostitutes there are unhappy sex workers in need of support. Society should protect the unwilling and underage from sexual exploitation and provide outreach for those who need and want it. We already have laws and services for that. Maybe the laws should be more intelligently enforced and the services better supported. But prosecuting the victimless crimes does neither of these. It helps no one.

The potential existence of abuses does not mean such work should be automatically criminalised if for no other reason than doing so makes the lives of people in sex work worse, not better. Criminalisation is the very opposite of compassion. Rhoda Grant is hiding behind an "end demand" approach that will not achieve what she claims it will, but will punish sex workers and send those with already chaotic lives further into a downward spiral. If that isn't punishing them with no hope for change then I don't know what is.

It's time we started acting like grownups and stopped pretending that making something illegal makes it cease to exist.

This morning I awoke to find a claim published in the Mail that I was not a sex worker. 


It is a direct attack on my integrity as a writer, to claim that I lied. And I have been prepared.

When the case goes to trial, I will have to present evidence that I was a sex worker. Starting with this - an Archive.org snap of my first escorting ad from October 2003 (link NSFW).

(Readers of the first book may recall this was the session with the grumpy photographer I wrote about. As I have often said, it was that experience - being made to wear terrible lingerie, awkward poses, all the rest - that first made me think, 'hey, I should be blogging this.'

And if you read the third book, I made a reference to a restaurant on Old Compton Street that has the same name as my working name - that is, of course, Taro.)

I will also be presenting my bank records from 2003-04, showing the cash deposits from the money I earned as an escort, and tax records from the same years showing that this income was declared to HMRC and tax paid. Here is a sample:

 
I also have the notebook in which I recorded details of appointments, etc. In several instances I have been able to piece together entries from the notebook, deposits to my accounts, and the corresponding entries in the book. If pressed, I will name a client, but only as a last resort.

The Mail also claims I didn't own nice enough clothes so couldn't have been an escort!


That's from December 2003, and is the same red silk top I wore to meet the manager for the first time (as written about in the first book). The next is at Henley Regatta in July 2004, suit is from Austin Reed, the bracelet was a gift from a client.



The Mail claims I was in Sheffield when writing the blog, but I moved to London in September 2003 and started escorting in October, starting blogging a few weeks later. All of which is easy - trivial, even - to prove.

Oh, and the "former landlady in Sheffield, who did not wish to be named", where I supposedly lived for three years? Who apparently saw me in 'Oxfam jumpers'? Hmm... I lived one year in university accommodation (St George's Flats),  one year in a shared flat with an absentee landlord I never met (Hawthorne Road), and one year on my own in a house let through an agency (Loxley New Road). All well before moving to London. So either the landlady is lying about the timing of my tenancy and having met me, or (shock, horror) they made it up.

There's much more but it would be boring to put it all here. It's amazing to me the MoS made no effort at all to match anything they printed against things that are easy to find and in the public domain. But that's by the by, and will come out in due course.

It matters because this is a concerted and direct attack on my work as a writer. When I was anonymous, being real was my main - my only - advantage. The Mail on Sunday have made some frankly nonsense claims, and I will be going to town on this.

Because I know people do not trust the word of a sex worker, that is why I saved everything.

I look forward to the opportunity to rebut all claims in court. (The MoS claim the trial is expected "within weeks." In fact it is scheduled for June 2015.)

Volume 36, Issue 5, September-October 2024, Page 410-426. Read the full article ›

The post “A little love is enough for me to live my life…”: Precarity and resilience among older sex workers in India was curated by information for practice.

The fatal stabbing of a Hungarian teenager, killed shortly after she gave birth, has baffled police for 15 years.

A hologram of a sex worker who was murdered in Amsterdam more than a decade ago could help solve the cold case, investigators hope.

Here are the first look posters from Alia Bhatt's upcoming movie Gangubai Kathiawadi.

Montreal : National Film Board of Canada, 2019

Montreal : National Film Board of Canada, 2019

Women caught in the sex industry find new life through Nea Zoi, a partner organisation, which reaches out to sex workers in Athens.

The Census thinks that prostitutes are not workers, not because they don't work, but because of traditional views that what they do simply should not be counted as work, writes Shoma Chatterji.

An innovative project in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is helping sex workers empower themselves, by training them as paralegal volunteers. A confident community is fighting exploitation, standing up and being counted, reports Ramesh Menon.

Jessie Sage is a sex worker who writes and speaks publicly on issues related to sex work, feminism, and social justice. James Tison is a stand-up comedian in New York who uses humor to fight stigma against his LGBTQ identity and life with HIV. Sage and Tison recently spoke at an event at Penn State called “Facts not Fear: A Night to Fight Stigma,” and talked with WPSU about fighting the sigma their communities face. This Take Note interview talks about sex work and might not be suitable for children to hear.

Sex work, food vans at farmers' markets and race meetings are some of the latest activities banned by Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein, as part of the ongoing effort to slow the spread of coronavirus in the state.

Sex workers say they are being harassed and intimidated by South Australian police, as figures show charges for sex-work offences have spiked in the past two years.

South Australia Police raid a sex worker's unit in Adelaide.

A politician opposed to the decriminalisation of sex work in the Northern Territory claims he has been "censored" by a parliamentary scrutiny committee which agreed to accept evidence from sex workers behind closed doors because of concerns about stigma and discrimination.

Bradley Lester Grey, 54, pleads not guilty in the ACT Supreme Court to charges of allegedly telling prospective sex workers they would need to perform acts with him to prove they were right for the role.

Two sex workers charged with working illegally on the Gold Coast tell the ABC they thought the agency had been a legal operation.

Following on from the clinical review "Caring for sex workers", we spoke to the team at Open Doors, a sex worker outreach clinic in east London, run from the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Kim Leveret and Anca Doczi join us to give practical advice on reaching out to sex workers, what barriers exist to them accessing care, and...

Agencies have criticised the lack of action to protect the health needs of sex workers during the pandemic, with the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) warning of a “ticking time bomb of health...

This report analyzes the exploitation of migrants in three spheres: the domestic care sector, the labor market, and the sex industry. It details several obstacles governments face in their efforts to weaken the "bad actors" that profit from exploitation, and shows how one of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement is that serious criminals and lawbreakers often operate on the edge of legality and exploit legal routes wherever possible.

For a Bangladeshi woman, who has worked as a sex worker since childhood, her future post-COVID-19 looks hopeless. Shilpy, who works at Daulatdia, the largest brothel in the country, told IPS how she now also fears for the future of her two daughters. “When I was born, the woman my mother worked for gave everyone […]

The post Alive Amidst the Mayhem of COVID-19 – A Sex Worker’s Story appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ensuring sex workers’ rights was essential, not just for the workers themselves, but for any country’s wider society, including public health

The post Ensuring Russia’s Sex Workers’ Rights Essential for Wider Gender Equality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

When the nightclub in which she touted for business in southern Chile was shut down by the authorities as the new coronavirus spread, sex worker Camila Hormazabal was left without access to her sole...

ABSTRACTBackground:Female sex workers (FSWs) in Cameroon commonly have unmet need for contraception posing a high risk of unintended pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy leads to a range of outcomes, and due to legal restrictions, FSWs often seek unsafe abortions. Aside from the high burden of HIV, little is known about the broader sexual and reproductive health of FSWs in Cameroon.Methods:From December 2015 to October 2016, we recruited FSWs aged ≥18 years through respondent-driven sampling across 5 Cameroonian cities. Cross-sectional data were collected through a behavioral questionnaire. Modified-robust Poisson regression was used to approximate adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) for TOP and current use of effective nonbarrier contraception.Results:Among 2,255 FSWs (median age 28 years), 57.6% reported history of unintended pregnancy and 40.0% reported prior TOP. In multivariable analysis, TOP history was associated with current nonbarrier contraceptive use (aPR=1.23, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.07, 1.42); ever using emergency contraception (aPR=1.34, 95% CI=1.17, 1.55); >60 clients in the past month (aPR=1.29, 95% CI= 1.07, 1.54) compared to ≤30; inconsistent condom use with clients (aPR=1.17, 95% CI=1.00, 1.37); ever experiencing physical violence (aPR=1.24, 95% CI=1.09, 1.42); and older age. Most (76.5%) women used male condoms for contraception, but only 33.2% reported consistent condom use with all partners. Overall, 26.4% of women reported currently using a nonbarrier contraceptive method, and 6.2% reported using a long-acting method. Previous TOP (aPR=1.41, 95%CI=1.16, 1.72) and ever using emergency contraception (aPR=2.70, 95% CI=2.23, 3.26) were associated with higher nonbarrier contraceptive use. Recent receipt of HIV information (aPR=0.72, 95% CI=0.59, 0.89) and membership in an FSW community-based organization (aPR=0.73, 95% CI=0.57, 0.92) were associated with lower use nonbarrier contraceptive use.Conclusions:Experience of unintended pregnancies and TOP is common among FSWs in Cameroon. Given the low use of nonbarrier contraceptive methods and inconsistent condom use, FSWs are at risk of repeat unintended pregnancies. Improved integration of client-centered, voluntary family planning within community-led HIV services may better support the sexual and reproductive health and human rights of FSWs consistent with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

When truth is stranger than fiction

For decades, Jaime Montejo fought to bring dignity to sex workers in Mexico City, protecting them from police, pimps and eventually the coronavirus. Then he got sick.

Here are the first look posters from Alia Bhatt's upcoming movie Gangubai Kathiawadi.

'During a visit to One25, a charity which helps female sex workers in Bristol, Meghan did something very strange indeed. On each banana, she carefully inked a self-help message,' writes Jones.

A transgender sex worker is not criminally negligent for passing on HIV to a man because she never knew she had the disease, her lawyer has told a Perth court.

A transgender sex worker who identifies as a woman has been found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm after having unprotected sex with a male client and allegedly passing on HIV.

Australian drug smuggler 'Cocaine' Cassie Sainsbury has revealed why she became a sex worked and how it led to her taking a 'shady' courier job in Colombia.

Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed and her colleagues made a presentation before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a few months back on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Health interventions for sex workers and homosexuals would progress if they were not regarded as criminals and accorded dignity and rights, they stressed.

Even before the state of emergency was declared on March 14, the work had all but dried up, with fear of the virus keeping both clients and sex workers away.

When the nightclub in which she touted for business in southern Chile was shut down by the authorities as the new coronavirus spread, sex worker Camila Hormazabal was left without access to her sole source of income.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Hayden Library - PN1995.9.P76 W66 2018

While the first home will accommodate 100 elderly sex workers , the second one, for their daughters, will house 50 girls.

Bindel, Julie, author

Mumbai NGO reaches out to sex workers, nomads with ration during lockdown