sexwork

Dear Sex Worker Hater | Maggie Mayhem Speaks

by Viviane on 04/05/2025

in sexwork

The good news is, you don’t have to be a sex worker hater forever. You can choose to write something new, interesting, relevant, and original about what happened in this situation. You can choose to listen to this criticism and reframe your argument. You can choose to acknowledge that some of the people affected by the PornWiki might possibly be reading your column. You might even choose to apologize. At the very least you can acknowledge that you didn’t add anything to the argument by climbing up onto a moral high horse and wagging your finger at the whores down below to remind them that they shouldn’t expect the same kind of privacy that any other public figure expects. Don’t worry, including sex workers and talking about them ethically and honestly won’t turn you into one. It won’t even make you an ally. It just makes you less of a hating asshole. Anywhere you choose to go from there is up to you.

Link

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International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

by Viviane on 12/16/2024

in Events, sexwork

redumbrella International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Join us for a vigil and community speak out

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves
Who: Current & former sex workers, our allies, friends, families, and communities. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us in remembering those we’ve lost to violence, oppression and hate, whether perpetrated by clients, partners, police or the state.

We stand against the cycle of violence experienced by sex workers around the world. Recently in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council looked at the human rights record of the United States during their Universal Periodic Review. Uruguay’s recommendation to the Obama Administration – to address “the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses” – is the moral leadership we have been waiting for! We come together each year to show the world that the lives of marginalized people, including those of sex workers, are valuable.
Speakers:

* Audacia Ray, Red Umbrella Project & Sex Work Awareness
* Chelsea Johnson-Long, Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project
* Michael J. Miller, The Counterpublic Collective and PROS Network
* Andrea Ritchie, Peter Cicchino Youth Project and Streetwise & Wafe (SAS)

Readings

* Reading of the names of sex workers we have lost this past year
* Memorial for Catherine Lique by her daughter Stephanie Thompson and read by Sarah Jenny Bleviss
* Speak out: Bring poetry, writings or just speak your truth.

Light snacks, beverages, and metrocards will be provided.

This event is co-sponsored by: Audre Lorde Project, Babeland, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons, PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, Red Umbrella Project, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New yorK), SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), the Space at Tompkins, and Third Wave Foundation.

  • Facebook RSVP
  • International Day toEnd Violence Against Sex Workers
  • Cory Silverberg’s article about International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

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When Is Bondage Prostitution? Records May Help Set Boundaries (New York Law Journal)

by Viviane on 09/09/2024

in legal, sexwork

by Mark Fass

A Manhattan judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to shine a light on the hazy legal line separating bondage, domination and sadomasochism from prostitution.

In a decision last week, Supreme Court Justice Carol R. Edmead directed the NYPD to provide the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project with documents regarding police investigations of several Manhattan bondage, domination and sadomasochism clubs between 2006 and 2008.

The judge, however, ruled that the police department is not required to turn over a copy of a confidential Vice Enforcement Division manual, which sets forth the procedures used by undercover agents to identify, engage and arrest suspected prostitutes.

“Disclosure of this information…would ‘furnish the safecracker with the combination to the safe,’ as it would alert the potential violators of the prostitution laws to the unique factors and methods the undercover police officers are likely to use to communicate with the other members of the team,” Justice Edmead wrote in Urban Justice Center v. New York Police Department, 400988/2010 (Subscription reqd).

The Sex Workers Project, which provides legal services and policy advocacy for people who work in the sex industry—exotic dancers, dominatrices and pornography actors, among others—considers the contested documents essential to understanding how the NYPD interprets and enforces New York Penal Law 230.00, the single-sentence statute that prohibits engaging in “sexual conduct” for a fee, but fails to define “sexual conduct.”

Since NYPL 230.00 was enacted in 1969—”prostitution” had previously been treated as a form of vagrancy, according to the annotated McKinney’s Penal Law—the definition of “sexual conduct” has slowly been teased out by the courts. Homosexual intercourse is “sexual conduct,” courts have ruled, though “lap dancing” is not—so long as the person providing the lap does not touch the dancer’s naked breasts or buttocks.

The case law provides scant guidance regarding bondage, domination and “fetish for a fee” services. Only a single reported opinion, the 1994 Brooklyn Criminal Court decision People v. Georgia A., 163 Misc.2d 634, addresses whether such acts constitute prohibited “sexual conduct.”

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Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

by Viviane on 11/01/2024

in Events, sexwork

journeyproject Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

Time: 12:00-8:00 PM
Location: Washington Square Park

This month, if you see seven shipping containers in Washington Square Park, that’s the Journey project, sponsored by the Helen Bamber Foundation:

The aim of Journey is to bring the reality of the sex trafficking industry to the forefront of social consciousness and empower people to take action. Shackles bind perpetrators to victims, and victims to the punters who exploit them. The links extend to every level of society even to the organisations that care for the victims. They extend down the halls of government who pledge to act and pass laws to stamp out trafficking. The links form an invisible chain that binds us all together. It is the chain of modern day slavery.

It takes the audience on her journey of transformation from a childhood full of hopes and dreams into the harrowing reality of sex slavery, void …of freedom and self.

Each stage of this brutal journey has been interpreted and created by a different artist, titled Hope, Journey, Uniform, Bedroom, Customer, Stigma and Resurrection.

There will facilitators after you tour the installation…you might even meet Bamber Foundation trustee and actress Emma Thompson.

Journey exhibit slideshow
Emma And Elena, Exposing The Sex Trade (NPR)
Bondage from Freedom’s Facebook page

Photo from the Trafalgar Square installation of the Journey Project, courtesy of Bondage for Freedom.

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SWOP – Chicago presents “Happy Endings?”

by Lolita Wolf on 06/10/2024

in leather archives, sexwork

home top bg SWOP Chicago presents Happy Endings?

SEX WORKERS OUTREACH PROJECT-CHICAGO PRESENTS-
An intriguing exploration of the Asian massage parlor industry in Providence, RI

“HAPPY ENDINGS?”
in support of SWOP-Chicago
presented by Clarisse Thorn
and hosted by the Leather Archives & Museum
Film Screening and Post-Screening Discussion

Friday, June 12, 7PM
Leather Archives & Museum
6418 N. Greenview (at Devon)
Chicago, IL 60626
(773) 761-9200
$5-10 suggested donation to SWOP-Chicago

Rhode Island: the only state where prostitution is decriminalized. It had been over 25 years since five prostitutes sued the state of Rhode Island for selective prosecution and prostitution laws were removed from the books, when documentarians Tara Hurley and Nick Marcoux turned their cameras on the underbelly of “The Renaissance City”.

Watch the drama unfold in Asian massage parlors across Providence as Mayor David Ciccilline pushes to close the prostitution “loophole”. Follow Heather, a Korean immigrant, over two years as she manages the
massage parlor. Learn about the women who work in the spas. Hear from the police who arrest them. Watch the fight for and against the legislation. The film includes subtitled interviews with Korean women
who work in the spas, clients who frequent the spas, police, politicians from 1980 and today, local news footage, local radio call-in shows, and “voiced” reviews from internet escort review boards. Read more, watch the trailer, and see clips from the film at http://happyendingsdoc.com.

Just recently — May 2009 — prostitution is in the process of being criminalized again in Rhode Island. Come out, watch the documentary, and talk about it afterwards. What do you think about sex work? Is the change in Rhode Island law fair or unfair? Delicious snacks will be served, and discussion will follow! This is a benefit for the Sex Workers Outreach Project, and we’re requesting a $5-10 donation from attendees.

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