This week, Facebook earned a lot of good press when they decided to finally adjust their community standards. Previously, photos of breastfeeding women would get deleted after one or two people reported them as inappropriate, while entire Facebook pages promoting violence against women and rape went unchallenged, no…
Sex Workers and Anti-Trafficking Groups Want To End Condoms as Evidence
Sex workers, anti-trafficking groups, the New York Civil Liberties Union, public health advocates, and LGBTQ organizations are today lobbying the lawmakers of New York state to pass a bill that would make the possession of condoms inadmissible as evidence in criminal prosecutions of prostitution and related offenses.…
Sick Tourists Marrying Teenage 'One Month Brides' for Sex in India
The act of child prostitution is getting a whole 'nother level of terrible in Hyderabad, India. A 17-year-old girl who was sold to a Sudanese man as a "one month wife" ran away from her so-called husband, exposing the increase of such sham marriages for the purpose of sex tourism in the the country. The phenomenon is…
Game Makers Hope People Will Want to Save Women From Genital…
A new Facebook game inspired by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, in which players are tasked with the goal of "raising awareness" of issues like female genital mutilation, child prostitution, and sex trafficking, launches early next…
Wider Cellphone Use Among India’s Sex Workers Threatens HIV-Prevention …
India, which has been a surprising success story in AIDS prevention throughout the aughts, might be on the verge of a serious health crisis thanks to the more widespread use among sex workers of cellphones, those fragile, rectangular amulets of modern independence. Though India's sex trade used to be largely localized…
Trafficking in Wrongs: Why Californians Need to Vote No on Prop 35 and …
The CASE Act, Californians against Sexual Exploitation, is a ballot initiative against trafficking that's designed to tug at the heartstrings of a misinformed public. After all, no one supports commercial sexual exploitation except the people who gain from it. But here's the thing: the people who actually know about…
FBI Sex-Trafficking Sting Saves 79 Teens and Rounds Up 104 Pimps
It was a busy weekend in the fight against sex trafficking. The FBI has announced that it conducted a three-day sweep that resulted in the rescue of 79 teens who were being held against their wills by sex-trafficking rings across the country. The FBI cooperated with state and local law enforcement authorities in the…
NYC's Mayor Bloomberg Would Not Want to Be Treated like a Prostitute
NYC cab drivers who have been convicted of sex trafficking-related felonies will now be penalized under a new law which will raise fines on drivers who run what the city calls "brothels on wheels." Drivers applying for or renewing their licenses will also be educated about how to spot trafficking victims and the…
Small Mexican Town Produces an Alarmingly Large Percentage of New York …
Anyone familiar with the Mexico sketched in Roberto Bolaño's fiction knows that the southwestern borderlands from 2666 and The Savage Detectives is a place of almost mythic criminality, where apathetic or outright antagonistic law enforcement does little to relieve the heavy burden of drug cartel violence plaguing the…
A Quick, Simple, and Terrifying Guide to Sex Trafficking
Are you in the mood to read all about the worldwide sex trafficking industry this morning? Probably not: the global sex trade is one of those horrible, overwhelming issues that's hard to get a grasp on, no matter how many heartbreaking documentaries you watch or longform pieces you read; it's easier to dissociate from…
