Sex workers in Colombia have started a newspaper that is “flying off the shelves”—a rare distinction for any newspaper these days. La Esquina—which means “The Corner,” in English—is made by and for sex workers in Bogotá’s red light district, according to the Guardian. It’s both distributed as a regular newspaper and,…
The Sacramento chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), an organization that provides critical resources to both sex workers and trafficking victims, is suspending its direct outreach programs amid a sense of growing legal risk. The group will be shuttering its safe-house, ceasing distribution of both…
For Women’s History Month, Jezebel and The Root are partnering for JezeRoot, a series that focuses on women of color, domestic workers, and sex workers.
“Problematic!!!” disclaimer here (I know, it’s tired): but it’s still saddening to see people in poverty and/or with a very common stigmatized incurable virus lumped in with sexual predators. Last night’s SNL’s well-intended “Grabbies” skit, an Oscars for Hollywood’s rapists and harassers, was tinged as per usual with…
At what point does a robot become more than just a vessel for satisfying a human’s needs? That’s one of the many questions posed by the new HBO series Westworld, based on that other Michael Crichton story about a theme park in which the android attractions—who are designed to be fucked and killed—rise up against their…
A few months ago, during one Sunday brunch, my boyfriend of nearly two years and I had a difficult conversation. I expressed my desire to get married, and he admitted his reluctance to propose. “It’s not that I don’t love you and want us to spend the rest of our lives together,” Arran gently began—in fact, some months…
On Sunday, August 21, hundreds took to the streets in Istanbul, Turkey to condemn the murder of LGBTQ activist and transgender woman Hande Kader.
After a two year battle, MPs have passed a law that now outlaws paying for sex in France, with a penalty of almost €4,000 for offenders—but unlike legislation in other countries like the U.S., the “offenders,” in this case are clients, not sex workers.
It’s just like your terrible college!
Kink.com, the San Francisco-based BDSM and fetish porn studio at which a portion of the alleged sexual assaults by James Deen took place, has changed its policies in an attempt to prevent future abuses.
A sex worker in Charleston, West Virginia shot and killed a man in self-defense who had a list of prostitutes in his pocket and a “kill kit” in his Subaru. Police are now beginning to link the 45-year-old man, Neal Falls, to the unsolved murders of sex workers in the Las Vegas area and in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Only in Washington, D.C. can a former city councilman become a gay strip club impresario. Meet Jim Graham, the 69-year-old former politician with a new start-up touting topless men and screaming patrons at something he calls “Rock Hard Sundays.”
I expected to be criticized for my work — I'm a porn performer — from my classmates at Duke. But from my fellow strippers, denigration for "sitting on a dick for a living" stung, if no other reason than that I didn't see it coming.
It’s tough to promote safe sex while also instructing police to confiscate individuals' condoms as evidence that they're sex workers, but New York City has finally figured that out. Almost.
Renting your apartment out on Airbnb? Don’t worry so much about your stuff being stolen; instead, maybe freak out about whether your place will be as virginal as you left it. Prostitutes are using the online room-sharing site to set-up transient brothels.
New research out today claims to offer a window into the massive, murky world of the underground commercial sex economy in eight major American cities, relying on interviews with 250 law enforcement officials, sex workers, and pimps. And, like one might expect, this unprecedented peek inside shows that there's huge…
Brooke Magnanti, the research scientist/former sex worker behind Belle de Jour, is being sued for defamation by an ex-lover, who’s pursuing damages for defamation and breach of privacy, and wondering (quite vociferously) out loud to anyone who will listen, i.e. the Mail, if Magnanti ever really was a sex worker.
Here's one way sex workers can hold clients and cops accountable: videotape them. Raven Nicole Masterson, a self-described "coparazzi," uses her cellphone camera to document how often the basic rights of sex workers — especially those who are women of color — are completely ignored. Masterson's guerrilla tactics won't…
Man, the Supreme Court wants to go on summer vacay so bad! All it wants to do is head to the cabin upstate, chill at the lake, and make out with its boyfriend (he’s from Canada, you don’t know him), but Dad is being a total knob about driving privileges. “No driving until you finish all your opinions from last term…
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.…
