Knee-jerk reactions to campaigns like these lead to the criminalization of prostitution, creating environments where exploitation, abuse, coercion and trafficking are made easier, not harder.

Politicians pat themselves on the back for taking down Craigslist, which does what? Trafficking doesn’t stop because a site is gone. This only serves to push the activity underground where it leaves no paper trail and where it becomes harder for law enforcement to identify and help victims.

The inability to tell the difference between a slave and a sex worker is how you end up with things like the Anti-Prostitution Pledge which denies funds to governments and non-governmental organizations who “support prostitution” (i.e., work with sex workers, even if that means only providing them with condoms and other health services). This is what happens when we throw the best intentions behind sensationalism: we end up with policy that helps no one and hurts everyone involved.

Trafficking won’t stop until we learn to tell the difference between those who are coerced into prostitution and those who aren’t. Painting the entire red light district in Amsterdam — one of the few places where sex work is legal and sex workers have rights — as a trafficking zone will only result in criminalizing prostitution, putting all sex workers at risk of exploitation.

How is this a better option that working with sex workers there to find trafficking victims? The sex workers who work there by choice know their rights and are much better able to educate those who come in about these rights and to sniff out those who are victims than any foreigner across an ocean who is up in arms over a sensationalist video about all the hopeful dancers who are turned into hookers.

Meet Sarah Tressler. By day, she writes about Houston society for the Houston Chronicle. It’s not the most fascinating job, but a great place to start for a journalist trying to make her way through the decaying body of an industry that still hasn’t managed to come up with a model that supports their costs in this time of the open web.

Once deadlines are met, assuming she’s not teaching writing as an adjunct professor at University of Houston, Tressler packs it up and heads to her other gig — at any of a handful strip clubs in Houston. Unsurprisingly, this job is the one that inspires the bulk of her writing. Over the years she’s been active on the web, Tressler has created an engaging community of both civilians and other strippers across various social media platforms, all of whom devour her blog, which is filled with stories of her experiences.

Having more than one job is not an easy act to manage, but Tressler managed fine — until the Chronicle‘s competitor, the Houston Press decided to assassinate her in a post on their Hairballs blog.

Houston Press writer Richard Connelly unceremoniously outs Tressler as a writer, adjunct professor and stripper, suggesting that she’s only doing what she’s doing because she wants a book deal and a movie made about her life. “It’s all pretty much what you’d expect,” he says. “Writing in the style that really, really wants to be described as ‘fearless’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘funny’ and ‘sexy.’”

He goes on to quote an unnamed source at the Chronicle who says people at the paper are furious because Tressler never tried hard enough to hide the fact she’s a dancer, coming around the office wearing designer garb no journalist could ever hope to afford on such meager salaries, and because they know — they just know — she’s going to use them for fodder for a book.

Buried deep into the story is a quote from an actual named source who says Tressler is a highly competent freelancer — but the props she gets for her work are summarily dismissed in favor of an excerpt from one of her blog posts, where Tressler describes how uncomfortable it is when men at the club want her to play with their nipples.

In response to comments calling out the Houston Press for slut-shaming, Connelly tries to wash his hands of responsibility, assuring everyone he’s just trying to give a feelow journo some professional advice. He writes:

I don’t get the”slut shaming” charge. If you want to be a stripper, fine. If you want to write for a very conservative, uptight paper — covering the very powerful, very conservative and straitlaced people the paper so desperately works to keep happy and unruffled — fine. If you want to combine the two, it’s interesting, to say the least.

The implication here is that if you want to be a stripper, you can only be a stripper. Strippers are not allowed to be anything else — now or ever given how many people lose their jobs when adult history pasts come back to haunt them. But there is more here: the suggestion that sharing one’s personal narrative is a call for attention is something leveled against women all the time — especially those who write about anything relating to sex or the sex industry. It’s a silencing tactic to prevent sex workers — and, quite often, women in general — from sharing their realities. In the guise of offering “advice” Connelly is actually telling Tressler to shut up.

He seems to think it’s hypocritical for a woman who is in the sex industry to report on a conservative community, but the real hypocrisy is his. He’s accusing a woman who has found a way to make her career choices work for her of being an attention whore who only wants a book deal and a movie and doesn’t care who she uses for fodder, when he’s the one who has turned her into fodder.

And now, according to Gawker, Tressler has been fired from her job at the Chronicle. Way to go, Connelly. We hope the page views were worth it.

The e-commerce startup Sqoot could not believe the shitstorm. All they had done was advertised their Boston hack-a-thon by listing some of the perks they were offering at the event, you know, things like DJs, massages, food trucks, top-notch booze, energy drinks, snacks…

And women. Not women hackers, mind you. Clearly Sqoot doesn’t think women are capable of any technology-related task (except maybe using their phone cameras to snap n00dz to send them), because when they mentioned women as one of the perks along with all the other things they had available, they added: “Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you.”

The internet rightfully exploded, causing Sqoot event sponsors to drop left and right. Eventually, the startup released a statement, saying: “While we thought this was a fun, harmless comment poking fun at the fact that hack-a-thons are typically male-dominated, others were offended. That was not our intention and thus we changed it.” This isn’t an apology. Apologies say something along the lines of “we screwed up. We’re sorry.” This says, “we thought it was funny. Some don’t. Fine. It’s gone. Party poopers.”

So they issued another apology, which said: “When we put together the original event page, we used language that we now realize was reckless and hurt efforts to diversify gender in tech. We immediately and deservedly received an enormous backlash. While we aimed to call attention to the male-dominated tech world through humor and intended to be inclusive, the gravity of our wording was just the opposite. Our words completely undermined our intentions and went further to harm the world we’re trying to have a positive impact on.”

They tried to call attention to the male-dominated tech world through humor and be inclusive? You don’t “call attention” to a male-dominated industry and foster inclusion by enforcing sexism. It’s only slightly better than the initial apology, but we are heartened by the swift and brutalizing reaction to the ad.

Get with the program, people! Technology isn’t just for guys.

Header image features a screengrab from an episode of the The X-Files called “Kill Switch” (season 5, episode 11), featuring Kristin Lehman as computer whiz kid Esther Nairn.

Topsy is an indexing platform primarily developed to enable businesses to understand social trends. As such, their dealings are of primary interest to people in the social marketing space, so when Topsy released their Google+ comment searching tool in October of last year, the reception was limited to people in that niche.

In the past could of days, however, the function has been spreading among regular users of the network, creating something of a frenzy. Usage is simple: all you need is a Google+ user number, which appears in their profile URL. You take that and input it at the end of the Topsy Google+ search URL (http://plus.topsy.com/googleplus/), hit enter and voila! All public comments made across the social network appear before you awaiting your perusal.

Many have hailed this tool as revolutionary for finding older comments they have made that they can no longer find using Google+’s limited search function. But as someone who posts content that largely deals with issues relating to sex and sexuality, this concerns me. I do not think it is dishonest as some have suggested to want to be able to comment on certain issues without making everything you say accessible to your boss, your family, your congregation, the people in your building, the people who live in the town where you summer, your children’s school administrators, your insurance company, your ex-spouses attorneys, etc.

Most of us lead compartmentalized lives. We go to work, we have great parties, we give our time to causes in the community, we have our sexual proclivities, we attend church (maybe only during holidays), we support certain political causes — and so on. The first rule of courtesy is to understand the place and time. You shouldn’t speak about your delight with new anal beads at work. You shouldn’t regale your family at brunch with endless details about a merger. You shouldn’t speak about your wild parties at church. And you would do well not to divide the room by mentioning religion or politics at a cocktail party. Real life allows us to keep the various facets that make us who we are separate so they do not cause discomfort to ourselves or others. This is for a variety of reasons, some dishonest, many not. It doesn’t make us dishonest to encompass our share of contradictions. It makes us human.

The problem with the web is that it largely began as a world separate from meatspace. Today, most people use their real names, but this wasn’t always the case. When I started going online in the mid-90s, no one even knew my gender. I preferred that, not because I was hiding, but because I feel very strongly that I should be judged by my thoughts, not who people assume I am by seeing I am a woman, by attaching a handful of preconceived notions to what I am saying because they see my photo and think I’m too young or too old or attractive or unattractive.

Being an intangible essence allowed me to be more myself than I’d ever been before. Posting on different niche boards enabled the level of frankness that we experience when we’re in a group of like-minded people with whom we can openly debate or discuss topics. But this is no longer how the web operates and the transition hasn’t been an easy one. In a world where employers can easily find out everything about you, where insurance companies can decide to give or deny coverage because they see some status update as representing a liability, where a judge at family court can take away your children because — God forbid — you had a photo taken at Playboy West some Halloween… It’s not a matter of the web exposing you. It’s a matter of no longer having the ability to segregate different aspects of your life as we were once easily able to do and the concern is entirely valid.

This is why, for example, the page I manage on Google+ for this blog doesn’t list the people who follow it. It is no one else’s business that you care enough about sex to follow a blog about it. I have spent a lot of time debating whether the page should be private to enable people to comment openly and if Google+ allowed pages to circle more people, I wouldn’t hesitate. But closing the doors means I might eventually reach the cap and then I would have to consider opening it to enable more people to join — and having to retrain everyone who is used to the privacy to understand that they can no longer enjoy the conversation they once did. It doesn’t seem right.

I dealt with this adding a Like box for Facebook as well. There is no way on that network to shield who has Liked a page. I wish there was. It’s not surprising that a lot of people follow the blog by subscribing to my personal feed on Facebook instead of Liking the Sex and the 405 page itself.

And I faced the same question when I implemented Disqus as the primary comment system on the blog as a means of dealing with a growing spam problem. Disqus enables people to look at comments users have made all over the web, simply by accessing their profiles. I didn’t like it then and I don’t now, and it doesn’t surprise me that comments disappeared almost entirely when I finally chose to implement it. Most often, people prefer to e-mail me when they have something to say. I understand why this is, but it saddens me because of how completely it limits the exchange of ideas.

To pretend that we can have a complete life by posting only what our mothers and bosses will read, as someone suggested in a conversation about the Topsy tool, is to rob ourselves of experience and to rob the community of valuable engagement. Comments don’t simply break down into valuable and inappropriate. There are many topics that are valuable but not something you’d want on the first page of Google when someone searches for your name. There is nothing wrong with wishing that it were possible to compartmentalize your digital conversations in the same way you do your meatspace exchanges.

Unfortunately for us, this is not the direction the web is going, which is why pseudonymous accounts and the networks who accept them are so very, very important. Those who accuse pseudonymous users of hiding and being dishonest are, in my opinion, the ones who are the most dishonest. People using pseudonyms do so mostly to protect themselves in a world they know has no walls and retains everything they’ve ever said. Are they less honest, really, than people who continuously self-censor and refuse to weigh in on important issues because they’re afraid of the repercussions?

At her bail hearing a week ago in New York, Anna Gristina had a resolute look about her. She’d spent the past couple of weeks at Rikers Island weighing her options. She’s facing charges of promoting prostitution after a five-year investigation uncovered the high class escort business she was running out of a Manhattan Upper East Side apartment.

Allegations that the 44-year-old suburban mother of four had bragged that she had contacts in law enforcement who tipped her about raids has resulted in pressure from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to leverage every method possible to further the investigation into police corruption, but the Millionaire Madam is proving difficult to work with.

At her arraignment on February 23, Gristina pleaded not guilty. Now, it seems she may be considering changing her tune and pleading guilty to avoid having to give specifics about the $15 million pleasure empire she built to investigators — including naming those who used her services.

But that seems to have been of no help to former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who has nevertheless been incriminated in the investigation. According to Manhattan’s DNAInfo, during the drawn-out investigation, one of the Madam’s girls disclosed that Edwards had had a one-nighter with her while he was in the Big Apple in 2007 raising money for his presidential campaign. She provided a very detailed account of the tryst and investigators found her claim credible, especially after substantiating that Edwards was in New York at the time the woman claimed to have indulged him.

The Edwards camp was quick to issue a statement in response, saying: “Mr. Edwards categorically denies that he was involved with any prostitute or service.” His attorney called the allegations defamatory and demanded a retraction. DNAInfo, however, is not budging.

Edwards’ credibility is not hard to question, considering the way his affair with Rielle Hunter played out. He denied the allegations of that affair and the resulting child, constructing an elaborate house of cards that eventually fell apart around him. In the case of the allegations relating to the Millionaire Madam scandal, however, charges are unlikely because it is so difficult to prove that money was exchanged for the purpose of sex.

Header image by Jessica Janson.

Arizona Senator John McCain initially supported the Blunt Amendment, a measure that would have allowed individual employers to choose whether they wanted to allow employee health plans to cover birth control. Recently, however, he seems to have changed his mind regarding controlling women’s reproductive choices.

Last weekend, McCain appeared on Meet The Press, where David Gregory asked him about a bill introduced by an Arizona senate committee that would allow employers to demand that employees furnish proof that they were not using the contraceptive pill provided by employee health insurance plans to prevent pregnancy in order for them to approve their coverage. This is the segment — with a transcript below:

David Gregory: Are you concerned at all to see the focus — certain elements of the Republican Party on social issues? In your own state of Arizona, there’s this contraception bill that even the governor has said would put women in the uncomfortable position where they had to say to their employers why they wanted contraception, and why it should be covered — is that a bad road?

John McCain: I am confident that that legislation will not reach the governor’s desk and if it did it would be vetoed.

Gregory: It’s the wrong legislation.

McCain: Well, it certainly does not reflect — in my view — the majority view of the people of Arizona.

Gregory: Do you think that there is something of a war on women among Republicans?

McCain: I think we have to fix that. I think that there is a perception out there because of the way this whole contraception issue played out — we need to get off of that issue, in my view. I think we ought to respect the right of women to make choices in their lives and make that clear, and get back onto what the American people really care about.

Let’s hope the rest of the party isn’t far behind.

Header image by Rona Proudfoot.

Having a few foreigners on staff requires us to do a bit of explaining when it comes to American politics. Usually, any questions posed to us are answered rather quickly, and we take great pleasure (and pride) in seeing their faces light up with understanding. However bizarre our way of doing things may appear, one thing is clear: democracy is of the utmost importance in the United States. No matter where they come from, foreigners understand and respect that.

But there is one question we just haven’t been able to answer to our satisfaction — at least not without exposing the absolutely disgusting hypocrisy of people who claim to be interested in preserving the beautiful tradition of freedom and autonomy that this country represents. The question was posed simply enough: “The conservative party’s devotion to preserving the life of the unborn is admirable, but their concern seems to only extend to the unborn. Why are people so devoted to life in the name of God treat the very children they have saved as unnecessary burdens on the state, to be excised like so many malignant tumors?”

The question had arisen shortly after an article on Mother Jones had started to make the rounds around the newsroom, one in which the conservative presidential candidate Rick Santorum, stated in no uncertain terms that the nation is “falling apart because of single moms.”

Santorum believes that welfare is “paying” people to have sex. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but his emphasis on single mothers makes his point clear: welfare pays women to have sex. The Republican party wants to take away the oral contraceptive pill, make abortion in every instance illegal, and force women to carry even still born children to term, at the risk of their own lives. Essentially, they want to take away a woman’s ability to decide when she starts a family — or make any other reproductive choice for herself.

And they also want to penalize the result of having no choice as to when they start a family once they do. Per Santorum, the cause of crime in this country is directly related to the number of single-parent households and the only way to stop it is to no longer assist them financially. Not only does he have plans for welfare, he also believes it is essential to eliminate the head-of-household exemptions provided for unmarried parents filing taxes, while tripling the exemption for parents who are married — so long as they are man and wife, not any other configuration.

The answer to the question was quite embarrassing, for obvious reasons. It has become quite clear that the conservative party doesn’t actually care about the unborn children they are fighting so hard to preserve. If they did, they would understand that education and access to healthcare and day care are essential. But they mock education and hate the idea of providing healthcare or any other form of help, and they rail against women who try to raise children on their own.

This clearly isn’t really about creating better lives for people, but creating a society in their image, regardless of what doing so will have on personal liberty, privacy, and society as a whole. Put simply, these individuals are an embarrassment and a threat to this country and everything it stands for. Please known that they do not speak for all of us.

Header image by Gage Skidmore.

Meghan McCain, daughter of the Republican Arizona Senator John McCain (and former presidential candidate), is appearing in Playboy next month. Though herself a conservative, the young McCain’s approach to politics is much more liberal and candid than her father’s. In the interview that accompanies the photographs (in which she appears fully clothed), McCain opens up about herself with characteristic candor.

“I’m not a lesbian, if that’s what you’re asking,” she responds when the interview zeroes in on a comment about spending a weekend in Sedona with girlfriends. “I’d be the first person to tell the world I was gay. I’m not private about anything. I think you should live how you should live. But I’m strictly dickly. I can’t help it. I love sex and I love men.”

McCain also talks about misogyny and what it’s like to be a woman who comments on political happenings: “Who says stuff like that? Some guys out there just can’t handle a woman with a strong opinion. And the quickest way to cut down a woman is to talk about her appearance. Do I care? No. Every guy I’ve ever dated and every boyfriend I’ve ever had—nobody ever complained about my body. And there are way more important things for me to do than obsess about my weight. We have an election going on, people!”

About sex scandals that rock the political sphere from time to time, McCain comments: “I always say repression breeds obsession. Politicians have to be goody-goodies. They put on this face of perfection and pretend they’re completely above indiscretion. But the more you deny your sexual side, the more it builds up and comes out in inappropriate ways. Not to bring any particular politician into this discussion, but I always find it fascinating that the number one state per capita for downloading porn is Utah. All those pious Mormons and they’re drooling at their laptops all day.”

Read the whole thing on Playboy.

The Huffingtom Post has a great video of best-selling young adult author Judy Blume speaking out about reproductive choice in women, hoping to remind this generation what it was like to have no options in her time. It’s a needful reminder — we have the vote and we need to use it, to remind the government that we need to have authority over our bodies and ourselves.

Whether we would ever get an abortion ourselves if it came to that, whether our church supports the use of contraceptives — these should be our choices for us to select according to our consciences and our faith, not for someone to decide for us.

This is a transcript of what she says:

I don’t understand why young people think feminism is a bad word. Maybe they just don’t know. They don’t know. They don’t know what it was like to worry all the time about getting pregnant. To be terrified even within our marriages. That was such an enormous fear. There was nothing you could do about it, except a back alley kind of abortion — and that could kill you.

I went to an all-girls public high school. Two of the top girls were pregnant at graduation and those hasty marriages and having babies just changed their lives. For ever. It’s not a romantic thing. That’s why I hate that teenage — whatever reality show that is on reality television — teenage mothers. I mean it’s not — it’s not romantic. It’s not fun. It’s tough.

The above video features women reading out quotes from prominent members and supporters of the Republican Party. The following is a transcript:

“Forcing women to have an ultrasound before an abortion is justified because they already made the decision to be vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.” — Republican lawmaker.

“The agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts.” — Representative Bob Morris, Republican

“If we’re gonna pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.” — Rush Limbaugh, Conservative talk show host

“A woman impregnated through rape should accept that horribly created gift, the gift of human life. Accept what God has given you and make the best of a bad situation.” — Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, Republican

These aren’t our words. They’re all real things said by prominent members of the Republican Party. Judging by their comments, the GOP must have a serious problem with women. And until the Republicans get over their issues, we women have got a serious problem with the Republican Party.