Blame It On the Red Light District (Because That Helps Everyone)

We’ve expressed our concern in the past about the inability of activists to see the difference between sex trafficking victims and those who engage in prostitution by choice and how failing to make that distinction hurts everyone involved. Yet the more we point that out, the more organizations spring from the woodwork, clamoring to stop the sale of human beings without regard for how their campaigns may conflate the two distinct situations, like in this video from Stop the Traffik:

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. … Continue Reading

Houston Press Writer Outs Journalist as Stripper, Makes Ass of Himself

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. … Continue Reading

National Education Association Rejects Donation from Porn Studio

In November, Sasha Grey caused a stir after it was discovered that she had volunteered to read to kids at Emerson Elementary in Compton. No matter how poorly our kids are doing academically, how much funding schools have lost, or how much help the National Education Association could use, they refuse to stoop to accepting donations from persons or businesses of ill-repute. … Continue Reading

Adult Performer Lorelei Lee Speaks Against Condom Ordinance

In an incisive piece on Salon, adult performer Lorelei Lee writes about her concerns with the condom ordinance that the city of Los Angeles recently passed. Like many in the adult industry, Lee questions the motivation of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which set into motion the events that would culminate in this ordinance. … Continue Reading

International AIDS Conference Returns to the US

The International AIDS Conference — a gathering of all those involved in working for the eradication and treatment of HIV, as well as policymakers and activists — is returning to the United States after 22 years this July to assess the scientific progress that has been made and lobby for improvements in policy regarding the populations most affected by HIV and AIDS. … Continue Reading

The Problem with Google’s Anti-Trafficking Effort

As someone who has been researching and writing about slavery and trafficking since 2005, I worry that the overall desire to help on the part of Google has overridden a lot of details that must be understood if we are going to find a way to rid the world of trafficking and slavery. The most harmful and least understood of these details is the importance of supporting organizations that distinguish between consensual sex work and sexual slavery (something the State Department finally does and something NGOs must do to really help combat this blight). Several of the organizations that Google is funding do not make this necessary distinction. … Continue Reading

Would You Let A Former Porn Star Read to Your Kids?

What our nervous sideway glances and jeers say is simple: if you let on that you have sex, you’re a danger to our children, and possibly to society itself. Never mind if you’re a tax-paying, law-abiding, philanthropic citizen otherwise — the second it becomes known that you have sex or are interested in it, you’re immediately labeled unfit.

This is what is happening right now with former porn star Sasha Grey, who quit the adult entertainment industry to focus on mainstream entertainment and has since appeared in the popular television series Entourage. She recently joined the National Education Association’s program Read Across America, which combats illiteracy by showing children the joy of the written word through age-appropriate book readings.

On Wednesday, November 2, Grey went to Emerson Elementary School in Compton, California and read Dog Breath by Dav Pikey to first and third graders. According to celebrity gossip site TMZ, parents were horrified to have a former pornographic star read to their children. They contacted the California Parent-Teacher Association, which got in touch with the principal of the school, demanding an explanation.

A representative of the school district denied Grey was among the stars who read to children each year, saying, “We have several celebrities who read to our students each year. The actress you have indicated was not present.”

This is technically true: usually, Read Across America is celebrated once a year on Dr. Seuss’s birthday in March. During the one-day celebration, stars read to the children of Compton United School District. Previous celebrity guests have included Raven Symone of That’s So Raven, Rachelle Lefevre of Twilight: New Moon, Quinton Aaron of The Blind Side, the voice of Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kinney, and many others. Sasha Grey was not present at the usual Read Across America celebration.

But she did read to children at Emerson Elementary with Read Across America, a program she joined because literacy is something she believes is essential.

“Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental,” Grey said today in a statement posted on Twitter. The statement went on:

I believe education is a universal right. I committed to this program with the understanding that people would have their own opinions about what I have done, who I am and what I represent.

I am an actor. I am an artist. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I have a past that some people may not agree with, but it does not define who I am. I will not live in fear of it.

To challenge non-profit education programs is an exercise in futility, counter-productive and anti-educational.

Here is a woman who is contributing her time to get kids excited about reading. But we don’t want her help. Even though she is dressed conservatively, even though she won’t speak about the adult aspect of her career, even though all she will do is sit and read — she is dangerous. She is a bad example. She had sex and she did it on camera, and we will never let her forget that.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture or do you agree that anyone who has participated in adult film is unsuitable to being around children? I don’t get it and you’re welcome to explain it to me.

Photo by San Jose Library. Originally published on BlogHer.

Ernest Greene: In Defense of AIM

In response to the developing story of Adult Industry Medical’s leak of some 15,000 adult performers’ real names and addresses, director and editor of Taboo magazine Ernest Greene speaks out. The following post first appeared as a response to our editrix on Fetlife and is reproduced here with permission:

Full disclosure first. I’m a board chairman emeritus (seven terms beginning with its creation) of the AIM clinic and might be said to have a dog in the fight, as AIM has been fighting off dogs of one sort or another since day one. I should also disclose that since AIM, in response to persistent nuisance litigation from a competing organization [Editrix's note: AIDS Healthcare Foundation], surrendered its non-profit status and became a commercial clinic, I have had no direct affiliation with it. However, I remain a strong supporter of AIM’s work and its mission and feel it has been unfairly tarred in this mess. … Continue Reading

Porn Wins Cambridge Debate

The Cambridge Union Society, founded in 1815, likes its debates. Last week, the historic union tackled pornography, concluding — by 44 votes — that it “provides a good public service.”

The debate attracted a great deal of attention in the media last month because of the amount of people from the adult industry who were on board to participate. For the proponents, there was Anna Span; Johnny Anglais, the Essex teacher who was outed as a porn star last year and dismissed; and the sex educator Jessi Fischer. On the side of the opposition was the born-again-Christian and former porn star Shelley Lubben; the antiporn feminist Dr. Gail Dines; and Dr. Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist. … Continue Reading

Hookers, Futbol, Condoms and Fans

The Wold Cup will bring some 400,000 people to South Africa this June. Mostly male, the soccer fans attract a specific sort of service provider: the sex worker. According to South Africa’s Drug Central Authority, some 40,000 sex workers will be arriving as well from all over the world.

The Global Post reports on other local preparations:

Henry Africa, 49, drives a taxi in Cape Town and, aside from the usual airport pickups and winery tours, he also operates the “Bright Red Tour,” which he expects to be a hit among soccer fans. For the equivalent of 500 dollars, he’ll shuttle customers from strip bar to strip bar all night and even bring them over to a safe-sex practicing prostitute, a relevant selling point in a country where one in five adults are estimated to be HIV positive.

Despite jolly preparations for the rowdy futbol fanatics, the tourism board of the Cape tourism board has issued a code to try to curb sex tourism and AIDS awareness campaigns have been launched.

Even the president. Jacob Zuma, who is a polygamist with four wives and father of at least 20 children, asked the United Kingdom to supply 1 billion extra condoms to South Africa before the tournament. Britain to date has sent 42 million condoms, “a number sufficient to supply almost every citizen of South Africa with one condom or every tourist expected to travel there with one hundred,” according to the Global Post.

In this instance, it’s not just joga bonito. It’s play safe, too.

Image created by us using the South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup logo. Information from the Global Post.