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
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
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
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
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
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.
Imagine a fire breaks out in your apartment. You need to put it out immediately, so what do you do? You throw a bucket of butane on it.
That’s what the anti-prostitution loyalty oath (APLO), which forms a part of the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 (or, the Leadership Act) and the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), is: butane on a roaring fire.
By having non-governmental organizations pledge they will not offer services to sex workers, the oath should become a sort of deterrent, right? Wrong. It hasn’t deterred anything other than the prevention of disease. As it is now, organizations assisting sex workers around the world with education, health and other services are being denied funding. Many have been forced to stop their distribution of condoms or shut down entirely.
Sex Work Awareness is currently collecting signatures on a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the Office of Global Affairs. They’re trying to collect 100 signatures by Tuesday, December 22.
Sign it because you believe it’s better to protect a vulnerable population than moralize about mixing sex and money. Sign it because you support sex worker rights. Sign it because you believe fighting AIDS requires us to access every population. Sign it because it’s been deemed unconstitutional in the past. Sign it because you can’t think of any other organizations that have to make such a staunch division between themselves and a “restricted” practice (such as religious organizations who get funding for projects and also, say, proselytize). Sign it because you believe in better, smarter policy. Whatever your reason, sign it.
Yes, your signature can be made private. We know that matters to a lot of you. We understand why, too. That’s the world we live in.
Want more info about how the APLO’s affecting non-governmental organizations the world over? Go ahead and head over to GenderHealth.org and watch the 13 minute film by Erin Siegal, co-produced by Sex Work Awareness board member Melissa Ditmore.
Prostitution has been legal in the less densely populated areas of Nevada (i.e., outside Clark County) for almost 40 years. But the law, which stipulated that all sex workers have their cervices tested regularly for sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs), naturally excluded men, who don’t have a cervix.
So it was that prostitution was only legal in the Silver State for women.
Until recently, when the state Health Board approved a regulation to allow urethral testing for STIs in men.
Bobbi Davis, owner of the Shady Lady Ranch some 150 miles out of Las Vegas, is pushing to make Shady Lady the first brothel to offer men to customers. But it won’t be easy: Davis is going to need county approval first.
George Flint, the owner of a wedding chapel in Reno and a lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Owners Association, knows there’s a big double standard hurdle here.
“I think the Legislature is really going to give me some heartburn over this,” he told the Associated Press after talking to the Nevada Health Board in Carson City to endorse the Davis’ proposal. “But I think [offering male prostitutes] it’s an inevitability.”
Information from the Associated Press and Your Tango, via @MelissaRowley.
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