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.

The following words were written by Soraya L. Chemaly, a feminist, writer and media critic. While we’d find it difficult to select only one of her columns as a must read, this is a passage that needs to be read by women the world over.

Every woman knows the word slut has power. Whether you love it or hate it, the word “slut” is an evocation of a gender double standard used to control women and no woman alive hasn’t thought about what it means to be labeled in this way. In some cultures, where honor killings take place, it is a matter of life or death.

If you’re a “good” woman, don’t kid yourself. It means you’ve spent your life and will continue to spend your life calibrating your appearance, speech and behavior so that you are not a slut. By not acknowledging how the word is used you are embracing its power over you and other girls and women. And you will pass that corrupt and misguided abuse of power on to your daughters and mine. That’s because you know, deep down, that at any point that word can be used against you. Every woman is a slut waiting to happen. Women who abhor the word, find it vulgar, and fear it, the ones who slut-shame others, gain a little bit of power by participating in a system that denigrates them.

Other women, and their male allies, reject the power of the word and the social structures that perpetuate its harm. These women and men know it for what it is — a word used to control women and their bodies, and it is useless as a weapon against them.

— Soraya Chemaly, The Slut Manifesto

Read it once. Read it twice. Read it as many times as it takes you to internalize this crucial message.

Header image by Joel Gillman.

Rush Limbaugh has betrayed his audience. I won’t pretend that I write without an angle, but I know that it is possible to do so without lying and distorting the facts. This is not the case for Limbaugh, as it became clear on his show on Wednesday night, during which he again lashed out against student and contraception coverage mandate supporter Sandra Fluke.

Fluke, a third year student at Georgetown Law School, came before an unofficial hearing led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) to argue in favor of insurance coverage for birth control at religious institutions. Pelosi, it bears noting, had made arrangements to hear Fluke testify after the student was barred from the official hearing by presiding Republicans, who said her name had been submitted too late. According to the Washington Post, Democrats involved disagreed with this justification. Unsurprisingly, all the women present at the official hearing were opposed to the measure.

Fluke, who finally got her opportunity to share the views of Georgetown Law’s Students for Reproductive Justice, told those in attendance about the plight faced by women who need birth control not only to prevent pregnancy, but also to treat illness such as polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis.

On his show, Limbaugh ignored the terrifying stories shared by Fluke about women who suffered hardship after being denied birth control, suggesting that the only reason students care about contraception is because they’re oversexed.

During her testimony, Fluke related the story of a woman suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome, whose doctor prescribed her the birth control pill as a means of treating her condition. Despite the fact that Georgetown allows contraceptive coverage when it is not intended to prevent pregnancy, this woman never received coverage for her prescription. She was forced to stop taking the pill due to financial strain after months of paying for it out-of-pocket. During finals week, she was admitted to the emergency room after a massive cyst overtook one of her ovaries. Her ovary had to be removed.

To illustrate the point that not only heterosexual women need access to the pill, Fluke shared that the woman whose story she had shared is gay. “So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her,” Fluke said at the hearing.

If Limbaugh listened to her testimony, he chose to ignore it in its entirety. In an exchange with his pseudonymous call screener “Bo Snedley,” Limbaugh made the following remarks about Fluke and anyone who supports this measure:

We assume they’re having sex with guys. Well, we’re talking about birth control, Snerdley. So you gotta assume having sex with guys. So, do they not have some responsibility? Well, two women… I have to ask sex expert Snerdley on this, but I’m not aware that two women without another device can get pregnant on their own using naturally endowed accoutrements. I don’t think times have changed that much. [Chuckles.]

Now, I am 61. Maybe something I haven’t heard about that two women together would need contraception. That’s a whole new ball game if that’s the case. But I don’t think we’re talking about that. So it means there are men involved and that would mean there’s some responsibility on the part of the men. Do they not have condoms? Why don’t these women go ask the men to buy them contraception? Why go before a congressional committee and demand that all of us — because they want to have sex any time, as many times and as often as they want, with as many partners as they want — should pay for it? Whatever, no limits on this. I mean, they’re going broke having to buy contraception! They’re getting back-alley pills, folks. That’s what this leads up to.

Limbaugh refuses to accept that birth control has any other purpose than preventing pregnancy and he will not allow his listeners to even entertain the possibility.

Time and time again, Limbaugh refers to a story published by Craig Bannister at Cybercast News Service titled “Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate,” which features the clearly misleading lede: “A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they’re going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control.”

Initially, it is unclear whether Limbaugh repeatedly cites this article as a means to justify his dishonest tirade or if he truly failed to do the appropriate research regarding Fluke’s remarks, choosing to run with Bannister as his primary source instead. But as his follow-up show continues and Limbaugh plays more clips from Fluke’s congressional hearing, it becomes evident that he is picking and choosing what he wants his listeners to hear, in order to corroborate the allegation he made in a previous show that Fluke is nothing but a slut who wants everyone else to pay for her birth control.

Again, Limbaugh calls Fluke and any women who believe they have the right to receive contraceptive coverage from insurance companies sluts and prostitutes, dismissing any concerns these women may have about their health as thinly veiled attempts to be paid for sex:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

Rush Limbaugh is an enemy of women, an embarrassment to conservatives and a disgrace to everyone in his profession. I am unsurprised by the petition going around asking his advertisers to pull their content from his fraudulent show and I am inspired by the move on the part of Sleep Train and Sleep Number mattresses and Quicken Loans to pull their ads from his show (other advertisers have been identified, if you are interested in following up on their status with regard to his show).

For those of you who believe in getting your news straight from the source, I include a video below of the original testimony given by Sandra Fluke. A complete transcript follows.

Leader Pelosi, members of congress, good morning and thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation. My name is Sandra Fluke and I’m a third year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ and I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

We as Georgetown LSRJ are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the institute of medicine. I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens. We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women. Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic and Jesuit institutions.

When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage and especially in the last week I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis I hear from yet another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously affiliated employer and they tell me that they have suffered financially, emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage. And so I’m here today to share their voices. And I want to thank you for allowing them – them, not me – to be heard.

Without insurance coverage, contraception as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 over law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer salary. Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law that they struggled financially as a result of this policy. One told us just how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.

Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice. Some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately that’s just not true. Women’s clinics provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitively documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

How can congress consider the Fortenberry, Rubio, and Blunt legislation that would allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraceptive coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis – particularly when so many legislators are attempting to defund those very same clinics?

These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. In the worst cases, women who need this medication for other medical reasons suffer very dire consequences. A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome and has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy. Unfortunately, under many religious institutions’ insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs and under Senator Blunt’s amendment, Senator Rubio’s bill, or Representative Fortenberry’s bill, there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers, rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, a woman’s health takes a backseat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In sixty-five percent of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescriptions and whether they were lying about their symptoms. For my friend, and 20% of women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription, despite verification of her illness from her doctor her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.

After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and she had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room – she’d been there all night in terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, “It was so painful, I woke up thinking I’d been shot.” Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary. On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences. Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats, weight gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32 years old. As she put it: “If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no chance at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies, simply because the insurance policy that I paid for totally unsubsidized by my school wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.”

Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at an early age– increased risk of cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis, she may never be able to conceive a child. Some may say my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were. One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery, so the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication, the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to
pay for her medication and is terrified not to have access to it. Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medication since last August. I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends. A woman’s reproductive healthcare isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority. One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance, and she assumed that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handled all of women’s reproductive and sexual healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

As one other student put it, “this policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.” These are not feelings that male fellow students experience. And they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder. In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking: what did we expect when we enrolled at a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of cura personalis, to care for the whole person, by meeting all of our medical needs. We expected that when we told our universities of the problems this policy created for us as students, they would help us. We expected that when 94% of students opposed the policy, the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for completely unsubsidized by the university.

We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere. And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health and we resent that, in the 21st century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for access to the healthcare we need. The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and universities appreciate the modification to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the healthcare they need. I sincerely hope that is something we can all agree upon. Thank you.

Header image by steve9567.

Hoping to provide pro-choice supporters a space to counter anti-abortion rhetoric and activity surrounding the “40 Days for Life” Lent campaign, a Tumblr has been erected to cheer on those who believe that a woman’s body doesn’t belong to society.

Introducing 40 Days of Choice, a Tumblr based in the U.K. and supported by Education for Choice, bpas, FPA and Abortion Rights, all members of the pro-choice coalition Voice For Choice.

“We believe that women deserve accurate and impartial information about their pregnancy options and that abortion should be legal and accessible for those women who require it,” reads the 40 Days of Choice About section. Every day, they will be posting an entry celebrating the right to choose.

Only a week in, they have posted a link to the back story about what pregnancy options counselors really do, and to the free short film Obvious Child, about a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy. Most moving, perhaps, are the pictures they post daily sent in by readers, holding signs that state they support a woman’s right to choose.

40 Days of Choice writes:

Opinion polls consistently show the majority of people support a woman’s right to choose, and this support cuts across lines of faith and politics. There’s a widespread understanding that women need to be able to control the timing and size of their families, and that abortion is an important back-up to contraception if women are to be able to make real choices about their lives.

But the persistent minority who oppose a woman’s right to choose often try to make out the tide is turning. To kick off 40 Days of Choice send us your pics to show that, actually, it’s not.

Tweet us @40DaysofChoice or submit a photo of yourself with an ‘I ♥ pro choice’ sign -– wherever or whenever the mood takes you — and we’ll publish them here.

Header image via 40 Days of Choice.

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.

According to their site:

The AIDS 2012 programme will present new scientific knowledge and offer many opportunities for structured dialogue on the major issues facing the global response to HIV. A variety of session types — from abstract-driven presentations to symposia, bridging and plenary sessions — will meet the needs of various participants. Other related activities, including the Global Village, satellite meetings, exhibitions and affiliated independent events, will contribute to an exceptional opportunity for professional development and networking.

Audacia Ray, founder of the Red Umbrella Project, has issued a call to sex worker activists to join forces, noting among various pressing issues that “the U.S. exports terrible policies and strings-attached funding that harms sex workers. For example the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which funds international organizations, include an anti-prostitution clause in contracts with grantees. American sex workers must stand up to our government and denounce PEPFAR and similar policies that harm our brothers and sisters around the world. The IAC is an important forum for us to make our voices heard.”

From PEPFAR Watch:

Current law requires all organizations that receive PEPFAR funding to have a policy that explicitly opposes prostitution and sex trafficking. This policy, known as the anti-prostitution pledge, or the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath (APLO), has been shown to have a negative impact on prevention efforts because it undermines the most effective approaches to working with sex workers.

Sex workers are among the most marginalized people in any society and often lack access to social and health support systems — while being at increased risk of HIV infection. Their rights to access health care and to be free from violence are frequently violated, making it essential that organizations work with them non-judgmentally. Organizations that build trust with and peer relationships among sex workers have yielded dramatic reductions in HIV infections among these populations. But CHANGE [Editor's note: The Center for Health and Gender Equity] has found that these organizations are unlikely to sign the pledge, making them ineligible for funding. Other groups have been cut off from funds because of over-interpretation of the policy by U.S. officials in the field, made possible because the government has not clearly defined what constitutes a violation of the policy. Moreover, the pledge has led organizations to eliminate, scale back, or censor their prevention efforts with sex workers, undermining best practices in public health.

As a result, the pledge has led to further alienation of already-stigmatized groups, given free rein to police who abuse or extort money from sex workers, and has resulted in further violence, discrimination and human rights violations against women, men and transgender people in prostitution. The policy is driving sex workers underground and away from the non-governmental organizations and health workers best poised to provide them with HIV prevention, health and alternate-livelihood services.

If you can’t join the Red Umbrella Project but feel strongly about these issues, you can still take action by writing a message to the Committee on Foreign Affairs urging for comprehensive, evidence-based HIV prevention in foreign assistance reform efforts that doesn’t marginalize at-risk populations such as sex workers.

Image of Red Umbrella activists by ReikHavoc, via TitsandSass.

I browse Craigslist personals on a regular basis, as a way to check the pulse of sex here in Los Angeles. Over the past few days, I have noticed an increase in the number of ads that suggest a monetary exchange for sex. This shouldn’t be surprising, as two weekends ago Craigslist self-censored the adult services section of the site after a long and drawn out battle with government and law enforcement officials, and activist groups, which culminated in 17 attorneys general writing an open letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark:

The increasingly sharp public criticism of craigslist’s Adult Services section reflects a growing recognition that ads for prostitution — including ads trafficking children — are rampant on it. In our view, the company should take immediate action to end the misery for the women and children who may be exploited and victimized by these ads. Because craigslist cannot, or will not, adequately screen these ads, it should stop accepting them altogether and shut down the Adult Services section. Read the entire letter…

The shutting down of this section, in my opinion, and the shift in focus to other sites to achieve similar results is a huge error that will not only not help the dire situation faced by sex trafficking victims, but endanger men and women who are involved in sex work by choice or non-coerced necessity.

As Melissa Gira has pointed out, people involved in sex trafficking will not cease their activities because this avenue is closed off. As I mention in the beginning of this post, listings for adult services are already starting to appear in other sections of Craigslist — in sections that do not require payment for postings, meaning there is no paper trail to follow for law enforcement.

While opponents of Craigslist may shake fists screaming about how Craigslist profits from sex trafficking, it is important to remember that the system of payment for adult services was instituted to create a record. As Gira points out in another article:

The records Craigslist maintains on its users played a critical role in apprehending the so-called Craigslist Killer. The Boston Police Department reported that “Craigslist was cooperative in identifying and locating” accused murderer Philip Markoff; Craigslist spokeswoman Susan Best notes that “a digital trail left by those breaking the law” allows Craigslist to support criminal investigations in a way, say, a newspaper cannot. In the case of Markoff, what could have become a series of murders was put to a quick halt once his inbox was examined. Boston cops said they relied on these “high-tech” solutions as much as “shoe-leather” investigation. The lesson here for those in law enforcement — and a lesson that Richard Blumenthal fails to understand — is that Craigslist is an ally, not a perp.

Danah Boyd at the Huffington Post agrees, suggesting that shutting down the section will push these activities underground where it will be far more difficult to address these issues:

The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they’ve ever been able to obtain through underground work. It’s far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many aspiring governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it’s a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.

… Censoring a space may hurt the ISP [Internet Service Provider] but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there — and publicizing it — is far more effective. This, by the way, is the core lesson that Giuliani’s crew learned in New York. The problem with this plan is that it requires funding law enforcement.

Censoring Craigslist has moved these activities to locations within the site where there is no paper trail, making it hard for law enforcement to crack down on perpetrators. Continued pressure to remove these sorts of sites will result in moving these activities underground where law enforcement will have an even more difficult time addressing the wrongs suffered. As Boyd writes on her piece in the Huffington Post:

Taking something that is visible and making it invisible makes a politician look good, even if it does absolutely nothing to help the victims who are harmed. It creates the illusion of safety, while signaling to pimps, traffickers, and other scumbags that their businesses are perfectly safe as long as they stay invisible… Censorship online is nothing more than whack-a-mole, pushing the issue elsewhere or more underground.

Another problem I have with this issue is the lack of transparency on the part of a lot of so-called trafficking advocacy groups that are actually more concerned with silencing the discussion, exploration and expression of sexuality than they are with addressing the plight of sex trafficking victims. The crime, in their agenda, is prostitution, and they don’t hesitate to use the word trafficking even in the case of consensual prostitution.

Now, while prostitution is a crime in most all states where these ads existed on Craigslist, the site is protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states, in short, that no provider of a site or internet service shall be treated as the publisher of any information provided by said site’s or service’s users, even if a tort is committed. With nothing to assist them on the legal front, the word “trafficking” starts being thrown around.

I have written in the past about organizations such as Citizens Against Human Trafficking who have gone after not only sex worker activists, but sex educators, in such a way as to occasionally alienate their own supporters. Bringing trafficking into the picture, nevertheless, can and is an effective way to silence anyone who disagrees that prostitution is inherently evil.

Ignorance on the topic and the willingness of people to exploit this lack of information in pursuit of sex-negative goals or political gain results in inaction as a result of semantics or very dangerous legislation that affect all victims of slavery.

E. Benjamin Skinner, author of A Crime So Monstrous — an expose about modern day slavery in various forms — has been a vocal advocate of the necessity of not only differentiating between consensual prostitution and sex trafficking, but also giving the same amount of attention to other forms of slavery, often overshadowed by sensationalism surrounding accounts of sex trafficking:

“The West’s efforts have been, from the outset, hamstrung by a warped understanding of slavery,” he says in A World Enslaved:

In the United States, a hard-driving coalition of feminist and evangelical activists has forced the Bush administration to focus almost exclusively on the sex trade. The official State Department line is that voluntary prostitution does not exist, and that commercial sex is the main driver of slavery today.

[...] Many feel that sex slavery is particularly revolting — and it is. I saw it firsthand. In a Bucharest brothel, for instance, I was offered a mentally handicapped, suicidal girl in exchange for a used car. But for every one woman or child enslaved in commercial sex, there are at least 15 men, women, and children enslaved in other fields, such as domestic work or agricultural labor.

Recent studies have shown that locking up pimps and traffickers has had a negligible effect on the aggregate rates of bondage. And though eradicating prostitution may be a just cause, Western policies based on the idea that all prostitutes are slaves and all slaves are prostitutes belittles the suffering of all victims.

Skinner wrote that piece two years ago before the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008 replaced the loose definitions of its predecessor. The U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, the most recent of which came out in June, now highlights the difference between prostitution and sex trafficking, saying: “Prostitution by willing adults is not human trafficking regardless of whether it is legalized, decriminalized, or criminalized.”

The inability to see the differences between these two things thwarts federal resources set aside for identifying, freeing and protecting actual victims of slavery, because they become diverted with matters of consensual prostitution, which should be handled by local law enforcement as necessary, and which, though a crime in most places, is nowhere as severe as slavery of any kind.

As a society we need to see the censoring of Craigslist as an infringement on our freedom of speech; a threat to law enforcement efforts that once relied on the paper trail to combat the abuse of minors, trafficking and other criminal activity on those boards; and the criminal posturing of politicians looking for an easy fight during an election (yes, that means you, Richard Blumenthal).

How many of you people who are so up in arms about the exploited have marched with the Student/Farmworker Alliance? Boycotted Burger King when they refused to pay an extra penny for tomatoes so that consumers could ensure no debt peonage came a the expense of their burgers? How many know what the Coalition of Immokalee Workers does?

“No one really cares about Mexican dudes working in kitchens,” said sex educator and sex worker activist Audacia Ray in a recent interview with sexuality netcast KinkOnTap. She’s right. They don’t.

Well, here’s a chance to change that. Read this. Listen to this. Stop obsessing over the prurient details and look around you. There is always something you can do, something real. Something that actually helps instead of dividing people and hindering the efforts of those who are really fighting this battle.

We here at Sex and the 405 think this is outrageous, of course. We are taking a stance for our freedom to look at whatever we want.

Porn valley will not take this one lying down like a pillow queen. And neither will those of us who support our freedom to make porn and watch it, male or female.

Sex blogger Violet Blue issued a lolsy video yesterday with suggestions about what we can do:

Anti-porn organizations subscribe to a rigid belief system that states that explicit visual imagery created for sexual stimulation is humiliating and exploitative and harmful to women. According to anti-porn pundits, pornographic imagery is such a powerful mind-control weapon, it could turn Gandhi into a serial killer. That is because the people who make porn are rocket scientists.

Anti-porn pundits state that women are harmed by the use of pornography because the people who use porn are creepy guys who smell bad and can’t have a real relationship and watching pornography makes them into brain chemical drug addicts, wife-beaters and baby-rapers. Gay men are totally immune to the effects of pornography.

Take a picture of yourself with a sign that says you’re pro-porn and upload it to the Our Porn, Ourselves Facebook page or make a video and post the link to Twitter using the hashtag #proporn.

Our editrix has compiled a list of local pornstars on Twitter — check them out, follow the list or follow the girls and show your support. Check out the anti-porn conference, too.

Los Angeles. City of Angeles, high hopes and broken dreams. Bastion of pollution and filth. Your mortality has never felt more real than it does as your eyes run down the numbers.

Total Population: 17,786,419
Pediatric Asthma: 442,040
Adult Asthma: 1,094,827
Chronic Bronchitis: 556,68
Emphysema: 200,338

More from Forbes:

Sunny areas like Los Angeles face the harmful effects of ozone year-round. In fact, the Los Angeles metro area is named the country’s worst for ozone by the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2010 report, released Wednesday. The ranking is worrisome for the city’s residents because inhaling ozone is akin to “getting a sunburn on your airways,” says Dr. Norman H. Edelman, the ALA’s chief medical officer.

In short, we’re going to die. So have fun! Carpe diem! You know the deal.

Header image and information from Forbes.

We here at Sex and the 405 get so much sex, we made it halfway through May without knowing that apparently, May is National Masturbation Month. Actually, we get so much sex, we made it 15 years without knowing.

OK, that’s a lame excuse. We failed you and we’re sorry. So get this, National Masturbation Month began in San Francisco in 1995 after U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was forced to resign for saying that she thought masturbation is “part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.”

Furious over how the comment led to her resignation and the obvious implications for their business, the San Francisco sex toy and education company Good Vibrations took a stance and declared May National Masturbation Month.

Why do we need a month to celebrate something that most of us do? Because a lot of us apparently don’t. And those of us who do can all use a little encouragement to try something new. Shake it up, find a new toy or open and up and try mutual masturbation with a partner instead of sex. Get to know your body better and expand your pleasure horizons!

To make up for the oversight, our editrix is taking requests for toys to try out:

Got any ideas? Leave them in the comments. And if you say “me!” we’ll roll our eyes, laugh at you and then post your IP address on a very special new post about the most boring come-ons we’ve ever seen directed at our editrix. Thanks!

Image from Good Vibrations. Information from the Examiner.

All right, this isn’t sexy. But we here at Sex and the 405 think it’s paramount that everyone maintains their bodies in top shape so they can enjoy the pleasures that sex can bring.

With this in mind, we bring you an offer from You Never Really Know, a site dedicated to safe sex. This Valentine’s Day they’re offering a $70 discount for couples who go in together (for a total of $328). They test for gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes I and II and HIV.

Their site even includes tips on how to bring up the subject. Even if you don’t end up going together, do consider going in for yourself. Your body is your pleasure instrument: take care of it.