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sex work

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

by Viviane on 12/16/2010

in Events,sexwork

12/17/2010
7:30 PMto9:30 PM

redumbrella International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Join us for a vigil and community speak out

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves
Who: Current & former sex workers, our allies, friends, families, and communities. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us in remembering those we’ve lost to violence, oppression and hate, whether perpetrated by clients, partners, police or the state.

We stand against the cycle of violence experienced by sex workers around the world. Recently in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council looked at the human rights record of the United States during their Universal Periodic Review. Uruguay’s recommendation to the Obama Administration – to address “the special vulnerability of sexual workers to violence and human rights abuses” – is the moral leadership we have been waiting for! We come together each year to show the world that the lives of marginalized people, including those of sex workers, are valuable.
Speakers:

* Audacia Ray, Red Umbrella Project & Sex Work Awareness
* Chelsea Johnson-Long, Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project
* Michael J. Miller, The Counterpublic Collective and PROS Network
* Andrea Ritchie, Peter Cicchino Youth Project and Streetwise & Wafe (SAS)

Readings

* Reading of the names of sex workers we have lost this past year
* Memorial for Catherine Lique by her daughter Stephanie Thompson and read by Sarah Jenny Bleviss
* Speak out: Bring poetry, writings or just speak your truth.

Light snacks, beverages, and metrocards will be provided.

This event is co-sponsored by: Audre Lorde Project, Babeland, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons, PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, Red Umbrella Project, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New yorK), SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), the Space at Tompkins, and Third Wave Foundation.

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The Red Umbrella Diaries: “Well Seasoned”

by Viviane on 08/03/2010

in sex work,sexblogs

August 5 Well Seasoned The Red Umbrella Diaries: Well Seasoned

Location: Happy Ending Lounge, 302 Broome St, NYC (Pink awning says “Xie He Health”)

Cost: 21 and up – FREE

STARRING Veronica Vera, Lauren Wissot, Chelsea G Summers, Michael Pollack, and E.V. Fleurima, aka Ckiara Rose
Hosted by Audacia Ray
…
15% of the bar tab supports PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers)

Performer details:

Veronica Vera’s multi-faceted career began with several years on Wall Street. Then she decided to earn an honest living as a sex journalist, porn star, erotic model, prostitutes’ rights activist. Her collaborations with artists include Robert Mapplethorpe. Veronica testified in Washington for freedom of expression. In 1992 she created the world’s first crossdressing academy, Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls and wrote the book of the same name. Her second book is Miss Vera’s Crossdress for Success. She continues to offer classes in higher heeled education at her NY academy and college campuses, fields offers from reality show producers and works on her memoir.

Lauren Wissot is a NYC-based, award-winning filmmaker and freelance film and theater critic whose work can be regularly read at “Filmmaker” magazine, Slant Magazine and Theater Online among other publications. Her erotic memoir Under My Master’s Wings, about her time spent as the personal slave to a gay-for-pay-stripper/porn star, is available from Random House sub-imprint Nexus Books. Currently, she’s looking for film and writing opportunities in Amsterdam since she plans to relocate to the city this fall. Please visit her blog www.beyondthegreendoor.blogspot.com.

In order to fund her Ph.D. habit, Chelsea G. Summers worked most of the go-go ’90s as a stripper. Later, she found herself uninspired to write her doctoral dissertation and thus she began writing her award-winning blog, pretty dumb things, in March 2005. Since then, Chelsea’s work has appeared in magazines like GQ and Penthouse and in multiple anthologies. She has been interviewed by the legendary Susie Bright for her Audible.com show “In Bed With Susie Bright,” and her work has been featured in fine online publications such as Filthy Gorgeous Things.com. Chelsea is currently working on any number of projects, when she isn’t suffering from paralyzing crises of confidence. Chelsea lives and sometimes writes in glamorous New York City.

Michael Pollack grew up in Huntington, Long Island and graduated from Huntington High School in 1964, and got his BA from Syracuse University in 1968. While attending Syracuse he was the business manager for the “unofficial alternative” school newspaper, The Promethean. Their largest advertiser was the Civic Follies Burlesque and hence he started my involvement with porn. After graduation Michael stayed in Syracuse and while managing the Civic, attended the forming of the Adult Film Association in Kansas City in 1969. He spent the 1970’s in porn; the 1980’s in the video business; and for the last 20 years he has been selling foreign language books to schools.

E.V. Fleurima, aka Ckiara Rose, is of French Haitian paternal heritage and Miskitu/Nicargauan and Sudanese maternal heritage. She is the author of Ckiara Song of Men Slaves, a poetic biography that tells the story of her life as a sensual dominant and sacred whore. http://ckiararose.com/

The PROS Network (Providers and Resources Offering Services to sex workers) is a coalition of sex workers, organizers, direct service providers, advocates, and media makers. We exist to collaborate on programs and campaigns around sex work-related issues in the New York metropolitan area. We work with people of all genders who, by choice, circumstance, or coercion, engage in sexual activities for money, food, shelter, clothing, drugs, or other survival needs. Grounded in principles of social justice and human rights, the PROS Network embraces a non-judgmental, harm reduction approach. Check them out on Facebook.

More info: http://www.redumbrellaproject.com/august-5-well-seasoned/

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Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

by Viviane on 11/01/2009

in Events,sexwork

11/10/2009 12:00 PMto11/16/2009 8:00 PM

journeyproject Journey Project @ Washington Square Park

Time: 12:00-8:00 PM
Location: Washington Square Park

This month, if you see seven shipping containers in Washington Square Park, that’s the Journey project, sponsored by the Helen Bamber Foundation:

The aim of Journey is to bring the reality of the sex trafficking industry to the forefront of social consciousness and empower people to take action. Shackles bind perpetrators to victims, and victims to the punters who exploit them. The links extend to every level of society even to the organisations that care for the victims. They extend down the halls of government who pledge to act and pass laws to stamp out trafficking. The links form an invisible chain that binds us all together. It is the chain of modern day slavery.

It takes the audience on her journey of transformation from a childhood full of hopes and dreams into the harrowing reality of sex slavery, void …of freedom and self.

Each stage of this brutal journey has been interpreted and created by a different artist, titled Hope, Journey, Uniform, Bedroom, Customer, Stigma and Resurrection.

There will facilitators after you tour the installation…you might even meet Bamber Foundation trustee and actress Emma Thompson.

Journey exhibit slideshow
Emma And Elena, Exposing The Sex Trade (NPR)
Bondage from Freedom’s Facebook page

Photo from the Trafalgar Square installation of the Journey Project, courtesy of Bondage for Freedom.

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Paying for It (Bookslut)

by Viviane on 05/19/2009

in sex work

Canadian journalist Victor Malarek’s book The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It is a distinctive contribution to the ongoing conversation about sex work. While we tend to focus on the women who work in the sex trade (as Malarek himself did in his earlier book, The Natashas), here he trains his lens on the men who patronize prostitutes, arguing vehemently — and occasionally convincingly — that the demand side of the transaction is really the problem.

This argument is premised on an “unwavering realization” Malarek has proudly come to: “prostitution — all prostitution — is not about choice.” Researching his previous book seems to have clued him in to the hypocrisy of the whole situation: the fact that sex workers are stigmatized and demeaned, while the men who seek out their services literally get off easy. It’s a reasonable, and entirely welcome, point. But to make it, Malarek rests on easy assumptions, particularly about the women involved in the sex trade, who he uniformly portrays as victims. He makes his case with a sensationalist zeal that is often moralizing, sometimes condescending, and nearly always guided — and defeated — by sweeping generalizations. I wonder, though, if a decidedly mainstream takedown of men’s sexual privilege could really have gone any other way. (Perhaps tellingly, male sex workers are all but absent from these pages.)

Link

[via Melissa Gira]

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PRESS RELEASE: “Erotic Services” Denied: Craigslist and Attorneys General Are Putting Sex Workers At Risk

by Lolita Wolf on 05/14/2009

in craigslist,sex work

This is a collaborative press release – please distribute and repost widely!

Contact:
Dylan Wolfe – Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net
Will Rockwell – $pread Magazine, will@spreadmagazine.org
Audacia Ray – Sex Work Awareness (SWA), aray@sexworkawareness.org
Susan Blake – Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Michael Bottoms – Sex Workers Outreach Project – New York City (SWOP-NYC), info@swop-nyc.org

With Craigslist’s recent announcement that its Erotic Services category will be discontinued within the week, hundreds of thousands of erotic service providers will become more vulnerable to dangerous predators. Eliminating erotic listings as Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others propose will only drive us further underground.

Policing the masseuses, phone workers, pro-dominants, and escorts using Craigslist fails to protect those of us who are coerced into the sex industry. Preventing the use of Craigslist advertisements also eliminates the advantage of screening clients online, which makes for a safer work experience by filtering out potentially dangerous individuals. Furthermore, keeping us offline hinders police investigations of violent crime. In the Boston murder of Julissa Brisman, it was online tracking that enabled the police to identify the suspect. One has to wonder: are the Attorneys General examining the evidence or simply enforcing their moral values?

“Removing the erotic services category from Craigslist does not help prevent violence against escorts and other sex workers. It only pushes me and people like me out of the places where advertising is available,” said Jessica Bloom, a sex worker from Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK). In the face of increasing criminalization, we insist upon respect. As mothers, daughters, brothers, and members of your community, we claim that sex work is real work, work that we are entitled to conduct in safety. As such, we must be accorded the human right of full protection under the law.

###
**EDIT** an addendum. I just typed this up in response to a Facebook friend asking what he could do to help. Here are some suggestions:

You can totally help, mostly by speaking up and jumping into the fray!

Legislation about consensual adult sex work (not trafficking, coercion, or child prostitution) mostly happens on the state level – since you’re in NY, you can find your assembly person here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ – write to him or her and tell them how you feel about the risks created and perpetuated by continued criminalizing of sex work and cracking down on advertising

Write letters to the editor of newspapers that publish misguided pieces about how the elimination of craigslist erotic services will “help” women

Comment on blog posts and online articles (if you’ve got the stomach for it!)

And check out the very excellent and thorough reports on research done by the Sex Workers Project to arm yourself with statistics

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The second Sex 2.0 to focus on the intersection of social media, feminism and sexuality

by Viviane on 04/29/2009

in Sex2.0

lips date sponsor 400 The second Sex 2.0 to focus on the intersection of social media, feminism and sexuality

Sex 2.0 May 9, 2009

Now in our second year, Sex 2.0, a one-day unconference, will take place on May 9, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both?  Sex 2.0 is an unconference, which means that sessions will be informal conversations organized by people attending the event. Session leaders with some knowledge in a subject area facilitate conversations among the participants.

Sessions will include: “Internet Advocacy for Sexual Freedom” with Ricci Joy Levy of the Woodhull Foundation; “Polyamory in Media’s Spotlight” with Anita Wagner; “Craigslist Red, Craigslist Blue: Why we should dismantle the “internet red light district” with Melissa Gira Grant and Joanne McNeill;  “Kick Ass Twitter Apps” with Cunning Minx; “Revenge Porn” with Maria Diaz; and “Sex Writing Beyond Erotica, Beyond Porn” with Jack Murnighan, Nerve.com editor-at-large. The keynote speaker will be Nikol Hasler, creator of the Midwest Teen Sex Show (http://midwestteensexshow.com). A complete list of sessions may be viewed at: http://sex20con.com/2009-schedule/sessions/

Sex 2.0 will be held in a Washington, D.C. hotel. (To ensure everyone’s privacy, location information will be email once you are registered). It will offer five conference rooms, a lounge (with free WiFi), vendor area as well as space for various sex-positive outreach groups to set up informational displays and tables.

The event is managed by volunteers and funded by sponsors. We are pleased to have SEXTOY.com as our presenting sponsor this year. SEXTOY.com has been focusing on building a relationship within the blogger community with the recent start-up of its sex toy reviewer program. SEXTOY.com is honored to be the official sponsor for Sex 2.0 and looks forward to a mutually rewarding relationship with the blogger Community.  Two SEXTOY.com associates will be attending Sex 2.0 this year: Erik Van Riper and Domina Doll; who both look forward to meeting everyone, attending the talks and participating in discussions. Sex 2.0 is also pleased to have community sponsor Bound Not Gagged, hospitality sponsor Kimberleecline.com and technology sponsor PosAlt.com supporting this years conference.

While the event itself is on Saturday, May 9, there are participant-organized meetups, outings, and parties being planned for Friday night and Saturday evening, as well as a Sunday brunch. For more information, visit the Sex 2.0 website at www.sex20con.com or follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/sex20con.

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Trailer: The Girlfriend Experience

by Viviane on 04/16/2009

in movies

rgb girlfriendexperience still1 Trailer: The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience opens May 22nd. The Tribeca Film Festival will have a screening which will include a Q&A with the director and lead actors Sasha Grey and Chris Santos on April 29th.

Go to The Frisky to see the trailer (my site is too racy for Hulu, so it’s blocked).

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Police release surveillance images in luxury hotel murder (WHDH 7News)

by Viviane on 04/15/2009

in sex

090415 hotel survellience Police release surveillance images in luxury hotel murder (WHDH 7News)
BOSTON — Boston police are investigating a shooting death inside a luxury hotel in the city.

Commissioner Ed Davis said that the 26-year-old victim from New York City was offering massage services through Craigslist.

Police believe that she may have been involved with prostitution and that there was an attempted robbery.

The victim, whose name was not released, was found around 10 p.m. Tuesday. A security guard found the woman bound and shot multiple times in the chest in the hallway on the 20th floor of the Marriott Copley Plaza at 110 Huntington Avenue.

She was taken to Boston Medical Center where she later died.

Police released surveillance images on Wednesday and no arrests have been made.

Detectives are currently investigating the possibility that this incident is related to another. On April, 10, at approximately 12:46 a.m., officers responded to a robbery in progress at the Westin Hotel at 10 Huntington Avenue.

Police received a report from a 29-year-old female that she was robbed at gunpoint in her hotel room.

The Boston Homicide Unit is actively investigating.

Anyone with information is asked to call 617-343-4470.

Link

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The second Sex 2.0: May 9th

by Viviane on 04/14/2009

in Events,sex

lips date sponsor 400 The second Sex 2.0: May 9th

Sex 2.0 May 9, 2009

Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both? These questions, and many more, will be addressed within a safe, welcoming, sex-positive space.

The first Sex 2.0 was a year ago, which came about because Amber Rhea had a vision. Last year’s Sex 2.0 was really energizing – an diverse group of sex nerds, bloggers, sex workers and writers, talking to each other (and Twittering all the while). We have the run at a really nice venue in Silver Spring, MD. And like last year, the out of town guests will be staying at the venue, so there will be a lot of hanging out, before during the after.

I’ll be doing a WordPress open Q&A with MayMay, so bring your questions about WordPress and blogging and we’ll do our best to answer them. There will be even more attendees this year who will be Twittering throughout the weekend. I’ll try to post a list soon.

The discounted registration of $30 (which was to have ended today), has again been pushed back to April 16th, so you have two more days to register at the lower rate. It’ll go up to $40.00.

The website is here: sex20con.com/

The Sex 2.0 Google Group is where all the discussion and organizing of the event (and the events before and after) is happening.

groups bar The second Sex 2.0: May 9th
Subscribe to Sex 2.0
Email:
Visit this group

If you’re wondering what last year ‘s event was like, here’s lots of linkage:

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NCSFreedom – Stop the Arrests Coalition NYC

by Viviane on 03/12/2009

in sex work

March 10, 2009 – The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom NCSF is a proud member of the Stop the Arrests Coalition. Spokesperson Susan Wright has participated in organizing meetings and spoke out atthe Sheridan Square Rally on February 21st, 2009, against the false arrests of gay men and professional Dominatrices for prostitution.

There is good news from a meeting on March 6th with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly pledging to curb the stings against gay men see articles below. NCSF is continuing to press for a cessation of arrests of professional Dominatrices, and has written to Commissioner Kelly to ask for a meeting about the NYPD’s change in policy after 14 years of legal operation, which has resulted in a number of arrests of Dominatrices and owners of BDSM houses since Fall 2007.

NCSF opposes the prosecution of pro-dominants under prostitution laws. Consenting adults engaging in safe, sane, consensual SM, fetishes, and cross-dressing services do not pose legitimate health or safety issues for local communities. What these adults agree to do in private is no one else’s business.

Members of the Stop the Arrests Coalition include: Queer Justice League, Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, Sex Workers Outreach Project, Urban Justice League’s Sex Worker Project, and FIERCE New York.

More. . . .

[via Miss Calico]

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Downsized Nine-to-Fivers Turn to Kinky Sex Work (AlterNet)

by Viviane on 02/06/2009

in sex work

by Tracy Quan, The Daily Beast

“I’ve seen it before,” says Linda, “during the tech bust in 2002. Women who thought they would always make a decent living in the tech sector lost their jobs.” They came looking to Linda’s industry for freelance work, and now it’s happening again: professional women whose cubicle-bound careers have been downsized are entering Linda’s corner of the “gig economy” — a corner that involves whips, ropes, and occasionally, nipple clamps.

With staff jobs evaporating and former nine-to-fivers cobbling together incomes through scattered side projects, freelancing as a dominatrix — or “pro-domme,” as industry types prefer to call it — has become a plausible gig option. As a former call girl, I know plenty of people in the industry, and I recently spoke to several who have started doing kink work to supplement their incomes. (I’ve changed their names to protect their privacy.) They agree: The sector is poised for expansion as more unemployed and underemployed women begin looking for extra cash.

More . . ..

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The Hipster Rent Boys Of New York (Observer.com)

by Viviane on 01/28/2009

in sex,sex work

On a recent Wednesday evening, Robert was with a client in Greenwich Village. It was a first-timer who’d called him a few days earlier to arrange a meeting at a bar on 9th Street so they could speak face-to-face before closing the deal he’d proposed earlier.

When Robert arrived, the man, in his mid-60s and, Robert said, “handsome and fit for his age,” was sipping a martini; Robert ordered a glass of pinot noir. After their drinks were done, he went back to the guy’s apartment, had sex with him and became $360 richer.

“I like it when clients ask me to meet them out somewhere first,” said Robert the following night, when he stopped for coffee at a Bedford Avenue cafe en route to some art openings on the Lower East Side. (He agreed to speak with The Observer on the condition we’d use a pseudonym.) He was wearing tight Uniqlo jeans tucked into Army-issue boots and a vintage plaid button-down fastened to his chest by skinny Marc Jacobs suspenders. “It gives me a chance to be charming,” he continued. “Build up their desire. Get them to want me.”

Robert sounded like a professional letting you in on a bit of strategy. Still, he doesn’t seem like what they call a “pro” on Law & Order. At least if you saw him on the street, you’d probably think he looked like any other hip 23-year-old who moved to Williamsburg because it was cooler than whatever suburb had spawned him. But he is—to use an old British expression that’s currently the preferred terminology for some men who work this job—a rent boy, selling his companionship, sexual or otherwise, for a hefty hourly fee. He’s been escorting more or less full time for about half a year now, making as much as $3,000 a week. Before that he worked in an Apple Store for around $15 an hour.

“I never thought I’d be doing this,” he said, “but it just sort of worked out that it’s actually a lot of fun!”

It’s one of the oldest stories in this city, of course. For many of us in post-Ashley Dupre New York, the word “escort” conjures images of decadent trysts between beautiful women and influential politicians or other members of high society.

Much quieter, and a much smaller sector of the prostitution economy, are the men who fill the same role: charging high rates (though usually not as high as Ms. Dupre) to meet with rich clients, without having to work the streets.

More. . .k

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Spread Review, Sundance 2009 (SpoutBlog)

by Viviane on 01/27/2009

in movies

spread 300x135 Spread Review, Sundance 2009 (SpoutBlog)
The advantage of seeing the Ashton Kutcher-starring Spread at Sundance, as opposed to in theaters down the road, isn’t just the fact that director David Mackenzie hasn’t yet been forced to neuter the film’s skintastic sex scenes his 2003 Young Adam was shaved down for far less to get an R rating here in the States, but also the way it so nicely compliments a film that screened a few days later, Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Neither movie quite works on its own, but as a pair, they are the yin to one another’s yang — portraits of a Hollywood hustler and high-class escort that, taken together, give a well-rounded picture of that world.

More . . ..

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Dec 17: NYC Vigil to End Violence Against Sex Workers

by Viviane on 12/16/2008

in sexwork

december 17 Dec 17: NYC Vigil to End Violence Against Sex Workers

NYC Vigil to End Violence Against Sex Workers

December 17th, 7-8pm in the center of Washington Square Park (Google Maps).  Fore more events around the country, go here.

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Dec 17: National March for Sex Workers Rights

by Viviane on 12/16/2008

in sex

2008march 300x231 Dec 17: National March for Sex Workers Rights

National March for Sex Worker Rights

More information, and to see a list of all related events, at SWOPUSA.

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