Siri likes sex workers!

Well, not sure what sex workers and abortion have in common, but for the purposes of this news story they must have summed up the yin and yang of Siri, that sultry-voiced high-tech vixen who voices commands on the latest versions of iPhones. Apparently the controversy is over Siri being helpful when it comes to finding sex workers nearby, but not for getting an abortion.
Hmmm. Slow news day, guys?

Make some noise!

Merry Christmas, everyone! OK, maybe a protest by survival sex workers isn't everybody's idea of cheery Christmas news, but it's great to see this news of some push-back developing among sex workers in the Downtown Eastside.
If anyone's still waiting for our government to address the problems of survival sex workers, best to just let that go. What lingers from the Pickton trial and inquiry is that we'll be waiting a long, long time if we leave it up to the mainstream and our governments to do right by sex workers. It's going to take protest - more than the 75 people who turned up for the DTES protest, it's true. But hey, it's a start.
The fifth annual Red Umbrella Day march last Saturday in Victoria brought out more people than ever for the walk to the legislature, including sex workers. Great to see some of the indoor workers out in support of stopping violence against sex workers.
Kudos to Tracie Fawkes and her crew from PEERS Victoria for organizing the walk, which also was a chance for new PEERS executive director Marion Little to introduce herself to the community and some of the local sex workers.
Sex workers need mainstream people to walk alongside them if they're ever going to get out from under the stigma and stay safe from the dangerous or exploitive aspects of their line of work. But it's great to see them out there on the front lines themselves, rejecting the stigma that keeps them sidelined and invisible all too often. Here's to many more protests in 2012!

The tide is turning....maybe?

Oh, isn't it heartening to see stories like this one starting to crop up in "respectable" papers like the Montreal Gazette? There was a time when this kind of coverage would have started with the police version of things and then maybe - maybe - allowed the sex worker a paragraph or two at the very bottom to protest that in fact, she was perfectly happy in her work.
Can we call this progress? Perhaps, but so slow! 

Two out of three agencies helping B.C. sex workers are closing

These are dire times for survival sex workers. Two out of the three agencies in B.C. that specifically work with sex workers have announced they'll be closing their doors - PEERS Vancouver in the spring, PACE Vancouver almost immediately, as that organization runs out of money to pay their staff in just three weeks.
And how deeply, tragically ironic that it's all happening even as a multimillion-dollar inquiry unfolds in our province looking into why so many sex workers went missing or turned up dead in the Pickton years even while police and the public watched with studied indifference.
The stigma around sex work has got to go. It kills people. It lets government safely withdraw funding from marginalized groups, because governments know that the public won't much be troubled by that.
If you've got any influence anywhere on this issue, please use it. Hundreds of people - mostly impoverished, traumatized women - work the outdoor strolls in our province. Regardless of how people feel about sex work - and we'd hope that those reading a blog linked to an escort agency would at least be a little more kindly disposed to these misunderstood workers - the situation for outdoor workers in particular simply must change. And part of that change is supporting the community groups that help them. 

Telling it like it is

Nothing like a gay porn star who's not afraid to talk about it to liven up the scene at Oxford. Here's coverage of what must have been an interesting presentation from the man who started the French sex workers' rights group Les Putes in 2006. 

Industry pays more, gets less

Another great health and safety night at Sweet VIPs this month - a big thanks to the Cool Aid street nurses for being there for STI tests and for some frank conversations on how to keep sex safer for everybody. These events are regular happenings at Sweet VIP, and are excellent opportunities for bringing staff together to get to know each other better.
One of the topics that came up a few times that afternoon had nothing to do with STIs, though. Talk turned to why it is that escort agencies pay a business licence that's 15 times higher than almost any other kind of business licence in the City of Victoria, and also requires individual SWs to pay an additional $250 apiece for their own licences.
It's not just the money that rubs agency owners and SWs the wrong way. What irritates them much more is that even though people working in the sex industry have to pay far higher fees for everything from business licences to Yellow Page ads just because it's sex that they're selling, they still get the chilly treatment from the municipal staff and publishing/advertising staff  at the places where they do business.
"If I'm going to be charged at the gold level, then at least I should get gold-level treatment," notes Sweet VIP's Ms. Harvi.
So true. Come on, business community - either quit your gouging of the industry or give them way, way better service for all that money they're having to spend.

Life as a hostess

Refreshing viewpoint on the human-trafficking issue from a woman who worked as a hostess. Just like everything else in the world, it's complicated. Force and coercion, bad. Doing what you have to do to extract yourself from a bad situation, good - or at least understandable. Time to separate the two. 

Anyone know what's up with the stroll?

Not that the Victoria outdoor stroll has much to do with Sweet VIP, but anyone know what's going on out there? Word from police and service providers is that the number of workers is way down on strolls along Rock Bay and Government up by Discovery, but nobody knows whether that means a new stroll is developing somewhere else or if there's a new way of doing business that isn't so reliant on an outdoor stroll.

If you know something about this, post some info and we'll be sure to pass it along to the people who provide support to outdoor sex workers - PEERS, Sandy Merriman House, VARCS.

Sex Meters in Germany

Ah, those Germans. Stymied in their recent attempts to collect tax revenue from sex workers, they've now installed meters in Bonn to collect money from street sex workers.

The idea is that the workers will pay six euros a night for a permit to work the streets. Sex workers aren't too happy about it, though - they're OK with sex work being taxed (it's been legal in Germany since 2002), but they don't like an approach that singles out sex work from all other kinds of work for a special tax.

Video project

You gotta like any video titled "Every ho I know says so." Maggie's, the sex-work advocacy organization in Toronto, has set out to create a place for media by sex workers - this video looks to be the only one on offer at the moment, but hopefully there will be more to come.

Red-light specials

Well, damn, even where it's legal there are complications. Here's a report from the brothels of Australia, where post-economic-meltdown has fueled competition and spurred some all-Asian places to put their BBBJs on permanent special.

Best to be wary of any claim that sex work practices are responsible for the rise in STDs. Sex workers are always getting wrongly blamed as "vectors of disease," when in fact they're much more likely than those who give it away for free to take precautions. It's their job, after all.

All's not well in Sweden

Found this new blog from a sex-worker-positive writer - check out the report on the shortcomings of the so-called "Swedish model" of decriminalization, in which the buyers are criminalized but the sellers aren't. As you might expect, the law's not working as well as expected.

Vacation break

The blog mistress is on a road trip for a couple of weeks - check back for regular blog updates starting in the week of July 18.

Louisiana steps out of the dark ages

Holy moly, they've been making some sex workers register as sex offenders in Louisiana up until now!! The good news is that they've stopped that practice.

Interesting to note that the most vulnerable and marginalized sex worker were the ones most likely to end up charged by police under the state's sex-offender laws. That's mostly how it is in Canada for prostitution charges overall, as 95 per cent of the charges in our country in any given year are brought against people working the outdoor strolls.

Google's discriminatory practices

Read this and make some noise! Let's see if we can't get Google to rethink this bad decision. It's much bigger than a small ad for Irish sex workers - it's really about discrimination against legal workers just because you don't like what they do for a living.

Post ur displeasure yoon Google and CEO Larry Page's Facebook sites (although the blog mistress did just that this morning and the post is already gone from Google's site - I think it lasted all of 5 minutes). Send feedback to Google corporate. Give in to your inner radical.

Consider the customer

If you don't mind a bit of academic prose, here's a paper from the Sociological Review arguing that any sociologist studying service culture ought to include the customer experience. The researcher has used a UK review board, Punternet, to test the premise.

Google censors sex workers

Hey, what's up with Google? A sex workers' group in Ireland says Google is prohibiting the group from running an AdWord that links to the group's Web site due to the ad content being an "egregious violation" of Google's advertising policy.

Here's what it said: "Turn Off the Blue Light - Sex Workers In Ireland need human rights, not legal wrongs." Yeah, that's pretty out there, pretty damn egregious. Come on, Google! Time to see this item get a little media attention.

News coverage of court case

Hope you're following the great coverage in the Globe and Mail on the big sex-work case currently before the Ontario Appeal court. Canadians are never going to get so passionate about safer sex work that they will actually force the government to act on decriminalization, so let's hope the courts can make things happen.

Film Fests

Hey, this looks like fun! Anybody heading to London for a little getaway in the UK? Good chance to catch a sex worker film fest. Here's more thoughts on the festival, which starts June 12.

Too late for San Francisco's SW fest - that was last month. Next year?

Taking the stuffing out of the Swedish model

Finally, a research paper that right-thinking people can use to refute those tiresome abolitionists who are always going on about the Swedish model (customers criminalized, sellers legal). This is out of the Prostitution Licensing Authority in Queensland, Australia.

This is a disturbing development - everybody on the government side of the upcoming Pickton inquest gets taxpayer-funded lawyers, but not the sex workers' groups, aboriginals or residents of the Downtown Eastside. Hmm - that's just a tad obvious, isn't it?

OK, there's never going to be enough public money to go round, but it's just a little unsettling when ALL the money goes to one side of the case and none to the other. The scales of justice seem to be tipping rather firmly in one direction....

New comic-strip book touts johndom

Gotta like a man who steps out of that deep, dark closet and reveals himself as an enthusiast of the sex industry. Check out this book review of "Paying For It," by Chester Brown. It's a comic-strip memoir of life as a customer, and definitely sounds like a great gift book to slide into the hands of all those friends of yours who you fear would faint dead away if they knew you paid for sex. But then again, maybe they do, too.

Court resumes in June

An update on the court challenge to Canada's sex-work laws. The next round starts in June. Maybe common sense will prevail and we'll cease all this silliness and just get down to making a sensible decision to scrap a lot of these damnable laws. Yeah, right.

Nice little rant here from the always readable Dan Savage. Hope your Easter weekend was full of eggs and bunnies. See you at the polls May 2 - wonder where the federal parties stand on sex work.....

Another Olympic "cleanup"

Lordy, will we ever learn? The years pass, the various Olympic events move from city to city, and we still chase the sex workers all over town in the runup as if that's going to get rid of the industry. Here's the latest out of London. Blimey, leave the girls alone!

Battle-weary, but still fighting

PostMedia columnist Ian Mulgrew sounds off about Canada's long, slow drift to nowhere around sex work. Looks like our governments will be throwing up every barrier they can to prevent the decriminalization of the adult industry. Fortunately, there are some pretty committed people fighting this issue from the other side.

Stronger together

A moment in history - a short video from the 2005 Montreal gathering of sex workers.

Ancient Louisiana law tripping up SWs

Leave it to Louisiana to come up with an even more punishing way to make life miserable for the state's sex workers. Man, we waste a lot of time causing pointless grief for adults just trying to make a living.

Inching closer to a resolution on the Charter challenge around the sex-trade laws in Canada. The federal government has come up with the offensive legal argument that there's no requirement to protect sex workers because they work in an illegal industry. Except, of course, that's not true - selling sex is legal in Canada.

Hey, how'd they keep this case so quiet? A man busted in Maple Ridge for communicating used a Charter challenge to argue that Canada's laws are unconstitutional because they harm sex workers. OK, he didn't win, but the judge praised him for giving it a try.

The Blog Mistress is away for a couple weeks, so apologies in advance for the lag in blog updates. Back in mid-March.

Stigma lingers

Not a bad piece out of the Kingston Whig Standard, which has been doing a decent series looking at the issues around sex work as part of the build-up to whatever's coming this spring when the Ontario court ruling is heard on appeal.

The point about stigma remaining even when sex work is legal is a good one. When adult sex work is finally legal in Canada (because it will be soon, right?), we'll need to have a good conversation about how to lift the damaging stigma once and for all.

Sex work in the Big Apple

Ah, the oldest profession makes it into Wired, which takes a look in its latest issue at how technology and time has changed sex work in the city. That'd be New York Cityt, of course. Interesting map showing the shift in the sex-work districts in NYC over the last 20 years.

It's a good job when it's you calling the shots

Looks like sisters are doin' it for themselves in Thailand. You go, ladies! We appreciate the age range, too - 18 to 66. As the manager of the brothel points out, it's hard to find a 66-year-old sex worker if that's what you want, and apparently her sales are great.

Ad campaign shakes up stereotypes

A big hurrah to the Halifax community agency Stepping Stone, which has launched its first-ever awareness campaign reminding us that sex workers are people, too. Here's a news story on the launch this week, and a link to the clever, funny ads that Toronto/Halifax ad agency Extreme Group came up with for the campaign. About time this message got out there!

If Calcutta can do it, can't we?

The Tyee is running a series on co-ops, adapted from the book Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in an Age of Capital. Here's this week's segment, about a co-op of Calcutta sex workers that's still thriving after 15 years.

YouTube interview with sex worker

A sex worker gives a frank interview on YouTube, providing some of that intriguing insider information that only a working girl would know.

News from summer sex-work conference

This looks like it would have been a fun time. We'll keep an eye out for announcements around the group's 2011 conference. The Power Point is definitely worth a look.

Sex on sale around the globe

Here's an interesting site that summarizes where the prostitution laws are at around the world. Not sure if we agree with all of this fellow's offside comments - it'd be nicer if he'd just stick to the facts - but it's still a handy resource to have the laws and practices of various countries laid out in one place.

As for his opinions around street prostitution, that's clearly an issue that. in a decriminalized context, would be dealt with as a municipal zoning issue. And let's be honest - the reason we've got people selling sex on the street is because there are customers who buy that way. If it's an end to street work that we want, then we should be taking aim at the buyers on that front. It's not like there's a shortage of indoor venues.

Crazy laws a global phenom

Nice to know we're wacky all over the world when it comes to crazy law around sex work. Here's a story out of Britain underlining that.

Oh, and happy New Year!