Viewing the ‘sex work’ Category

If you’ve read Waking Vixen or interacted with my other work for any amount of time, you know that I focus a lot of my energies on creating space for sex workers to use their voices, and trying to support sex workers to do this in a way that best suits their circumstances and goals, [...]

Below is my speech for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers event in New York. The night had an amazing turn out, and NBC followed up on a story they did on Thursday (which features me as a former prostitute talking about violence) about the discovery of bodies in Long Island and [...]

Join us in NYC for a vigil and community speak out When: Friday, December 17, 2010 at 7:30PM – 9:30PM Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves. < http://bit.ly/dUenDt > Who: Current & former sex workers, our allies, friends, [...]

Last week, VBS TV (the video arm of Vice Magazine) debuted a 30 minute documentary called “Prostitutes of God”, which features some of the members of VAMP, a group that is part of the organization SANGRAM (I visited them last fall on my trip tot India). The representation of the women and their lives in [...]

Tonight, I did a segment on Fox 5 News New York, with host Ernie Anastos and guests Councilman Fernando Cabrera and attorney Arthur Aidala, to talk about Melissa Petro, an elementary school art and writing teacher in the Bronx who was outed this week as having a past as a stripper and a prostitute. Melissa [...]

Craigslist’s self-censorship of its adult services ads will do nothing to end sex trafficking, though it might make it a little more challenging to post adult ads on the site. As a former Craigslist sex worker myself, I know that not all commercial sex interactions are sex slavery. In fact, many transactions facilitated by the [...]

The above video and supplementary documents are designed to spark discussion and create inspiration for looking at the ways that peer-led groups providing support and services to sex workers in their communities can collaborate with harm reduction agencies. The materials were developed by a group of sex workers and allies during the Speak Up! media [...]

Over the last few months, I’ve been consulting on communications for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). Mostly, my team and I have been working on internal communications and strategies for the organization, but since this week is the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, we’ve been working to get NSWP’s messages out to [...]

This post original appeared on the International Women’s Health Coalition blog, Akimbo. World Cup mania has struck worldwide, and along with the stories about team victories and groups of fans gathering cheer on their home teams, are stories about the economic effect the World Cup has on South Africa. Countries host sporting events on the [...]

This is a video keynote speech I produced to be shown at the LOVER magazine conversation on sex work in Utrecht, Holland on June 23, 2010. Though the bulk of the conversation at the event is about local prostitution law, I was asked to provide a rights-based perspective to get the conversation started. Thanks to [...]