Be heard on the issues that matter most to you!
Yesterday I was too caught up in my own irritation about Eliot Spitzer's hypocrisy to point out some important threads from the forum we recently held on sex work, trafficking and human rights.
I particularly want to remind people of the thread that Chris began and that many contributed to called "What good is sex work?"
Consider these two responses (and read the whole thread if you haven't read it already):
Stacey Swimme wrote that "Sex workers not only teach people how to have safe sex. Sex workers teach people how to enjoy safe sex. I think that is a critical and effective contribution to pulic health."
Michael Goodyear adds "Is there evidence of the sex worker providing a teaching role? Certainly many cultures, particularly Latin, used sex workers in sexual initiation of young men. There is recent data on the role of sex worker as educator (Sanders 2006), and there is at least implicit recognition of this by the German health care system which actively recruits from the ranks of sex workers for care providers."
There's a lot more in the thread. Read it here.
More later. Right now I've got to run to work!
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...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Thanks for the reminder. When prostitution makes headlines, I’m generally overjoyed to hear voices in the mainstream media defending it as a “victimless crime”—a phrase which masks a number of complex issues, including the fact that criminalization produces victims, and that some people are in fact coerced. It’s sad that more positive rhetoric about sex work rarely makes the news.
