Working Girls Speak: Shame On You, Diane Sawyer

Gracie — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:45:54 -0700

Tonight, ABC's 20/20 hit the streets looking for hookers & intending to cash in on the salacious sides of sex work ~ with Diane Sawyer as lead pimp, making her paycheck just another one of the profits earned from the poor, down-trodden, girls she herself called exploited.

Diane let us know from the start, with her Good Friday biblical references, that this was not actual news coverage nor anything remotely close to impartial reporting; and from that moment on both Secondhand Rose and myself, Gracie Passette, began typing furiously to one another ~ and no, 'furiously' wasn't our typing speed.

Here are our notes.

The two hour 20/20 was titled Prostitution in America: Working Girls Speak; apparently no one thought this ironic as Diane often interrupted her interviewees to put words in their mouths.

Secondhand Rose interviewed by Radical Vixen

Elizabeth — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:49:12 -0800

Radical Vixen, whose blog tagline I adore (Porn...peace...politics) responded to this past International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers by starting a Sex Worker Solidarity Series on her blog. What a brilliant idea. It's an interview series asking sex workers important questions about social change, feminism, and most of all, building solidarity within the ranks of workers. I'm a union junkie at heart and can't think many things more important in achieving social change than solidarity and organization.

Gracie, our newest correspondent, just tipped me off to the new interview with Secondhand Rose. This is the third interview in the series, and I hope you'll go over there and read it. It's fantastic. In it, Secondhand Rose discusses things like what's missing in feminism, why it is so hard for sex workers to have solidarity with one another, and why parallels between the gay rights movement and the sex worker rights movement give her a sense of optimism. One quote, just to tempt you into going over there and reading the whole thing: