SITPS Presents: Sex Work, Trafficking and Human Rights

so me and my girlfriend decided we were in to a lil rougher sex but she had only had sex a few time in her life prior to this but we went ahead anyways and afterword the next morning she was bruised could barely walk and had a swolen sternum. Also she through up the next day and pee'd a little blood, i was just curious if this is normal or if mabey we should tone it down a bit.

If anyone wants to try their hand at dissecting this article , go for it. It certainly exemplifies a lot of the problems we've been discussing this week.

I have a lot of thoughts about the article, but I'm too disillusioned with Creative Loafing (some of you know my history w/ them, including their most recent offense w/ their representation of Steve Gower) to feel up to exerting the effort to write something.

I will say, though, that Rusty and I turned down a potential web development job from Innocence Atlanta (the organization mentioned in the article), because the language on their web site conflated voluntary adult sex work with child sex trafficking. The worst offender for me was a sentence that talked about ways business owners can help, and one of the things mentioned was "hire a reformed stripper."

As the forum is winding down I can't help but look back at Stacey Swimme's forum post and think about how well it lays out some of the broad themes that unite discussions of sex work and trafficking but that the mainstream media is constantly diverting our attention from. Our wideranging discussions this past week only touched the tips of so many proverbial icebergs.

Her title, "Smoke and Mirrors," is particularly apt. Many of us do work that is directed at refocusing attention onto these complex issues of class inequality in the US and globally, of labor markets and consumer economies, of sensationalistic media outlets that all but ignore our issues unless something scandalous can be paraded in front of viewers/readers, and of politicians who prefer moralism to evidence.

A really interesting conversation about labor issues, collective interests and personal freedom started in the comments on Amber's post about how destigmatization could reduce profits for some sex workers.

I think it started with this passage from a comment of KerwinK's regarding a "labor speed up" of sorts in strip clubs in San Francisco: 

Hi again,

A few days ago I suggested (in response to Roy Kay's suggestion about contacting supportive journalists to write stories from a human rights perspective) that we should have a forum where we can collect names and references for such journalists. At the end of the forum I'll put together some resource pages but for now we can collect the information here.

In the comments please leave the names of journalists you know who have demonstrated a willingness to challenge the dominant, moralistic approach to stories about trafficking and sex work. If possible, links or references for stories would be great! 

This is a question that's been bouncing around in my mind for a few days:

"Would sex work be so profitable if it weren't stigmatized or criminalized?"

Sex work is often an attractive option for single mothers, because they can earn more money and (sometimes) work fewer hours than they would at a retail or other service industry job, thereby allowing them greater economic stability and more time with their children. But to what extent is this attributable to the stigmatized – and, with prostitution specifically, criminalized – nature of sex work?