More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Sex work or prostitution is the selling of sexual activity for payment, which can be dangerous if coercive or unregulated.
In movie roles, we want women—even when they are tough or funny or sassy—to always be vulnerable, to open themselves up to our judgment and our sympathy.
From Anora to Enilia Perez to Wicked, this year’s Oscars reflect what we value in women’s performances.
Sean Baker’s Anora invites our capacities for feelings, not judgment, to accompany one young, female sex worker through a few roller-coaster, genre-defying weeks in her life. Like all of Sean Baker’s films, it refuses an ending that tells us what to think. It doesn’t tie things up and lead us to a morally unambiguous conclusion but to the perfect, emotionally right one. And the magic of it is that it does it without much being said.
While the comic parts of the movie, like classic screwball comedies, are full of characters whose talk bumps into each other, jostling for our attention and laughter, the last movement has hardly any dialogue at all. And it will stay with you for a long time.
LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto—the first female city attorney in the city’s history and the first Latina elected citywide—has made fighting child sex trafficking a priority since her election in November 2022.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, today Feldstein Soto leads a team of 1,000 legal professionals. She was driven to tackle this issue after witnessing the extent of the problem firsthand during a ride-along on South Figueroa Street. Ms.spoke with her on her multifaceted approach includes rescuing minors, prosecuting predators, and disrupting the demand for trafficked children.
“We have to crawl our way out, even though we tripped our way in,” said Gabrielle Prieto, who was sex trafficked at 12 years old and is now challenging the stigmas surrounding survivors of sex trafficking and advocates to end sex trade.
In New York, a new bill could afford survivors seeking legal recourse for the crimes committed against them a real chance for justice—removing the five-year statute of limitations on sex crimes.
Each instance of gendered and sexualized narratives against high-profile women—and even ordinary people, including students like myself—serves as a warning to thousands of other women and those close to us. Witnessing these attacks often leads them to reconsider their own participation in public discourse.
The message is clear: Speak out, and your sexuality will be weaponized against you.
From the Summer 2010 issue of Ms.: “In 10 years, we will look back and consider it ludicrous that we ever prosecuted children for prostitution.”
(For more ground-breaking stories like this, order 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION, Alfred A. Knopf—a collection of the most audacious, norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published.)
A guidance paper produced by a U.N. human rights group on eliminating discrimination against “sex workers” actually advocates for policies that will endanger women and girls.
Prostitution is not labor (as the term “sex work” entices us to believe), but a harmful cultural practice. Its inception parallels that of other forms of gender-based violence, such as female genital mutilation or domestic violence. It is a system that relegates women to second-class status and offers men the opportunity to purchase domination. From Bangladesh to the Netherlands, from South Africa to Colombia, and every country in between, the sex trade generates significant profits for both those who exploit women and the state.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed two laws last month empathetic toward people who engage in prostitution, while expanding criminalization for sex buyers and those who sexually exploit vulnerable populations, including children and people with mental disabilities.
The two new laws in Maine were inspired by the movement against domestic violence—which aims to center victims, hold abusers accountable and eliminate victim-blaming.
The Stroll is a feature-length entry into Sundance’s U.S. Documentary competition that won this year’s Special Jury Award for Clarity of Vision. The film is about several blocks of 14th Street in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, colloquially called as “The Stroll,” where trans sex workers, mostly women of color, were known to gather.
Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s compassionate and authentic portrayal is about solidarity and hope—asking viewers to understand the past while looking forward into the future.
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups. And each year, we review our monthly Reads for the Rest of Us lists and choose our favorite books of the year.
You’ve read the other “Best of” lists—now read the other one. You know, for the rest of us. Here they are, my top 40+ feminist books, in alphabetical order.