For the last five years, more 1,000 nuns have been going undercover as sex workers to help women trafficked into prostitution and sex slavery. And while you’ve probably never heard of them, the sisters of Talitha Kum—a reference to the Gospel of Mark meaning, “Maiden, I say to you, arise” in Aramaic—are worthy of your attention. The sisters run prevention […]
Prostitution
Sex work or prostitution is the selling of sexual activity for payment, which can be dangerous if coercive or unregulated.
Meet the Sex-Trafficking Survivor Who’s Battling Prostitution
Toward the end of award-winning director Kim Longinotto’s new documentary, Dreamcatcher, the film’s subject, Brenda Myers-Powell, stands onstage in front of a room full of mostly women. Confident, passionate and determined, Brenda speaks to the gathered conference attendees and encourages them to keep an open mind. She’s brought a guest, Homer, a former pimp and sex trafficker, […]
Trafficking Policy Should Focus on Empowerment, Not Coercion
I have been studying the sex industry for nearly 25 years and been a feminist for even longer. Over this period I have seen many changes in the sex industry as well as how feminists and others talk about it. But for many Americans, feminists included, one point has remained steady: the belief that sexual […]
Pimpkillah: Feminist Comic Hero Is Not Your Girl Next Door
When one is looking for nuanced, relatable female characters, the comic book world can be a difficult one to traverse. Women are often props for male protagonists, prizes that need to rescued, adored or ogled. Even when they do get to be the main characters who vanquish villains, they are reduced to “fighting fuck toys,” […]
How Prison Killed Sex Worker Marcia Powell
In 2009, filmmaker PJ Starr received an email from a friend bringing news of the horrific and unnecessary death of Marcia Powell. Powell had been serving a 27-month sentence for solicitation of prostitution. While in Perryville Prison outside of Phoenix, corrections officers left her out in a metal cage for four hours in searing heat. As a […]
TRICKED: A Chat With The Filmmakers
A shocking 20.9 million people are victims of human trafficking around the world today—more than the populations of New York, Chicago, Miami, Houston and Los Angeles combined. In their new feature-length documentary TRICKED, filmmakers John-Keith Wasson and Jane Wells follow pimps, johns, sex-trafficking victims, parents and law enforcement agents in several U.S. cities, paying special […]
Turning the Corner on Sex Workers’ Rights in Argentina
The Association of Women Sex Workers in Argentina in Action for Our Rights (AMMAR) has painted the walls of Buenos Aires with new ads demanding legal protection for female sex workers. The ads, commissioned by AMMAR and designed by the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, are carefully positioned on various street corners, revealing a sexualized woman on one side […]
The Merseyside Model: Crimes Against Sex Workers Are Hate Crimes
When prostitutes are made to disappear, most of society does not care, and most of the cases remain unsolved. Women in prostitution suffer higher rates of murder (the mortality rate for women in prostitution in London is 12 times the national average —according to Home Office, a UK government agency that deals with crime and policing), higher rates of […]
Women’s Rights Key To Effective Global AIDS Response
As the XIX International AIDS Conference proceeds in Washington, D.C., this week, its pertinent to note that a new report by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, an independent body of former world leaders and top legal, human rights and HIV experts, has labeled the global response to the AIDS epidemic as “stifled” by various […]