I love this article in the Mail. Sex sells and sex has the power to even unfreeze the hearts of bankers it seems. The Mail reports that Spain’s top escorts are on strike and refusing to service Spanish bankers until they begin to lend money to families and small businesses. If only our sex workers were so organised in the UK they could do what the government has so far failed to do and really get the economy moving again. These sex workers epitomise capitalism that works. More than the bankers do days these days.
A national sex strike! Spain’s ‘high-class hookers refuse to sleep with bankers until they open up credit lines to cash-strapped families’
Top-end prostitutes say strike to continue until bankers offer credit
By LEE MORAN
PUBLISHED: 11:16 GMT, 27 March 2012 | UPDATED: 13:11 GMT, 27 March 2012
Spain’s high-class escorts are refusing to have sex with the nation’s bankers – until they open up credit lines to cash-strapped families and firms.
Madrid’s top-end prostitutes say their indefinite strike will continue until bank employees ‘fulfil their responsibility to society’ and start offering bigger loans for struggling Spaniards, it has been claimed.
Sneaky bankers were trying to circumvent the protest by claiming to be architects or engineers, the sex-workers said.
On strike: Spain’s high-class escorts are refusing to have sex with the nation’s bankers until they open up credit lines to cash-strapped families and firms
But this was ‘not fooling anyone’ because, as one escort revealed: ‘It has been many years since these professionals could afford rates that start from €300 per hour.’
The capital’s largest luxury prostitute trade association, which is reportedly initiating the strike, said: ‘We are the only ones with a real ability to pressure the sector.
‘We have been on strike for three days now and we don’t think they can withstand much more,’ added the woman, known as Ana MG.
It said the move came after one of its members, Lucia, pressured a bank employee client to grant a loan by halting her ‘sexual services’.
Read the full article with links and photos “HERE”
Good news from Canada where the Ontario court has affectedly decriminalised indoor prostitution. The landmark decision that could legalise brothels through out Canada if ratified by the supreme court will not take effect for a year to allow the Canadian government to amend present legislation. The law does not legalise street sex workers however which has dismayed some campaigners. This positive move however is important because it is not based on moral considerations but upon evidence which supported the claims by sex workers that the law deliberately made sex work dangerous by denying sex workers the most basic human rights.
This is the news report and an article from the Globe and Mail reporting the land mark decision.Read article with links “HERE”.
GLOBE AND MAIL
Monday, March 26, 2012
Kirk Makin, Justice Reporter
Landmark ruling legalizes brothels in Ontario
Left to right sex worker advocate Terri-Jean Bedford raises her arms in victory during a press conference in Toronto, Ont. Monday, March 26, 2012.
Ontario,ÄöaÑa¥s top court has legalized brothels in a ruling that came out today.
Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
Ontario’s highest court has legalized brothels in a sweeping decision that condemned current prostitution laws for adding to the hazards of a highly dangerous profession.
The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed the Crown just one victory, ruling that communicating for the purposes of prostitution will remain illegal.
The landmark decision is binding on Ontario courts and sets up a final showdown at the Supreme Court of Canada next fall or in early 2013.
Ontario Attorney-General John Gerretsen said on Monday that he intends to discuss appealing the decision with his federal counterparts. “Our main concern is that people feel safe in their communities, feel safe in their homes, and this kind of issue may very well need legislative action,” he said.
The five-judge appellate panel said unanimously that prostitutes may set up brothels and hire staff to protect them. They said that it is senseless to have a law that compels prostitutes to work in dangerous isolation, given that prostitution itself is legal.
The judges also explicitly rejected a Crown argument that prostitutes make an informed decision to enter a dangerous trade, saying that prostitutes deserve as much protection as other citizens who work in “dangerous, but legal, enterprises.”
However, the court majority — Mr. Justice David Doherty, Mr. Justice Marc Rosenberg and Madam Justice Kathryn Feldman — salvaged the communication provision on the basis that it has kept neighbourhoods free of organized crime, drugs, noise and unwanted solicitations.
They played down arguments from prostitution activists that those it hurts most are marginalized street prostitutes who work in the shadows and must assess potential clients hastily.
Mr. Justice James MacPherson and Madame Justice Eleanore Cronk took sharp issue with the majority on the point, arguing that the communication provision significantly worsens the plight of street prostitutes.
“The violence faced by street prostitutes across Canada is, in a word, overwhelming,” they said. “One does not need to conjure up the face of Robert Pickton to know that this is true.”
The brothel ruling takes effect in a year. However, as of April 25, prostitutes can engage bodyguards. The court remodelled the pimping provision to target only those who live off the avails of prostitution “in circumstances of exploitation.”
The Sex Professionals of Canada immediately urged Ontario municipalities to begin discussing licensing provisions that will ensure health and safety of brothel workers and their clients.
Municipalities are expected to create a patchwork of regulation. Many, such as Niagara Falls, already license body-rub parlours. About 40 workers are employed in the city’s four licensed parlours. Toronto has 25 body-rub parlours and 482 licensed workers.
Eddie Francis, mayor of Windsor, Ont., said his planning staff are looking at zoning issues that isolate brothels from schools and family neighbourhoods without creating red-light districts.
Meanwhile, police forces are split on the logic and propriety of continuing “sweeps” of body-rub parlours in search of prostitutes and their clients.
“We stopped doing sweeps after the last decision and told our people that if there were problems, there are other laws they could use to deal with them,” said Toronto Police Service spokesman Mark Pugash. “We see little reason to change that.”
However, York Regional Police Chief Eric Jolliffe said that his force “continues to be bound by the laws that exist today and our obligation is to uphold the law as it is now.”
Prostitution activists hailed Monday’s decision as a historic victory.
“Six out of six judges so far have concluded that the law does not work and is hurting people,” said York University law professor Alan Young, the lawyer for the women who launched the constitutional challenge.
Valerie Scott, one of the litigants, said that prostitutes have a sense of belonging for the first time. “I feel like a debutante,” she said. “I feel like a citizen.”
Ms. Scott said that brothels have always existed in the shadows. “There is a brothel on every block in every city, and there always has been,” she said.
Nikki Thomas, executive director of SPOC, told reporters that prostitutes will be normal citizens who file income taxes, purchase investments and quietly go about their work. “We are not going to have fire and brimstone and sex workers raining down from the sky,” she said.
The Court of Appeal noted on Monday that Parliament is not precluded from enacting new prostitution laws provided they do not heighten the danger to prostitutes.
With reports from Karen Howlett and Anna Mehler Paperny
I was made aware of this article through a fb friend. It is a story that comes as no surprise. The anti sex work lobbyists and propagandists are a little like fundamentalist religionists. Reason and evidence are a distraction to their truths. Enjoy the article however which was Posted by Jacob Sullum on Wednesday Mar 21st at 6:03pm in Reason Magazine. You can read the full article with links “HERE”.
On Sunday, as part of his campaign against Backpage.com, the online classified-ad service owned by Village Voice Media, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof told the story of “Alissa,” a former underage prostitute who “escaped that life and is now a 24-year-old college senior planning to become a lawyer.” Kristof reported that “Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage,” beginning when she was 16. He quoted Alissa as saying, “You can’t buy a child at Wal-Mart, can you? No, but you can go to Backpage and buy me on Backpage.” The headline for a video accompanying the online version of Kristof’s column says, “Age 16, She Was Sold on Backpage.com.” Kristof claimed “court records and public officials back Alissa’s account.”
But as Village Voice Media (VVM) points out, Alissa turned 16 in 2003, and “Backpage.com did not exist anywhere in America in 2003.” The company adds that Alissa, who testified that she had been compelled to work as a prostitute in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City, said she left prostitution in August 2005, and “in the summer of 2005 Backpage.com did not exist in Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Atlantic City.” VVM says Kristof could have found this out readily enough:
He could have read the court transcripts. He could have read the testimony of A.G. (the victim). He could have read the testimony of FBI agent Tamara Harty. He could have Googled the case and read the coverage in The Boston Globe which reported: “Soon after meeting (agent) Harty in 2005, (she) was moved out of state to a home for troubled youth.”
Neglecting to do any of the above, Kristof could still have asked us.
Instead, says VVM, Kristof “concocted a story to suit his agenda.” Kristof responds on his blog:
Alissa turned 16 at the end of 2003….All during 2004, she was 16 years old, traveling up and down the east coast being pimped. Backpage operated in at least 11 cities during 2004, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, both of them cities Alissa where [sic] says she was pimped on Backpage. Then at 17, as Backpage expanded to 30 cities including Boston, she was pimped even more broadly on Backpage — and also in Village Voice print ads, she says.
Moreover, contrary to what the Voice says, Alissa continued in the sex trade until 2007, when she got out for good. Backpage was steadily expanding and becoming a major force in this period, and pimps routinely used it to sell her, she says.
VVM says Alissa did not mention any of these details in her court testimony. According to the October 2010 Boston Globe story to which VVM refers, Alissa (dubbed “Jessica” by the Globe) left prostitution in 2005, not 2007, and the case against her pimps “covered incidents that happened between 2001 and 2005.” By 2007, when Kristof now claims she “got out for good,” she would have been 19 or 20.
Do any of these details matter? Only if you accept Kristof’s premise that VVM is responsible for criminal misuse of Backpage.com. That logic would also make Craigslist responsible for the deaths of men lured to their deaths by online job ads, Louisville Slugger responsible for assaults aided by its bats, and GM responsible for bank robberies in which its products are used as getaway cars. Kristof concedes that “many prostitution ads on Backpage are placed by adult women acting on their own without coercion,” and he says “they’re not my concern.” Yet he cites the National Association of Attorneys General, which routinely equates all prostitution with slavery, to back up his claim that Backpage.com is “the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States,” and he joins those bullying busybodies in demanding that VVM stop accepting “adult” ads, suggesting that advertisers should boycott The Village Voice until it does. All this while admitting that “Backpage’s exit from prostitution advertising wouldn’t solve the problem.” It would, however, force Kristof to pick a new scapegoat.
I’ve just started working at the University of Kent and am involved in a study which ultimately seeks to uncover the public’s opinions on nightlife in their local area. What does this have to do with the sex industry, you might ask? Well, there’s a specific focus on the perceived and real impacts caused by lap-dancing clubs.
We’re interested in this because policy has been formulated to control lap-dancing clubs despite there being a lack of academic evidence which uncovers what your ‘average person’ thinks about them in the area. Thus, we want to get the ‘quiet voices’ rather than the more obvious Radical feminist and religious voices which have assisted in policy formation so far.
So, if you run a business or live in Maidstone, Kent, Lincoln, Newcastle or Brighton we would love you to check out our survey at http://www.survey.kent.ac.uk/nightlife
For anyone who hasn’t heard of me, my name is Billie and I’ve spent a number of years looking at the sex industry, firstly at the impact policy chance had on sex workers in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and then I moved onto the lap-dancing industry, looking at how this area has changed in recent times – in Scotland.
Although I myself consider the sex industry to be a form of labour, the purpose of this study is to find out everyone’s views, no matter what they are in relation to all forms of nightlife….we are interested in discovering if people perceive or experience any more or less problems with lap-dancing venues in comparison to other places that are open at night. Thus, I’m using this post to simply spread the word, and would like to thank the lovely Douglas Fox for allowing me to do so. I urge all you readers to help us out and spread the word about the study. The findings will be available at the beginning of next year and I would be delighted to share them.
Catherine Stevens
Douglas Fox
Elrond
Jessie Abraham
Laura Lee
Morven
PONY
Sensuous Amanda
Sexwork IE
Shelly Stoops
Silky
Snowdrop Explodes
Steve Newcastle
Teegan Fox
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