For B, various articles and blogs regarding pro sex work by sex workers

Actually, also getting some twitter accounts here.   many posts lead to more info.  

http://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/myth-turn-off-the-red-light-are-trying...

More Rescue Industry fraud:  http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/06/04/chong-kim-the-woman-whose-allegedly-true-story-served-as-the-basis-for-megan-griffiths-film-eden-revealed-to-be-a-fraud

maggie mcneil   https://twitter.com/Maggie_McNeill

Christina Parreira, https://twitter.com/SinCityGrrrl  

Who writes, what it is REALLY like to work at the Nevada brothel here:    http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/guest-columnist-christina-parreira/

Dr. Brooke Magnanti  http://sexonomics-uk.blogspot.ca

http://thebaffler.com/blog/2014/06/zombie_statistics_on_sex_work

When the statistics about the sex work industry are wrong, it matters. For the organizations that rely on people believing the sex industry is enormous to secure funding, the inflation of these numbers is a win. But for the sex workers themselves, who may face more intrusive police and tax investigations fueled by unrealistic depictions of the industry, however, the failure of ONS to correct their heavily flawed model is a disaster.

 

http://www.feminisnt.com/     I'm an atheist who was a full-time pornographer and sex worker for 10 years, but I'm now transitioning out of the jizz biz into an awesome science career. In my silly younger days, I was a "sex-positive feminist," but I grew up and stopped trying to shoehorn myself into a useless ideology like a pair of ill-fitting high heels. I oppose the core feminist beliefs that women are inherently feeble victims, brainwashed by "the patriarchy," and that we can't succeed in life unless we're treated like babies. I operate SWAAY.org, the only sex workers' rights project aimed solely at public outreach and education. 

http://harlotsparlour.com/    The Sex Industry Blog

http://www.texasgoldengirl.com/afterhours/sex-working-cliche/

https://twitter.com/Marijke_Vonk    Psychologist | Activist | Sex Positive    The Netherlands

The myth of trafficking:   http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/2011/01/01/chinese-prostitutes-resist-effort-to-rescue-them-from-africa

They found 11 Chinese women who had been promised decent jobs in Paris by traffickers but ended up working in a Chinese-owned karaoke bar in the country's capital Kinshasa, the newspaper said.

After a joint raid by Chinese and Congolese police on the karaoke bar, however, the women decided to stay in the country, saying it was easier to make good money there than in China.

Rabble blogger Mercedes.     http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/mercedes-allen/2014/06/c-36-conflating-sex-work-human-trafficking

C-36: Conflating sex work with human trafficking

 using the term “human trafficking” interchangeably with sex work actually confuses the issue significantly, diverting funds and energy away from where it's needed and toward combating legitimate sex work as well.  This makes it impossible to get clear and realistically comparative data, and reallocates funding away from effective anti-trafficking initiatives.  It undermines the fight against trafficking and tarnishes the organizations that try to do the needed work, making it much harder to address actual human trafficking.  And it has allowed far right moralists who are more interested in controlling peoples’ sexual habits seductively hijack the dialogue that once considered womens' autonomy and choice to be important.

 

Currently showing comments from the politicians

https://twitter.com/AfterBedford

Boivin: 'we don't know how scientific the Public Consult was. Any scientific info has not been revealed'

Boivin: 'I want to see just 1 opinion on how the various clauses are actually in compliance w the SCC ruling.'

Boivin on '1 major prob of #C36, cl 15: criminalizing the 'victims we want to protect'.

PC MP Blaney & Smith only talk of those who are exploited. Ignoring all those who aren't.

Casey to Smith: 'would you not agree there were better options in the middle to address the issue of safety?', #

Boivin to Smith: 'how can she SERIOUSLY think only $20million will help those in need

Smith now citing a study that says there is a rise in underage prostitution in New Zealand. There is *no* evidence of that being true.

. @MPJoySmith now mocking journalists & their reaction to #C36. Considering PCs have MPS who DON'T know laws, journalists can help.

Casey: 'the decision to double down on criminal sanctions on complex social problems" is what's wrong w this gov'.

Casey reading a note from a sexworker, Rachel, about how #C36 affects her.   Rachel outlining how her current work/legal screening ensures her safety. #C36 "is a gift to sexual predators posing as clients"

Casey: 'MacKay won't release any Charter compliant docs, nor the $175K study on #C36. Why?'

MP Easter wants more time allocation for proper discussion on #C36. Wants gov to provide who gave the legal advice in drafting.

This is Canada wide, coming to a city near you http://www.straight.com/news/663926/sex-worker-protest-planned-response-bill-c-36

Same date in Hamiltion, Toronto, etc.  I don't have the info about where but a google should help you find info for your own city.  

I know several who will be going, and an equal number who would go but are afraid to be seen in public as a sex worker, due to the stigma and potential repercussions of what Bill C-36 might do to them if they were photographed.   

http://rabble.ca/whatsup/national-day-action-sex-workers-and-allies-criminalization-costs-sex-worker-lives

National Day of Action by sex workers and allies: Criminalization costs sex worker lives

On Saturday, June 14, sex worker groups, along with organizations and individuals that support human rights and women's rights, are gathering across Canada to denounce the Conservative government's proposed bill (C36) to re-criminalize sex work. The new law criminalizes selling sex in public, purchasing sexual services, advertising sexual services and benefitting from the sale of sexual services.

In Toronto, Aboriginal Legal Services Toronto, Maggie's - Toronto Sex Workers' Action Project, COUNTERfit Women's Harm Reduction Program, Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), Bad Date Coalition (BDC), and the Feminist Coalition (a national coalition of 25 sexual assault centres, women’s shelters and other anti-violence agencies) are rallying together against this legislation.

"Maggie's is devastated by the proposed legislation. Sex workers will be forced into dangerous conditions, pushed into isolated areas and their ability to screen clients and work together will be criminalized,"according to Jean McDonald of Maggie’s - Toronto Sex Workers’ Action Project.

"Sex work is not inherently dangerous. However, the proposed law will lead to increased violence and exploitative conditions for the most marginalized sex workers: women who work on the street and who are disproportionately Aboriginal, transgendered, and/or in poverty. We will see more missing and murdered women as a result of this legislation."

Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto's Legal Director, Christa Big Canoe stated "Bill C-36 does not place the safety of sex workers as a primary objective, despite a preamble that says so. The proposed law is too similar to the old law, struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, with new language. It proposes new forms of criminalization and raises risk that will likely hurt the most marginalized sex workers." She also said, "Raising the concerns of the most vulnerable and those impacted most by the proposed law is necessary so that decision makers understand the implications of passing this Bill."

According to Jane Doe, a well-known Toronto activist against sexual violence and coordinator of the Feminist Coalition for Full Decriminalization and the Human Rights and Labour Rights of Sex Workers (which applied to intervene in the Supreme Court Case): "The 'new' legislation put forward by the government will increase and even cause violence against sex workers - women who are our allies, colleagues, friends and family. An attack on that sector’s charter, human, and labour rights is an attack on all women.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/sexworklawreform

An alliance between Canadian sex worker and allied groups, organizations and individuals fighting for reform of Canadian's prostitution laws.

The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law reform is an alliance between Canadian sex worker and allied groups, organizations and individuals. We have joined forces across the country to ensure that sex workers' voices are central to discussions around law reform. Our mandate is to: fight against criminalization regimes and instead promote full decriminalization -- a made-in-Canada-New Zealand model. 

The Alliance is made up of the following groups and individuals:

Big Susie’s (Hamilton, ON)
BC Coalition and WCCSIP (Vancouver, BC)
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network 
Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV) (Vancouver, BC)
Émilie Laliberté, Sex Worker Rights Activist (Montreal, QC)
FIRST (Vancouver, BC)
Kara Gillies, Community Organizer (Toronto, ON)
Maggie’s (Toronto, ON)
PIECE (Edmonton, AB)
Pivot Legal Society (Vancouver, BC)
POWER (Ottawa, ON)
Sex Workers Action Group (Kingston, ON) 
South Western Ontario Sex Workers (London, ON)
Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC) (Toronto, ON)
Stop the Arrests! (Sault Ste Marie, ON)
Winnipeg Working Group (Winnipeg, MB)
Stella, l'amie de Maimie (Montreal, Quebec)
Stepping Stone (Halifax, NS)

 

http://www.afterbedford.com/#!language-matters/c7nn

Required reading if you want sex workers to listen to you.   :)

Excerpts from the link.

INTRODUCTION

The way we talk about sex work is anything but neutral – it communicates meaning and influences how people understand our work and create policy about us. The words we use when speaking about sex work – whether in media or legal arguments, with our friends or in discussion with a stranger – matter. Language used to describe sex work and sex workers varies across and within sex working communities – this speaks to differences in our histories, regional specificities and how we selfidentify.

 Sex work and sex workers are often framed in very simplistic and stereotypical ways that erase the complexity of our realities: good or bad, forced or chosen, glamorized or exploitative. When choosing language to talk about sex work we are trying to balance self-identification, our desire to represent our diversity and the importance of breaking through stereotypes and binary categories. When our choice of words differs from the beliefs and stereotypes that people have about us, people are quick to discredit us.

So, how and when we use language depends on who we are talking to. Within sex working communities we honour the language each of us uses to self-identify. We may, however, publicly reject or strategically choose other language to describe ourselves, because language can also divide and support public misconceptions of sex workers.

........

Prostitute, Sex Worker and Sex Professional

American sex worker and activist Carol Leigh coined the term sex work in the 1970s. While before this the term working girls was popular amongst workers, creation of the term sex work was a deliberate attempt to unite sex workers of all genders and sectors of work, and to highlight the work, or labour, that sex workers are doing. The term sex work is liberation from the deep-rooted negative and legalistic term prostitute.

 

Some of us call ourselves prostitutes, but recognize its negative connotations when outsiders use it. People use the word prostitute in different contexts: to refer to legislation where word prostitute is written into law; to refer to sex work that involves intercourse with clients; to refer to street prostitution; to refer to debasing oneself, not necessarily in a sexual context; and to refer to history when the word prostitute was used with pride. How and when we use these terms will differ depending on our audience.

 

Sex workers’ rejection of the term is often based in how the public perceives prostitutes and prostitution rather than an inherent shame in the word itself. Some sex workers also embrace the term sex professional. Like sex work, this term highlights and legitimizes the labour context of sex work. Other sex workers find this term alienating because the term professional can imply a level of accreditation that is not afforded to criminalized work. It can also insert a classist element to the work — some workers are seen as professional while others are not. Not all sex workers have access to the mechanisms that professionalize their work, and many work under precarious conditions.

 

Prostituted women

The gendered term prostituted women is sometimes used to refer to sex workers. This terms denies the agency of sex workers by suggesting that prostitution is something done to us. Many sex workers consider this framing and language around prostitution or sex work as disrespectful, alienating and invisibilizing of our realities.

 

Recap of the Swedish model    

 What Canada Can Learnfrom Sweden’s Laws that Criminalize the Purchase of Sexual Services

http://media.wix.com/ugd/177062_d7f02586cdcc4e43ad31628953d2b2d9.pdf

Canada vs Bedford: The Importance of the SCC Decision

http://media.wix.com/ugd/177062_4eb4319ffb254496a8b983516602b4a1.pdf

In 2007, three Ontario sex workers initiateda constitutional challenge to provisions of theCriminal Code that prohibit various aspects of adultprostitution, including:

• s. 210 (keeping or being found in a bawdy house),

• s. 212(1)(j) (living on the avails of prostitution), and

• s. 213(1)(c) (communicating in public for the purpose of prostitution).

The case of Attorney General of Canada v. Terri Jean Bedford,Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott examined whether these three provisions violate sex worker’s constitutional right to security of the person (protected by s. 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and freedom of expression (pursuant to s. 2(b) of theCharter).

On December 20, 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a landmark unanimous decision that these provisions contravene the s. 7 security of the person rights of sex workers, and that this violation are not justifiable. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice McLachlin said:The prohibitions at issue do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate. They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky – but legal – activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the riski

This decision mirrors the arguments made by the Applicants and many of the interveners in this case, including Pivot Legal Society, Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United AgainstViolence Society (SWUAV), PACE Society, Secretariat of theJoint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS),British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA),Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, British Columbia Centrefor Excellence in HIV/AIDS, HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario,Simone de Beauvoir Institute, and Aboriginal Legal Services ofToronto.i

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/06/16/prostitution_bill_a_foolish_f...

Prostitution bill a foolish fusion of right and left lunacy: DiManno

Men who buy sex are neither “perverts”, as described by Justice Minister Peter MacKay, nor “pathetic,” as described by my usually astute Star columnist colleague Heather Mallick, oft- and self-professed feminist.

I’m a feminist, have always been a feminist, will forever remain a feminist, though no longer find it necessary to bleat and brandish that term as if firing off an F-word fusillade. It’s in my bones, my DNA, my O-positive blood type and every word I’ve ever committed to paper. What I’m most adamantly not is a feminist evangelical who will find concordance and compatibility with preachy prudes, whether the REAL Women subset of Stepford Wives or the do-gooder Agony Aunts pushing condoms and exit strategy, each end of the ideological spectrum stiff and unyielding and witheringly judgmental.

Where doctrinaire feminist meets evangelical moralist is a squishy, fetid place; the underbelly domain of male-on-female coercion and extortion where sex outside of conventional relationships always has a long slithery tail.

Lord save us from the unholy alliance of liberals and illiberals.

Why does sex — the arranging for it, the negotiating of it, the supply and demand economics that drive it — turn even clear-minded thinkers into starchy puritans?

I will not demean men who purchase sexual services as pathetic perverts, smugly assuming they’re either deviant — wanting sex doesn’t make a person creepy — or hapless losers incapable of striking up a “buy ya a drink?” conversation with a potential leg-over partner.

 

Related, from the same blog as above:

On why sex work is not 'inherently' violent as some claim:

http://becauseimawhore.com/2011/12/21/up-ya-bum/

On the assumptions of sex work:

http://becauseimawhore.com/2011/08/17/sex-as-a-service/

I have been participating around the blogosphere in ‘debates’ where I find myself constantly having to justify my job as a valuable service and needing to fight against the suggestion that I am an exploited victim (with the perpetrator being the employers or clients).  In a way I hope that anyone following my blog for any period of time will be able to come to their own (possibly more informed) conclusions.

...

Many many sex workers, including me, have got experience or training as carers, nurses and support workers in the disability and aged sector. I worked as a carer in my early 20′s both in disability and aged care, in one of my guilt induced, partner enforced ‘retirement’ from the sex industry. Frankly, dealing with naked body’s and natural bodily functions and things that other people find icky, and doing it all while trying to provide a little human care…. it’s not that far of a stretch from sex work. Except – one has way better pay and conditions (but I’ll do a post about that another time)

Anyway, many of us have a caring and compassionate streak, and enjoy those occasions when our work allows us to share with someone something special. For example, a young man with Autism wants to lose his virginity at  age 30, or an old widowed man hasn’t been touched in a gentle caring way for years and wants a sensual massage. Or like my first overnight booking, with a man who was lacking in social skills and confidence and just wanted to wake up next to a woman for the first time in his life. I know a sex worker in her 60′s who only sees clients above 50, and specialises in nursing home visits.

 

 

 

 

http://www.nswp.org/resource/bill-c-36-and-the-views-people-involved-the-canadian-sex-industry

In this brief the authors focus on the findings from their recent national study funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Their research program has drawn together a multi-sectorial team of knowledge users, collaborators, scholars and trainees, many of whom have worked for over two decades to raise public awareness. The team has worked collaboratively to: a) identify key factors that are systematically linked to violence and vulnerabilities in the Canadian sex industry; b) estimate the impact of gender and sexuality on violence-related links between sex workers, clients, romantic partners, supervisors, regulators, and service providers; c) ensure that useful knowledge generated by the research program informs policies and practices aimed at improving the safety and health of sex workers and those they relate to at work and in their personal lives.

The results of the national research, the largest of its kind in Canada, indicate that the main provisions of Bill C-36 will impede the use of safety strategies employed by sex sellers. It is based on false assumptions regarding the makeup of the sex industry in Canada and the experiences and motivations of sellers, their intimate partners/spouses, buyers, and managers. Currently, people involved in the Canadian sex industry are reluctant to contact the police if in danger. Only 22% of the sellers who reported any incidents of victimisation while working in the sex industry in the previous 12 months ever contacted the police and only16% filed a police report in connection with their victimisation. The proposed legislation will make sellers feel even more wary about asking the police for help. The authors of the study recommend instead treating the sex industry as any other industry and regulating it through existing human rights legislation, labour laws, and municipal regulations as a better alternative to the current proposed legislation. They also recommend, as others have internationally, harm reduction and health promotion policies that improve health, safety and wellbeing.

 

 

 http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/activist-toolkit/2014/07/finding-community-sex-work-organizing
Finding community in sex work organizing

asb

http://scathinglywrongrightwingnutz.blogspot.ca/2014/07/remember-ottawa-cop-who-abused-black.html

......

Back at the Justice Committee hearings, law enforcement witnesses like Chiefs of police supporting C36 were unable to explain why current criminal code sanctions against human trafficking aren't being enforced to stop "procurement" and the enslavement of women into forced sex work through threats, confinement and other brutal methods.  

And the focus of MP Joy Smith's (yes, the MP who hired Vic Toews' mistress) attention at the hearings was riveted upon the horrific, brutal stories told by women who had been trafficked.

Despite numerous fundamentalist religious groups vehemently claiming thousands upon thousands of women are sexually assaulted 10, 20, 30 times daily, very few police investigations, arrests, charges, and prosecutions of human trafficking are being followed through in any rigorous or systematic way.

On the last day of the hearings Christa Big Canoe of the Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto challenged the legal sloppiness of the pro-C36 crowd who used trafficking, and prostituting as synonyms for one and same criminal activity.  

.......

Big Canoe pointed out that last year's Supreme Court ruling known as Bedford dealt specifically with Canada's prostitution laws.
"Bedford was about sex work. It wasn't about trafficking. We have laws in Canada about trafficking that aren't actually being used well. 

 

Hum.. I wonder what she thinks of "prostituted woman"