Groups that oppose the decriminalization of sex work often conflate prostitution with human trafficking and/or sex trafficking. But there are significant differences. Prostitution involves commercial sex between or among consenting adults, and it is prosecuted on a local level. Sex trafficking, a subcategory of human trafficking, is a federal crime, defined by statute as causing a person under age eighteen to engage in commercial sex, or using force, fraud, or coercion to cause an adult to do the same.
In Toronto and Tucson, Auckland and Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Sacramento, and countless other cities worldwide, sex workers and those who care about their safety will gather Saturday, December 17, as part of the International Day To End Violence Against…
At a Dec. 8th meeting of the Arizona Human Trafficking Council, Gov. Doug Ducey announced a statewide media campaign to bolster a long-discredited urban legend: that large sporting events such as the Super Bowl serve as magnets for the sex…
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut combines the worst characteristics of Cotton Mather, Girolamo Savonarola and the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Senior, not Junior. The 76-year-old Democrat’s persistent, self-righteous efforts to censor the internet, using “the kids” as his rallying…
At the first glimpse of anti-sex work researcher Dominique Roe-Sepowitz on screen, a round of boos erupted from the audience at Tucson’s Screening Room on Friday, where they were watching a preview of director PJ Starr‘s upcoming documentary, Manifesting Monica…
Normally, I don’t like to read books on Kindle, but in the case of Samantha Cole’s breezy, brilliant sex-positive chronicle, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History, I practically gulped it down over the…
A recent article in Forbes by the magazine’s associate editor, Thomas Brewster, accuses the popular money-transfer giant Cash App of being the “payment tool of choice” for sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), aka, child pornography. However, Brewster’s…
On Sunday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tentatively scheduled oral arguments in the Lacey/Larkin case for Friday, September 2, nearly a year after prosecutorial misconduct caused a mistrial in the high-stakes First Amendment donnybrook. The hearing is one of…
At the request of this writer, editors at The Washington Post issued a correction to an April 8 review of former California prosecutor Maggy Krell’s self-serving memoir, Taking Down Backpage. The review by E.J. Graff, managing editor of WaPo’s “Monkey…
Granted, the Jonestown Massacre may not be the perfect metaphor for Washington Post scribe E.J. Graff’s recent review of California prosecutor Maggy Krell’s book, Taking Down Backpage. Still, the way Graff blindly glugs down Krell’s self-serving account of the latter’s…
To judge from the responses of sex workers and their allies, John Oliver’s recent segment on the sex trade for his HBO show Last Week Tonight was a moonshot home run of the type Reggie Jackson used to belt out…
