Sex work encompasses a wide range of adult-oriented commercial services, from stripping to BDSM to pornography to what’s commonly known as prostitution. For example, the World Health Organization has described sex work as:
“…the provision of sexual services for money or goods. Sex workers are women, men and transgendered people who receive money or goods in exchange for sexual services, and who consciously define those activities as income generating even if they do not consider sex work as their occupation.”
Groups that oppose the decriminalization of sex work often conflate the term 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.
How did Phoenix’s paper of record, the Arizona Republic, get so many things wrong about the Super Bowl/sex trafficking panic in its recent reporting on the topic? In the days leading up to Super Bowl LVII, the paper casually conflated…
If Arizona State University gave degrees in gaslighting, Cindy McCain and her lackeys at ASU’s McCain Institute would have long ago earned their PhDs in public chicanery. Case in point: A recent op-ed authored by two McCain Institute flunkies and…
Two months after Arizona’s lame-duck, Republican governor, Doug Ducey, announced a statewide, multi-media campaign to promote the insidious, long-discredited notion that the Super Bowl causes a surge in sex trafficking, the office of his Democratic successor, Katie Hobbs, released an…
A coalition of sex worker-rights organizations will demonstrate from 5-8 p.m. today, Monday, Feb. 6, outside the Footprint Center in Downtown Phoenix as part of a “public and media education action” ahead of Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, now less…
Despite more than a decade of research, reports, editorials, magazine articles and even police accounts debunking the odious myth that the Super Bowl is a magnet for sex trafficking, this zombie lie remains catnip to local politicians, police and media…
Today, a coalition of organizations committed to sex workers’ rights denounced an ongoing statewide media campaign by the Arizona Governor’s Office promoting a dangerous, disproven myth: that the Super Bowl serves as a magnet for sex trafficking and prostitution. In…
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…
