Red Light Rights
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Friday, December 18, 2009 - 1:09pm By Monica ShoresIn October of 2008, someone calling herself Lux started a blog about her work as a stripper. She detailed episodes of using drugs, encountering her ex-boyfriend at her club, and accepting a bad check after having sex with a client in his home. By...
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Friday, November 20, 2009 - 2:35pm By Monica ShoresBlogger Belle De Jour's coming-out press parade has been an ugly glimpse into how the public responds to well-educated sex workers who act with apparent awareness and agency. When Brooke Magnanti, a young neurotoxicologist working at a university,...
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Friday, September 18, 2009 - 2:13pm By Monica ShoresThis week, military news outlet Stars and Stripes ran a story on U.S. soldiers' current involvement in South Korean prostitution. Many of the "juicy bars" suspected of selling sex are crowded around U.S. military bases and staffed by...
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Friday, August 14, 2009 - 2:13pm By Monica ShoresIn the wake of George Sodini's murderous attack on a women's aerobics class, the notion of sexual frustration has taken on an ominous cast. Sodini's celibacy became the stuff of legend once his personal history came to light. Scarcely a single...
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Friday, July 24, 2009 - 4:35pm By Monica ShoresPicture this seedy scene: an undercover cop pays to enter an establishment advertising itself as a spa. After a massage, the female attendant offers him a hand job. (Or if you're feeling coy, "simulate[s] a sex act with her right hand".) The officer...
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Friday, July 10, 2009 - 5:29pm By Monica ShoresThere’s a new ad campaign in the city in which I live: it consists of large signs emblazoned with “AIDS is DC’s Katrina.” Public officials estimate that 5% of DC’s population has HIV; studies have shown conclusively...
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Friday, June 26, 2009 - 6:00am By Monica ShoresMs. Magazine, the self-proclaimed "media expert on issues relating to women's status, women's rights, and women's points of view," can't seem to stop disrespecting sex workers—a group who, in the Ms. way of thinking, is composed exclusively of...
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Friday, June 12, 2009 - 7:34pm By Monica ShoresI recently spoke on a conference panel that briefly touched upon the media's handling of sex worker clients. I remarked that it's possible for sex workers to like their clients, although those not in the industry seem to labor under the eternal...
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Friday, May 29, 2009 - 3:27pm By Monica ShoresOne of CNN.com's top stories this week was a small news item on seven individuals accused of operating a New York prostitution agency through Craigslist. For the most part, the article is stultifying. It routinely uses quotes around the word "...
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Friday, May 8, 2009 - 4:18pm By Monica ShoresThis Tuesday, The Washington Post claimed that Craigslist's Erotic Services listings have been linked to "recent high-profile murders," an error that is egregious yet entirely unsurprising given the nasty discussions taking place in the...
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Friday, April 10, 2009 - 5:45am By Monica ShoresEarlier this month, a bill was proposed in the Nevada State Senate that would tack a $5 tax on every sex act performed in a brothel. Opposition was vehement and varied, and the bill didn't make it out of the Senate Taxation Committee. However, the...
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Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - 9:26am By Monica ShoresLast month, a Las Vegas newspaper published the names and images of locally-convicted “prostitutes” who were so frequently in trouble with the law that they’d earned spots on the vice squad’s list of top offenders. (Most were charged with...
