Latest news with #sexwork
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Paris Lees' captivating millennial coming-of-age drama
9pm, BBC Three Millennials, prepare for a nostalgia rush as this rollicking adaptation of Paris Lees' memoir takes us back to the time of Nokias, Zombie Nation and total hedonism. Life is 'one big fucking party' for everyone except Byron (a brilliant breakthrough for Ellis Howard), a working-class teenager desperate to escape constant homophobia and hopelessness. Sex work leads Byron to Nottingham's underground scene and a fun-loving group called the Fallen Divas. But the party can't last for ever … It's a bold and captivating opening episode that doesn't flinch from exploring the big issues (Byron is only 15 when being paid for sex) and tells the story with authenticity and humour. Hollie Richardson 10pm, BBC Four'I killed at least 83 people myself; under my orders there were between 1,500 and 2,000 people killed. I was the most wanted man in the world.' That's Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – AKA Carlos the Jackal – speaking from prison in Paris, where he is serving three life sentences for his involvement in terror attacks. He narrates this film about his life, from growing up in Venezuela to his relationships with Gaddafi and Bin Laden. HR 7pm, BBC TwoRecent cyber-attacks on M&S, the Co-op and Harrods have exposed critical flaws in digital defences, causing empty shelves, halted deliveries and furious customers. The hackers? Organised, anonymous and ruthlessly efficient – but often simply disaffected youngsters showing off their skills, as one ex-hacker here admits. Ali Catterall 9pm, BBC One This certainly isn't one of those episodes where the researchers had to scrabble around for a half-decent story. Straight away, singer Will Young provides a moving tale of overlooked second world war heroism thanks to the exploits of his grandfather, Digby. Then there is some spicy villainy further up the family tree. Young receives both happy and sad news. Jack Seale 9pm, BBC TwoThere have been two dramatisations of the Lockerbie terror attack this year. Neither really felt as if they did justice to the tale, so now it's time to hear the families of six victims tell their own stories in this documentary. These victims include 25-year-old Olive Gordon and 24-year-old Tim Burman. HR 9pm, Sky ArtsFor her next trip in this lovely series, art expert Kate Bryan is in Preston at the home of the first Black woman to win the Turner prize, and 'ultimate disruptor', Lubaina Himid. They have intimate chats about Himid's work on race, identity and what it means to be Black in the UK today. HR Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story (Sinéad O'Shea, 2024), 10pm, Sky ArtsA woman who lived her life battling the repression that is an enduring theme in her novels, the Irish author Edna O'Brien is a terrific subject for a documentary. O'Shea does her proud here and is blessed with access to the then 93-year-old – who is as sharp as ever when talking through her experiences. But O'Brien is also tinged with melancholy – a result of a traumatic childhood, an oppressive marriage and the misogynist resentment she faced – not least back in Ireland – due to her frank opinions. Simon Wardell In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009), 11.45pm, BBC Two Iannucci's comedy bridges the gap between The Thick of It and Veep by throwing together governmental fools and chancers from the UK and US. It also ups the ante by making the result of the bungling of its apparatchiks, spin merchants and elected officials an actual war. Most of the Thick of It cast return, though confusingly as different characters. Luckily, Peter Capaldi's vituperative director of comms Malcolm Tucker is present and incorrect, bullying the out-of-his-depth minister for international development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) on an ill-fated visit to Washington DC. SW
Telegraph
a day ago
- General
- Telegraph
Ash Regan makes ‘underground' prostitution blunder
Ash Regan has been mocked over a prostitution interview blunder. The MSP claimed a question about whether prostitution would be driven underground made no sense because 'if you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would punters get to them?' Ms Regan tabled the Prostitution (Offences and Support) Bill at Holyrood last month to try to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland, alongside decriminalising those selling sexual services. But when asked how she responded to those who said the bill could drive prostitution into an 'unregulated and underground system', she answered: 'There is no basis for any of those assertions. If you even think for one second, you cannot possibly drive prostitution underground. 'If you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would the punters get to them?' Her response prompted The Herald newspaper reporter to clarify that the phrase 'driving underground' meant that men would continue to buy sex illegally if prostitution was outlawed. Asked if that made sense, she added: 'No. It does not really make sense whatsoever.' Ms Regan previously said prostitution was a form of male violence towards women and her bill was a step towards tackling the issue. But sex workers warned the move would be 'disastrous' for their safety by driving the vice trade 'underground', where women are less safe. They said sex workers had 'experienced more violence from clients and the police' in countries where similar systems were in place. Ms Regan's latest comments were met with disbelief among online readers. One asked: 'So does Ash Regan also think underground music is made by people who've been locked in literal underground bunkers?' Another added: 'A Member of the Scottish Parliament apparently did not understand that if you're asked 'what if the bill you're recommending drives the important and worrying issue you're trying to ban underground', it does not literally mean under the ground.' Sources close to the Alba Party MSP said she was being 'flippant' and she had not meant to be taken literally by the reporter. They said that she was arguing that prostitution could not be driven underground as 'men will find a way to get women' and they could then be tracked down by the police. Ms Regan resigned as community safety minister in Nicola Sturgeon's government over legislation allowing trans people to self-identify their gender by simply signing a declaration. The Edinburgh Eastern MSP won widespread plaudits for her principled stance after arguing the move endangered women in female-only safe spaces. She stood in the SNP leadership contest to replace Ms Sturgeon in 2023 and suggested building a large thermometer to show how prepared Scotland is for independence. But she finished a distant third, behind Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes, and later that year defected to Alba.
Mail & Guardian
2 days ago
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Amid all the talk about preventing gender-based violence, sex workers are ignored
When courts dismiss violence on the basis of occupation, the message is clear: sex workers' lives matter less. As International Sex Workers Day approaches, many will rush to be seen. Statements will be issued, social media tiles shared and a flurry of symbolic visibility will flicker across timelines. But for sex workers on the front lines, skin-deep solidarity does nothing to help them navigate broken health systems, violent law enforcement and exclusionary public policy. What makes sex work dangerous are the laws, policies and attitudes that surround it. When police wield condoms as evidence, when shelters deny access based on moral judgment, when courts dismiss violence on the basis of occupation, the message is clear: sex workers' lives matter less. This leads to a brutal reality in which sex workers are 17 times more likely to be killed than the rest of the population, according to a The What little recourse the broader population may have in law enforcement (as citizens, survivors of abuse, or as workers) is simply not available to sex workers when their jobs are a crime. A Even worse, police officers often target and extort sex workers. A Serbian sex worker told researchers: '[The officer] pulled out a police badge and said 'C'mon, you want me to take you in [to jail] or screw you?' I was scared, and allowed him to screw me.' Sex workers are stripped of their dignity day in and day out. They are no more than a legal inconvenience, a public relations liability, a line item in someone else's report. This is not a coincidence. It is the result of systemic neglect. The dangerous politics of protection Human rights violations against sex workers are often masked by the language of public safety. In many countries, 'rescue' operations involve rounding up sex workers, jailing them and forcing them into rehabilitation programmes that neither respect their rights nor improve their safety. Such abuses are only strengthened by those in the the anti-trafficking sector who continue to conflate consensual sex work with forced labour. At the same time, governments refuse to work with sex worker-led organisations as legitimate stakeholders in violence prevention. The result? Interventions designed in boardrooms instead of communities and funding cycles that prioritise 'rescue' over rights. Even in relatively progressive contexts, decriminalisation is debated endlessly while police brutality continues without pause. Most countries operate under partial criminalisation or vague regulatory frameworks that leave sex workers exposed to violence without legal recourse. These grey zones are not neutral, they're often lethal. And in today's political climate, where anti-rights movements are gaining ground in every region, sex workers are among the first to be targeted, often alongside LGBTQ+ people and migrants. The rollback of hard-won human rights always starts with those who have the least institutional power. And too often, sex workers are treated as expendable. What real safety looks like It does not have to be this way. There is no shortage of evidence on what works when sex workers are seen as experts in their own lives and supported to lead the response. A The Lancet found that community empowerment approaches, those led by sex workers themselves, result in lower rates of violence, better health outcomes and increased condom use. Safety for sex workers looks like: Decriminalisation of all aspects of consensual adult sex work; Legal reform to ensure that sex workers can report violence without fear of arrest; Access to justice that includes legal aid, human rights training for law enforcement, and pathways to restitution; Non-discriminatory health care, inclusive of sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and trauma services; and Sustainable funding for sex worker-led movements, not just token consultation. We don't need more research. We need more political courage. The Cost of Erasure As someone who works at the intersection of gender-based violence and sex work, I've witnessed the deep institutional reluctance to name sex workers as survivors of violence in their own right. I've read strategies to fight gender-based violence that list every vulnerable group except the one most consistently brutalised by the state. I've seen national action plans that mention 'inclusive' services while operating under laws that criminalise the very people they claim to serve. Silence tells sex workers that their pain is not valid, their voices not credible and their rights not urgent. Sex workers are not passive victims waiting to be rescued. They are advocates, care workers, organisers and strategists who have built safety networks in the absence of state protection. They are the ones who distribute condoms, educate peers, challenge stigma and hold abusive systems to account. Any violence prevention strategy that does not include them at the centre is not only inadequate, it is dishonest. On this International Sex Workers Day, we must go beyond gestures. The international community cannot continue to ignore the double standard it applies to sex workers when it comes to gender justice. Governments cannot claim to care about ending gender-based violence while criminalising, excluding and persecuting sex workers. Safety is not a buzzword. It is the outcome of political decisions about who is worthy of protection and who is abandoned to survive alone. If we are serious about ending violence against women and gender-diverse people, we must start where the system is most violent and most unaccountable. And that means standing with sex workers, not as an act of charity, but as an act of solidarity and justice. Because safety doesn't appear when it's merely used as a slogan, it has to be built up as a system. We won't fix the system we've got now by ignoring the people who have survived its worst failures. Tian Johnson is the founder of the Pan-African health justice NGO, The African Alliance and GBV adviser to the Hands Off 2 programme which works with sex worker-led organisations, religious leaders, law enforcement, service providers and NGOs dedicated to human rights in efforts to reduce violence against sex workers.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Non-payment is a major issue for Victorian sex workers. They could soon lose crucial help finding justice
Aurora* had always considered herself a proud, educated sex worker. For years, she campaigned to decriminalise the industry in Victoria – writing inquiry submissions, contacting MPs and pushing for reform. Her efforts paid off in 2022, when the state government passed laws recognising sex work as a legitimate job rather than a crime. But even after the laws changed, Aurora says she still didn't feel safe reporting a series of what she describes as 'really terrible incidents' at work: one client threatened to kill her, others refused to pay and she was once held against her will for refusing to 'issue a refund' after services were completed. 'I felt like I wouldn't be believed because of what I do for work and I know the justice system can be incredibly traumatic for victims,' says Aurora. 'Even though things have changed, I still knew I'd be subjected to some pretty heinous questioning.' It wasn't until she found Southside Justice – one of only two specialist legal services for sex workers in Australia – that Aurora felt safe enough to report an incident of non-payment to police, who are now pursuing the matter. Southside Justice's chief executive, Mel Dye, says non-payment is the most common issue reported since decriminalisation, followed by discrimination, police accountability and employment issues. But as more sex workers seek their help accessing justice, the dedicated legal service now faces the risk of closing due to insufficient funding. Under Victoria's affirmative consent laws that came into effect in 2023, if a person agrees to sex under false pretences, such as a promise of payment that does not eventuate, that consent can be invalid. In such cases, non-payment can constitute sexual assault. According to Rachel Payne, an upper house member from the Legalise Cannabis party, non-payment and sexual assault are 'all too common' issues in sex work. 'People involved in the sex industry face stigma, inequality and power imbalances on top of existing barriers to justice. This is why specialist, trauma-informed legal support is so important,' she told parliament on Wednesday. Aurora says she knows several sex workers who have had clients use a range of tactics not to pay for services: fake transfers, counterfeit cash or staging urgent phone calls to rush out the door. 'It's a huge issue in the industry because they think they can get away with it and we won't report it,' she says. 'I don't know many people who have pursued it through the criminal justice system.' Dye says many sex workers remain reluctant to report to police without Southside Justice's support, often due to past experiences of criminalisation, stigma and discrimination. 'We're working with a community that has been marginalised and disadvantaged for decades. They need someone in their corner,' she says. 'You can't just decriminalise sex work and expect it to be 'job done, let's move on.'' Despite this, the Victorian government rejected Southside Justice's latest funding bid, allocating nothing to the program in last week's state budget. Of the $12.3m set aside in previous budgets to support the sector's transition to decriminalisation, the service received just $156,000 or 1.3%. A separate grant from the Victorian Legal Services Board is also due to expire in December. Dye says they had sought $2.5m from the state government over four years to expand the sex work legal team. When that seemed unlikely, they proposed three scaled-down options: $620,000 to continue funding one lawyer, $1.19m for two lawyers or $1.69m for two lawyers and a peer worker. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'It's peanuts,' she says. 'It very difficult to reconcile that the government has just invested $1.6bn into the justice system but won't provide a modest amount of support for us to actually make a real difference in the lives of the sex worker community.' Greens MLC Katherine Copsey said ongoing funding was essential, especially so the service's dedicated lawyer can contribute to an upcoming review of decriminalisation laws – a 'critical opportunity' to assess their impact. 'The success of decriminalisation depends not just on legislation and what we do in this place but on its implementation. Without accessible legal support, sex workers are left to navigate complex systems alone, undermining the reform's intent,' she told parliament on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the Victorian government said it had provided $40m to community legal centres in the budget, including Southside Justice. They said the government was in 'ongoing discussions' regarding future funding for sex work legal services. A spokesperson for Victoria police said the force 'treats sex work the same as any other occupation' and sex workers subjected to verbal, physical or sexual abuse 'can report these crimes to police without fear of self-incrimination'. 'If a sex worker is falsely told they will be paid for their services or misled it is a reportable offence. Any reports of sexual offences are also taken extremely seriously,' they said. As for Aurora, the impact of those incidents was lasting. She says she struggled to work for a year due to trauma, and it shook her self-belief. 'I lost trust,' she says. 'Mostly in myself. I couldn't trust my judgment any more – my ability to read people, to know when I was safe.' 'I've been in the industry a long time. But after that, I couldn't trust anyone.' She says speaking up now and pursuing a non-payment case through the courts, with the aid of Southside Justice, feels like a step toward reclaiming her identity. *Name has been changed Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. Other international helplines can be found at
CBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
This play is about Christmas Eve at a strip club. It's also about loneliness
Julie Phan admits that when she picked up a Christmas Eve shift at a Montreal strip club back in 2022 that she "low key did it for the plot." The playwright and actor, or self-described "stripper and theatre gremlin," started dancing earlier that year after quitting what she describes as a "shitty $20 an hour theatre admin job." Stripping, she says, felt like a more efficient way to supplement the money she made as an actor and writer, a way to make a living "without tearing all my hair out of my scalp." Besides, years of fitness pole dancing had given her the necessary stage skills. Still, she didn't know what to expect from the Christmas Eve crowd, other than "lonely people who didn't have anyone else to spend time with on that night." And that included her. "There was nowhere else I really wanted to be," she says. "I didn't come from a background where Christmas was like a big deal culturally or religiously." That Christmas Eve shift wound up being the inspiration for her new play, Never Walk Alon e. And at its core, she says, it's less a play about a strip club and more a play about loneliness and the search for connection. "The feeling of being alone and the feeling of not really being understood by the people I love, that's something that I've always felt," she says. "Before ever becoming like a sex worker or a stripper — just this feeling of being not really seen for who I am." Like a lot of people in sex work, Phan didn't tell her family about how she made a living for a number of years — they only found out last year — but prior to that, she'd already spent some time concealing her involvement in theatre. She developed a love of theatre early on, and was selected to be part of the Tarragon Theatre's Young Playwright's Unit while still in high school, but her parents didn't encourage her interest. In fact, they actively discouraged it. "At the time, I was doing a lot of the extracurriculars that my dad wanted me to do," she says. "Kind of the Asian child trifecta of Asian language school, like, off-brand Kumon tutoring and piano lessons. He really thought that adding this extra thing would have been… a distraction… I told my drama teacher, and she called my dad to tell him that he had to let me do it because it was basically a professional opportunity, and he allowed it because he listens to authority." After high school, she went to McGill with the intention of becoming a doctor, but in her first year, she was given the opportunity to put on a play she'd written back in Toronto. But she couldn't just bail on school to go direct the play. What ensued was a level of sneaking around, back and forth between Toronto and Montreal that seems almost unfathomable. "I was trying to do the show in my first year while going to school — school being in Montreal and the show being in Toronto — and needing to come back to Toronto to do that show without my parents knowing because I wasn't supposed to leave school," she says. "It went off not without a hitch, but it went off, and it went well, but I think I nearly died under the pressure of it all." Shortly after that, she came clean to her parents about wanting to pursue a career in theatre, quit McGill, and enrolled in the National Theatre School. "I had discovered that [theatre] was just such a fundamental part of who I am," she says. "It just makes up who I am, actually. I literally thought I was going to die without it." Phan says that not all the stories told in Never Walk Alone actually happened on that Christmas Eve shift, although some of them did. Rather, she's using the Christmas Eve shift as a device to hold together stories she's collected over the course of her time in stripping. "Situating it in Christmas was giving it more of an anchor, more of a context for everything that happens… for that kind of pressure to build," she says. Phan hopes that, in the wake of Anora 's big Oscar win, audiences are ready to hear more stories about sex workers, ones that are "more complex than, like, the dead sex worker or the background characters on The Sopranos." She particularly hopes that they're ready to hear sex worker stories like Never Walk Alone, ones written by sex workers themselves. "I think it's important to support narratives where sex workers are humanized and portrayed as their own people with their own motivations and complexities and, you know, all the beautiful things, but also all the messy things as well," she says. She adds that, hopefully, the more sex workers are humanized in fiction, the easier it will be for them to exist in real life. "I'm hoping that the more we have nuanced portrayals of sex workers, the more… it [will] be easier to recognize how a lot of the laws, or a lot of the ways we treat people are f**ked up," she says.
