The Huffington Post Canada
Stepping Stone, a sex-workers advocacy group in Nova Scotia, has released a series of ads that remind people that sex workers are also someone's mother, daughter or friend.
The ads feature messages such as "I'm proud of my tramp raising two kids on her own" and "I'm glad my prostitute made me finish school."
An article in the Vancouver Sun by Charlie Fidelman on the 11 July 2011 explains that a sex worker in Japan has been diagnosed with a new, mutant strain of gonorrhea. This is alarming because it is a "superbug" which doesn't respond to antibiotic treatment.
A federal appeals court in the United States has ruled that the Government cannot force grantees who are receiving money for HIV programming to denounce and oppose prostitution through the so called 'anti-prostitution pledge'. This ruling only applies to American organisations (working anywhere in the world) not people who receive American funds in other countries. Open Society Institute and Pathfinder International argued that this funding restriction violated their Constitutional rights.
A news story by Ade Mardiyati in the Jakarta Globe on the 5 July 2011 describes how Feraldo “Aldo” Saragi founded the Indonesia Social Changes Organization (OPSI) and their work to advocate for sex workers and to addresses issues of discrimination and human rights violations.
“The UN made ‘zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero HIV/AIDS-related deaths’ one of their Millennium Development Goals. How can they reach that goal by 2015 if criminalization still occurs?” he asks.
Read more on the Jakarta Globe website http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifestyle/bringing-indonesias-sex-workers-out-of-the-shadows/450956.
An extraordinary argument has broken out on Twitter between Ashton Kutcher and the Village Voice in relation to the statistics used in Kutcher's "Real Men Don't Buy Girls" campaign.
More background is provided here and here. Those of you who are online might want to get on over to Twitter and add your voices to those calling for an end to the use of 'junk science' in news and policy making.