Sex Work

Porn star Chanel Preston says that when she attempted to make a deposit into her new account, she learned it had been closed because of “compliance issues.”

She says that the manager who had helped her set up the account explained that the bank was worried about the live cam shows on her website and had decided to close the business account.

...Meanwhile, a former softcore porn producer in California is suing JPMorgan Chase after the bank refused to underwrite a loan for “moral reasons.”

The plaintiff — who actually sold his company several years ago — says it was the bank that had originally approached him about refinancing the loan, but after the refi got bogged down in months of delays, he eventually learned the truth.

In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiff states that Chase VP “finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff’s loan application was refused due to ‘moral reasons,’ because of JPMorgan’s disapproval of plaintiff’s former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality.”

He says the bank told him that Chase would be taking a “reputational risk” by going through with the loan.

“JPMorgan purports to be so ashamed of nudity and human sexuality that it cannot process a refinance of a home loan of plaintiff, secured by plaintiff’s house, because plaintiff’s source of income six years ago included production of television programs that contained nudity and human sexuality,” reads the complaint.

Porn on Google Glass? Porn MADE with Google Glass? Until now, previews of Google's new eyepiece have revolved around ziplines, roller coasters and skydives, but the upcoming release of Glass (TBA) could find the product in places the sun doesn't shine. Talks of utilizing the cutting-edge gadget in the pornographic industry have circulated, as both porn directors and actors have poked around this idea.

Sex work is just work. There is nothing so outrageous about the body being used as a means to generate income that the state must intervene to prevent us from doing so.

Former Victoria's Secret star Kylie Bisutti, who gave up modeling last February because it clashed with her Christian faith, has told how the fashion industry made her feel like a 'sex worker'.

The five-foot-ten brunette, 23, who was based in New York but now lives in the quiet town of Big Fork, Montana, with her husband, Mike, said on the Today show: 'It definitely felt like I was being made to sell sex. I just really started to feel exploited and sexualized.'

The local sex industry has almost doubled in the past 20 years and much of it occurs between the sheets in motel rooms across the New England North West.

Sex workers steer clear of hustling work off the street because in order for them to make money in country areas, they must be discreet.

The claims might startle some but it’s just some of the cold, hard evidence that has landed in front of UNE expert Professor John Scott, who’s been researching the industry for almost 20 years.

The adult film industry has always been replete with drama and taboo. Brent Corrigan's role in that continuing story is always evolving. Like the Corrigan character, actor Sean Paul Lockhart started in the industry when he was only 17 years old and has never looked back.

ChicagoPride.com first interviewed Corrigan in 2008. At that time he was producing and directing his own adult films. Today, Sean Paul Lockhart is involved in completely different work.

The actor, writer, producer and former adult star talks to ChicagoPride.com about his past, his future and his return to Chicago Memorial Day Weekend for the Grabby Awards.

A recent prostitution sting in Oakland has turned up a surprising new trend, some prostitutes are being forced to rob their clients when they don't meet their quota.

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According to police, if a prostitute has not made enough money, her pimp will force her to target her clients, taking the crime to a whole other level.

“And that level is robbery,” said Oakland Police spokesperson Johnna Watson. “They’ll take their wallet, money out of the ATM, and also their car.”

There is also a new twist. Pimps have been discovered selling whatever is stolen to the next john.

“Looking to capitalize from every angle possible,” Watson said.

Decriminalisation, it is claimed, would also guarantee better working conditions, and allow sex workers to report brothel owners involved in such crimes as trafficking or exploiting children as sex workers. Furthermore, the commission argued, sex workers would also have to declare their earnings and pay tax - which would give a fresh impetus to the perennial complaint of being screwed by SARS.

Anyway, there was such an egalitarian wholesomeness to all this - and who’s not for giving everyone some of that human dignity? - that reporters were duly dispatched to street corners to speak to whoever they found there on the game. The story they came back with was not so much that the activities of, let’s say, Lebo (“not her real name”) or Lola (“not his real name”) should be decriminalised, but rather that we must do all we can to keep the police away from these people.

The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force - which scares the horses under the very unappealing acronym of Sweat - recently completed a national survey of sex workers and found that 76 percent of them claim to have been robbed, raped and unlawfully arrested by the police. Given that there are more than 150 000 sex workers in the country, that’s a pretty large chunk of alleged rape and robbery.

Every year, women ranging from what the French call putes de luxes (high-priced call girls), who charge an average of $4,000 a night, to local streetwalkers, who normally get little more than $50 or $75 an hour turning tricks in nearby Nice, converge on Cannes for what one Parisian hooker calls "the biggest payday of the year." The influx is hard not to notice. "Hookers stand out in Cannes. They're the ones who are well-dressed and not smoking," tweeted Roger Ebert in 2010.

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, central to my work is my mission to provide education and awareness of the value of sex work and the need for equal rights and protection for our sex workers to my professional and surrounding communities. Although there is a great need for educational material relevant to practitioners in my field, resources are rare, so I am eager to introduce a new film, American Courtesans, an invaluable resource for therapists, clients, sex workers, as well as the general public.

The term “sex work,” she argues, moves away from the realms of legality and morality to the world of economics. It steers the discussion away from whether sex work is right or wrong, and away from the law, toward the real way most sex workers see their trade — as work. “Good managers, bad managers, well paid, not well paid — it’s a job.”

Sex workers in Johannesburg are demanding fair rights to operate within their industry. The Commission for Gender Equality says it has embarked on an investigation into how the law affects sex work.

It has discovered that the current laws which criminalise sex work in South Africa have failed sex workers and perpetuate abuse of their Constitutional rights. The Commission was briefing the media in Johannesburg on Thursday.

The Commission’s Janine Hicks says that the correct approach is to regard sex work as ordinary work, and allow the industry to be governed by existing labour and business laws intended to prevent unsafe, exploitative and unfair business practices.

The World Wide Web is very much like a cocktail party: You aren't sure who you'll meet, & drinking is optional.

In the realm of the Adult Webmaster, this is especially true. For like most parties, there are always the concerns of under-age attendees, party crashers (hackers), and those dreaded conservative neighbors who may call the cops.

Like any good host (or guest), we must be wise about our guest list ~ we should never tease minors or lure them into our festivities. We ought to do our best to not only be on the look out for the uninvited, but have plans in place in the event we do need to toss someone out as well as repair the damage done by such unwelcome guests. And we should do our best to make sure our party doesn't disturb our neighbors, or otherwise incite them into causing us legal problems. And if one angry person does make the call, we should have all our necessary papers at the ready (2257 etc), so that the interruption doesn't last long.

Women in Japan's island chain of Okinawa have demanded an apology from an outspoken Japanese politician who suggested US troops there make use of its thriving sex industry.

The comments from Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto came after he said "comfort women" – who most historians agree were pressed into sexual slavery for the Japanese imperial army during World War II – served a "necessary" role by keeping soldiers in line.

"Regardless of whether it is war-time or not, a view to use women as a tool [to let out sexual frustration] is intolerable," said Masako Ishimine, a senior member of a local women's body, quoted by the Okinawa Times, the day after Mr Hashimoto spoke.

"Does he mean women should simply take it because men work hard?"

The outrage came on the day Okinawa marked the 41st anniversary of its reversion to Japan at the end of post-WWII US occupation and after comments on history that provoked ire in South Korea and China.

Up to 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere were forcibly drafted into brothels catering to the Japanese military in territories occupied by Japan during WWII, according to many mainstream historians.