Adult World News

The Italian city of Salerno is introducing a repressive anti-vice law making it illegal to even look like a prostitute in public. The new rules mean women wearing skimpy skirts, high heels or acting flirtatiously could be fined £400.

Prostitution is not illegal in Italy but the council said police were being encouraged to crack down on women violating urban decorum . A council spokesprat explained:

The recent rise in prostitution has come just as we are expecting our annual influx of foreign visitors, so it's important that we act to protect the reputation of our town. We are encouraging police to fine indiscreet and brazen prostitutes for violating urban decorum.

Germany's Cabinet approved a dangerous new law requiring sex workers to register with the federal government. The bill also mandates the use of condoms, adds new restrictions for brothels and requires official permits for operators, who will be screened for certain convictions. Those who have a history of fraud, blackmail or smuggling won't be able to qualify for permits.

Sex workers, with the proposed bill, also must receive health advice at least every two years, and brothel operators will be forbidden from giving them orders on the the nature and scale of sexual services.

The bill will now more to the German parliament for consideration. It is scheduled to become law in 2017.

Hydra e.V. , Germany's first sex workers' association said:

It would minimize our already scarce chances of finding another job, if we want, or drive us into illegality if we chose not to register for these very reasons. Moreover, we are sure that enforced counselling and registration would not present us with the perfect environment for reporting situations of abuse or exploitation. Finally, the legal enforcement of a practice within the realm of sex, however advisable, would affect our right to sexual self-determination over our own bodies.

Although not in force yet, we have noticed a growing panic around this threatening new law. Many are unsure of its precise stipulations and are scared of its consequences, the group said. The vast majority of us refuse the mere idea of ever getting registered. Sex workers are getting more and more suspicious of authorities and institutions, insecure about their future livelihood, and angry.

Our conviction is that sex workers know best what would improve their lives.

Thanks to a repressive new law, supposedly to protect tax revenues, every business now has to give customers service receipts - and that includes the sex clubs too.

But the question of how to declare services provided to customers has led to some confusion among sex club bosses and some interesting receipts being issued.

One boss has asked how they are expected to register services like a two hour 'chat' between an employee and a client. As a tip?, suggests Peter Laskaris, boss of the Laufhaus club in Vienna.

The new tax law introduced in recent weeks requires many businesses to install a new till system and issue a receipt to customers for every transaction so the tax can be recorded.

Meanwhile the manager of Maxim club in Vienna has also questioned whether they will need 20 different tills, each for a different woman who offers her services on a freelance basis.

Maxim boss Josef Stern was also concerned about the security of his employees: Putting the actual names and addresses of the girls on the receipt absolutely won't work for security reasons.

One receipt obtained by newspaper Heute carrying out investigative research in Maxim included 250 euros on a special sex act.

 

The number of sex workers in Ireland has increased by 80% since the Northern Ireland ban was introduced last year, a former UK sex worker has said.

Paying for sex was outlawed in Northern Ireland in June. Mia de Faoite gave evidence to a Home Affairs Committee at Westminster recently. She said:

When Northern Ireland changed its law, of course they moved south and the women for sale, they increased on our side of the border. It was up by 80%. So they moved to where it is legal to buy.

Sex worker campaigners have argued that the criminalisation of their customers has endangered sex workers by pushing the industry underground. Sex worker Laura Lee, who is leading a court challenge bidding to overturn the ban, told the committee the prohibition had created problems:

The difficulty that we have now, for example in Northern Ireland, after the criminalisation went through on 1 June, is that clients are refusing to use the online screening process that we have and so it is putting us into greater danger. It is a very, very useful tool to have but in a further criminalised state it can be sadly abandoned, I am afraid.

Jeremy Corbyn told students in London he wanted a society where we don't automatically criminalise people , The Guardian reported. He said:

I am in favour of decriminalising the sex industry. I don't want people to be criminalised. I want to be [in] a society where we don't automatically criminalise people.

Let's do things a bit differently and in a bit more civilised way.

Of course it did not take long for the nasty wing of the Labour party to crticise their leader and re-iterate that they would like to see men jailed just for wanting to get laid.

Ex-Labour deputy leader Harriet Hatemen claimed prostitution was exploitation and abuse not an industry .

Labour MP Jess Phillips spewed on Twitter:

Man says we should decriminalize a known violence against women. Why did it have to be this man,

But the English Collective of Prostitutes, which campaigns for decriminalisation, voiced its support for Corbyn's comments. Supporters of decriminalisation include Amnesty International, which says it would mean sex workers are no longer forced to live outside the law .

Comment: Right Whinger

6th March 2016. Thanks to Alan

Corbyn's de facto number two, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell, also has a laudable track record of fighting the corner of sex workers.

The nonentity Jess Phillips is a right-whinger with form for trying to undermine Corbyn. As for the bollox spouted by Harridan Hatemen, it mat be worth noting that the International Union of Sex Workers affiliated to the GMB, a TUC-affiliated union, which certainly seems to make them workers. Since HH's old man, Jack Dromey, is a former union official, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the Dromey-Hatemen kitchen at breakfast!

I never cease to be amazed by the capacity of purported feminists like Hatemen and Phillips to spew crap about prostitution without ever talking to a few tarts.

Update: Corbyn is right -- prostitution must be decriminalised

8th March 2016.  See  article from spiked-online.com by Ella Whelan

We shouldn't punish sex work. We shouldn't celebrate it, either.

Feminist campaigners have whinged about website designed to help British men find the best escorts in the UK .

The website is called EscortDeck and is a Google-style search engine for sex workers. It lets men find escorts in all major British cities and invites them to search for sex workers willing to indulge in particular kinks before filtering the women depending on their appearance or ethnicity.

The site is not actually doing anything illegal due to the complex laws governing the buying and selling of sex.

Karen Ingala Smith, CEO of an anti sex work campaign group called NIA claimed:

Our experience leads us to the view that prostitution is a cause and consequence of women's continued inequality and discrimination and is a form of violence against women.

Indonesia's governmant has said that the closure of the Kalijodo red light district in North and West Jakarta is just one step towards closing all 168 such areas across the country by 2019.

The government has already close down 68 red-light districts, while another 100 would be closed down within three years, said Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa.

In connection with the closure of Kalijodo red-light district, the Social Affairs Ministry has offered former sex workers in the Kalijodo red-light district training to provide them with the various skills they need for better jobs after leaving the district, which is being demolished by the Jakarta city administration.

Those, particularly from outside Jakarta, who take up the offers would be trained at the ministry's women social working facility (PSKW), said Khofifah during a visit to the center in Pasar Rebo, East Jakarta.

This place is open for all former prostitutes from outside Jakarta. We will register them after they arrive here.

However, so far no former prostitute has come to the PSKW to seek assistance at the ministry's facility, which currently only accommodates 25 former sex workers, who were arrested by Public Order Agency officers, although the center can accommodate some 120 people.

Sex Buyer Law

See  article from independent.co.uk

A parliamentary group comprised of MPs seeking to criminalise men for buying sex have commissioned a report from a strident campaign group supporting the same cause.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution commissioned a report from the campaign group End Demand. And shock horror, the report is a one sided diatribe of nastiness grasping at the vengeful opportunity to jail men just for wanting to get laid.

The extreme proposal from End Demand calls for British men who buy sex from sex workers while abroad on stag parties should be prosecuted in the UK under new laws that make paying for sex illegal. See proposal from enddemand.uk

Sex tourists and businessmen who pay for prostitutes on expense accounts would also be criminalised under the campaign groups proposals in the Sex Buyer Law report.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution chairman, Gavin Shuker, Labour MP for Luton South spewed:

Speaking personally, I think the idea has merit for one simple reason: many people's first experience of buying sex takes place abroad.

Criminalise the sex buyers, not the prostitutes

See  article from theguardian.com Catherine Bennett

In its report, Shifting the Burden , the all-party group recommended the introduction, instead, of a sex-buyer offence, of following the Nordic model. It then asked End Demand , a campaign to end commercial sexual exploitation, to find out how this could be implemented. The resulting report, produced by a commission on the sex buyer law, is to be launched in parliament this week. This concludes -- on the basis of evidence from Nottingham and Suffolk, as well as countries such as Sweden, which criminalise buyers -- that a similar law is overdue here, to reduce both the human and economic cost of prostitution.

Having participated in that commission, along with, among others, Alan Caton and Diane Martin, a survivor of the sex trade who has helped others to exit, I find it harder than ever to understand how any politician, local or otherwise, would want to perpetuate, by legalising it, a trade so staggeringly unequal and so dependent on the trafficked and marginalised. In Germany, which did precisely that in 2002, the resulting brothels are warehouses of migrant women, pimped for bargain basement prices. Legalisation has failed, it turns out, both to inspire more gallantry in clients and to convince many German women that supplying oral and anal sex on demand could make a nice change from waitressing.

Comment: Disgraceful article by Catherine Bennett in today's Observer

22nd February 2016. Thanks to Alan

There is an appalling article by Catherine Bennett in today's Observer, pimping the Nordic model . I'm baffled that a purportedly liberal newspaper should print this grotesquely illiberal crap, taking any bullshit spouted by an authoritarian Swedish pseudo-feminist as gospel. So, for Bennett, the nasty Swedish minister of injustice points out blah, blah, blah.... Err, no, point out is a factive verb, claiming veracity for what follows. The minister actually tendentiously claims blah, blah, blah....

The Guardian and Observer really seem all over the place where sex is concerned. They seem to have a check list of approved sexual behaviours/persons. Hence they're all for buggery by male homosexuals, whom only a bigot would prevent from marrying one another, but Bennett has a fit of the vapours at the very idea of a lady of the night letting a bloke up her bum. At least the traditional taboos imposed by religion had a logical secular motive - to encourage legitimate offspring by condemning sexual practices that couldn't produce kids (buggery, masturbation) or cast doubt on their legitimacy (adultery). The Guardian/Observer system seems to pick its does and don't at random.

Needless to say, totally absent from Bennett's drivel is any input from women who actually work in the industry. When one considers that Max Mosley' lady friends were routinely described as prostitutes (and Lord Justice Eady seemed to acquiesce in that description), I wonder whether Bennett and the Observer might not more usefully consider why a woman with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry finds it more satisfying and/or remunerative to have her bum spanked than to use her academic qualifications in lecture theatre or lab.

Germany is considering a new law that will require men to wear condoms during sex with sex workers.

Under the proposed law, sex workers would be required to register and meet regularly with government health counselors. The law would also ban sex workers from living in the rooms where they work.

The proposed law could enter into force on July 1, 2017, said a spokesman for women's affairs in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

The Global Network of Sex Worker Projects' (NSWP) Regional Correspondent in Europe gathered together comments from sex workers. PG from Hydra said:

It is a bad sign, she said, this law won't protect sex workers. It is just about control. This new law comes in one package with forced registration and health 'counselling'.

According to PG, a similar law is already in place in Bavaria. Sex workers there have to register and condom usage is mandatory. Bavarian police are sending fake clients to sex workers asking for unprotected sex and if the sex worker agrees, they will be punished.

Germany legalised sex work in 2002. Under current laws, sex workers can collect public unemployment insurance and medical coverage.

Obligatory condom usage is implemented in New Zealand as well, where everyone should use a condom and/or dental dam for vaginal, oral and anal sex.

Paris, as everyone knows, is the city of love, the place where most people say they would like to have a romantic affair. Well, out of Paris comes a new development in the hotel trade that's calculated to help lovers in their quest for time alone - a website that helps couples book daytime hotel rooms.

French website Dayuse.com is even now ushering in daytime guests to crisp-sheeted bedrooms, complete with trouser-press and kettle, from Sao Paolo to Singapore - and of course in Paris.

In many of the world's big cities, hotels have been hard hit by home-share sites like Airbnb. In Paris there are now more Airbnb rooms on offer than hotel rooms. Every device to recoup lost income is welcome - so what better way than to sell your rooms twice over?

Dayuse has a variety of offers. A typical Paris experience might be a hotel in the Latin Quarter charging 80 euros (£62) for a morning booking (0900 - 1300), and 95 (£73) for the afternoon. Night-time prices would be double that.

Interestingly, Dayuse makes it very clear that no credit cards are needed in order to book. Is this a hint of the target clientele? After all, as everyone knows, rogue receipts are the worst enemy of the undercover Lothario. Lorenzo Sciotti, Dayuse's business development manager commented:

Our primary market is business-people - people who need a rest between flights, or a place for interviews or meetings. After that we are targeting people who want to use hotel facilities in the day-time, like spas and swimming-pools.

Of course, there are couples who use Dayuse - and we welcome them. But they are not our priority.

The Brussels muslim mayor has proposed laws intended to suffocate the red light window business located near Brussels North station.

According to sex workers, the owners of the buildings are opposing a regulation brought forward by Mayor Emir Kir. Twenty two bordello owners on Linne street will now take their case to court.

The new laws mean that window owners will see the fees rise from 950 to 3000 euros. The sex workers will also have to show conformity and medical certificates. Their working hours will also be reduced by 25%.

One of the owners, Pascale De Bruycker, said:

We have been trying to provide a conformity certificate since August, but the commune has always found ways to refer the issue. The mayor Emir Kir does not want to give new certificates, but he will close our bordellos if we don't have any.

The Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) has commended New Hampshire representatives Elizabeth Edwards, Amanda Bouldin, and Carol McGuire, who introduced House Bill 1614 that seeks to decriminalize prostitution in New Hampshire.

On January 28, there was a hearing on the Bill before the New Hampshire Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

Interestingly, representative Dick Marston (Republican) was quoted as saying, This bill can't be supported by women because my wife would hate this bill. This despite the fact that all three of House Bill 1614's sponsors are women, and that a series of women spoke in support of the Bill at a press conference. Maxine Doogan, President of the Erotic Service Providers Legal Education and Research Project said:

This is groundbreakingThe criminalization of prostitution is a failed policy. The 'War on Sex' hasn't stopped anyone from buying or selling sex, but it has caused a lot of collateral damage, to poor women, women of color, and trans women. It's about time that the government stopped intervening in what consenting adults do in private.

Adult magazine Penthouse will end its US print edition after 50 years. Parent company FriendFinder Networks Inc. said the magazine will henceforth be released in online-only format and that subscriptions would be converted to digital.

The magazine division, which operated out of New York, will move to the company's Los Angeles-based office.

Besides publishing Penthouse, FriendFinder Networks operates a number of adult-oriented social networking sites including AdultFriendFinder.com, Amigos.com, AsiaFriendFinder.com and SeniorFriendFinder.com.

Bob Guccione began publication of Penthouse in Britain in 1965 and four years later in the United States, earning him a fortune estimated at $400 million at one point with a more explicit alternative to Hugh Hefner's Playboy.

But as the Internet became dominant in porn, Penthouse publisher General Media Inc., which was 85 percent owned by Guccione, filed for bankruptcy in 2003, which led to its acquisition by FriendFinder Networks.

Correction: Reports of the demise of the print edition were incorrect

24th January 2016. See  article from money.cnn.com Thanks to Sabreman64

Several news outlets reported late last week that the porn magazine Penthouse was shuttering its print operations to go all-digital.

Penthouse managing director Kelly Holland says none of it is true.

Yes, Penthouse is launching a new digital format, an upgrade to its current web offerings. And it is true that the magazine laid off all of the more than 20 employees in its New York City offices last week as it relocates to Los Angeles. But Holland insists that nobody at the company said that Penthouse will do away with print. S he told CNNMoney:

One news outlet picks it up and gets it wrong. Then everyone picks it up and gets it wrong.

The tsunami of misinformation, as Holland put it, stems from what she concedes was a possibly weakly crafted press release. The press release title stated, PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE GOES DIGITAL! It went on to explain that the publication will be released in digital format and that future issues of the magazine will be available electronically through subscription. Nowhere in the release does it say the magazine is ceasing publication of its print edition.

Perhaps the press release should have said, 'Penthouse launches a digital platform in conjunction with its print publication,' she added.

The Home Affairs Committee is launching an inquiry into the way prostitution is treated in legislation. In particular, the inquiry will assess whether the balance in the burden of criminality should shift to those who pay for sex rather than those who sell it. Saying that, the only discussion points on the agenda are in support of the premise.

Inquiry: Prostitution Home Affairs Committee

Terms of Reference

Written evidence is invited on the following issues:

• Whether criminal sanction in relation to prostitution should continue to fall more heavily on those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it.
• What the implications are for prostitution-related offences of the Crown Prosecution Service's recognition of prostitution as violence against women.
• What impact the Modern Slavery Act 2015 has had to date on trafficking for purposes of prostitution, what further action is planned, and how effectively the impact is being measured.
• Whether further measures are necessary, including legal reforms, to:
  - Assist those involved in prostitution to exit from it
  - Increase the extent to which exploiters are held to account
  - Discourage demand which drives commercial sexual exploitation

Written submissions for this inquiry should be submitted online by midday on Thursday 18 February 2016.

A red-light district in Leeds has now been made a permanent fixture.

The street prostitution zone has been allowed to continue indefinitely despite the recent death of sex worker Daria Pionko who was found with fatal injuries inside the managed area in Leeds.

Councillor Mark Dobson, Leeds City Council's executive member for Safer Leeds, called the death of Miss Pionko a tragedy but insisted a managed area was needed to protect sex workers.

Under the scheme sex workers are allowed to ply their zone in the designated part of the Holbeck area of the city between 7pm and 7am, but council chiefs are looking at extending the hours women can work . Cllr Dobson said:

I accept that there are people who will always have a moral objection to the issue of prostitution.

I'm of the opinion that it is an industry that's as old as time and it isn't going to stop and, as a city that is responsible and cares about the people who live here - including the women who work in this industry - we have had to take a pragmatic approach to keep them safe.

The managed area isn't a universal cure-all. Sex work remains - as last month proved - an extremely dangerous and fraught occupation. But it's incumbent on us to make it as safe as possible.

A female police officer has been assigned to specifically interact with sex workers in the managed area. Superintendent Sam Millar  said:

Our job is to keep people safe and that applies when people put themselves in risky situations. Sex work is high risk and that is not something that we should ignore. Having gone through years and years of enforcement, which hasn't achieved the outcomes of breaking the cycle of sex work, we wanted to do something different which might help us better achieve those outcomes, to be brave and take some risks.

According to the council, since the area was set up, complaints from residents have fallen. Area community safety co-ordinater Zahid Butt said: For 10 to 15 years this issue dominated residents' meetings. It doesn't do that in the same way now.

West Yorkshire Police said that sex workers are much more likely to talk to officers and report crimes committed against them.

US police have shut down TheReviewBoard.net, one of the best known and highly used escort review forums in the Seattle area.

TheReviewBoard.net operated for several years. The site describes itself as

Here local Seattle hobbyists and providers gather to share information, or chat in a relaxed environment.

The website's home page has now been hijacked by police and shows a message indicating it has been:

Seized pursuant to a promoting prostitution investigation conducted by the King County Sheriff's Office, the Bellevue Police Department, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to KIRO-TV, eight men associated with TheReviewBoard.net site were arrested for promoting prostitution, money laundering, and various other charges.

The Sex Workers Outreach Project, known as SWOP, condemned the site's seizure and noted that there is resulting collateral damage.

SWOP believes the closure of TheReviewBoard.net is the latest in a long history of abuses of people in the sex trade that puts these communities in more vulnerable and often more dangerous situations.

Along with raids, attacks on web-based communities like TRB harm both native and non-native sex workers. In addition to a discussion forum, TRB functioned as a free advertising platform for adult workers. Many adult workers in the Northwest relied on the site as a low-barrier and free way to advertise and work without management, indoors, especially subsequent to MyRedbook's closure new barriers for using Backpage to advertise.

Capri Sunshine, a local sex worker and the SWOP-Seattle media coordinator, said:

The site was valuable to a lot of sex workers. It was free, undocumented workers without ID or credit cards could use it, and it was where most girls got the majority of their work

FHM has become the latest lads' mag to bow out after a history of 31 years of publishing.

The final issue of the magazine hit the shelves yesterday and features TV presenter Holly Willoughby. She first fronted the magazine in 2008. Willoughby poses in a black dress alongside the witty cover line: Ashes to Ashes, Bust to Bust .

Bauer Media, which owns FHM, said in November that it would be closing the magazine after dramatic losses in circulation.

Amsterdam closed eight massage parlors late last year after evidence was found indicating that they were used for illegal prostitution. Eight more massage parlors were told they have to close, newspaper Het Parool reports.

The local council investogated 22 parlors, most of them Thai and Chinese massage parlors. They looked for trace evidence, scantily clad women and sexually related objects in the parlors. They also looked at internet reviews.

Three of the checked massage parlors were clean, in three others there was not enough evidence to prove illegal prostitution took place. Eight were closed immediately and eight others were informed that they had to close.

The council claims that the parlours provide unsafe working environments and also considers unlicensed parlours to be unfair competition for licensed sex companies, who have to comply with various restrictive rules and regulations.