Adult World News

In 2014, the Canadian parliament, then dominated by the country's Conservative Party, passed Bill C-36, which for the first time made paying for sex a crime. The new law also outlawed receiving a material benefit from the sale of sex, as well as the advertising of sexual service.

The bill was misleadingly titled the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, but the actual aim of the legislation was to serve as a first step toward stamping out sex work altogether in Canada.

When the 'Liberal' Party won a majority shortly after the bill took effect, the new government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to review the effects of the law after five years.

With 2019 coming to a close, that five-year wait is also up, and Canadian sex worker rights activists say that the 'Liberal' government has done nothing to evaluate or reform the law -- which they say has put sex workers' lives at risk , and been a gift to sexual predators.

According to a VICE report on the law's effects, Canadian sex workers now can't work in brothels, can't hire security and can't properly screen clients, because those clients generally will not give their true identities for fear of arrest.

A spokesperson for Canada's Ministry of Justice said only that the law mandates that a committee study the effects of Bill C-36, and that committee is now being formed.

China is to end a punishment system for prostitution that allowed police to hold sex workers and their clients in custody for up to two years in prison camps it euphemistically called 'education centres'. Detainees were forced to work, allegedly making toys and household goods.

The detention system will come to an end on 29 December. Those still in custody will be released, according to Xinhua, China's state media.

Prostitution remains illegal in China. It carries punishments of up to 15 days in detention and fines of up to 5,000 yuan (£546).

A 2013 report by Human Rights Watch interviewed 140 sex workers, clients, police and specialists and found that many sex workers were beaten by police in an attempt to coerce confessions.

China isn't totally abandoning the idea of 're-educatio'n. Authorities in the country claim a number of camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang are voluntary education camps that help to combat extremism.

Australia's Northern Territory Parliament has voted to decriminalise sex work through the Sex Industry Bill 2019 . The Bill decriminalises brothels, soliciting and indoor sex work, and gives sex workers access to workplace health and safety protections already extended to other workers in the state.

CEO of Scarlet Alliance, Jules Kim said :

This is a momentous day for all sex workers and sets a positive example that sex workers are valued members of the community, deserving of rights and protections. We applaud the NT Government for listening to sex workers and the evidence in fully decriminalising sex work in the NT. Sex work is work and it is fantastic that it is finally being recognised as such. We hope that these critical reforms will demonstrate the importance of best practice partnerships between sex workers and government and lead to similar campaigns for the decriminalisation of sex work in other states and territories throughout Australia.

This past summer, without much fanfare, Facebook updated their censorship rules concerning sexual expression on the company's platforms, including Instagram.

The new language, under the guise of preventing sexual solicitation, restricts even further the posts that sex workers are allowed to share, making them even more exposed to targeted harassment campaigns by anti-sex crusaders.

Among the new things that could get someone Instagram's account flagged and/or removed for Sexual Solicitation: the eggplant or peach emoji in conjunction with any statement referring to being horny; nude pictures with digital alterations or emojis covering female nipples and buttocks.

The new rules include:

Do not post:

Attempted coordination of or recruitment for adult sexual activities, including but not limited to:

Filmed sexual activities Pornographic activities, strip club shows, live sex performances, erotic dances Sexual, erotic, or tantric massages

Explicit sexual solicitation by, including but not limited to the following, offering or asking for:

Sex or sexual partners Sex chat or conversations Nude photos/videos/imagery

Content that meets both of the following criteria:

Criteria 1: Offer or Ask

Content implicitly or indirectly offers or asks for:

Nude imagery, or Sex or sexual partners, or Sex chat conversations

Criteria 2: Suggestive Elements

Content makes the aforementioned offer or ask using one of the following sexually suggestive elements:

Contextually specific and commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings, or Regional sexualized slang, or Mentions or depictions of sexual activity (including hand drawn, digital, or real world art) such as: sexual roles, sex positions, fetish scenarios, state of arousal, act of sexual intercourse or activity (sexual penetration or self-pleasuring), or Imagery of real individuals with nudity covered by human parts, objects, or digital obstruction, including long shots of fully nude butts

Australian men's magazine the Picture and the 69-year-old People magazine will close at the end of the year, ending decades of printed weeklies featuring topless models and readers' sex stories.

Their publisher, Bauer Media, was forced to axe the magazines after retailers lined up to ban them from sale at service stations; and readership fell to 0.02% of the population over 14 for People magazine and 0.01% for the Picture. They are already banned from sale in supermarkets.

Discussions to close the Picture and People magazines have been taking place, as the magazines have lost ranging [visibility], which has affected their commercial viability, a spokeswoman for Bauer Media told Guardian Australia.

The magazines will be closing at the end of the year and we're working closely with staff to find suitable redeployment.

The latest retailer to ban the publication is BP who own 350 stores at petrol stations. BP's statement followed a decision by the 7-Eleven chief executive, Angus McKay, last month to order all 700 franchisees and store managers to urgently pull the magazines from sale.

Warning...the T-3000 model is equipped with a summary justice module

Designing Virtuous Sex Robots

By Anco Peeters and Pim Haselager

Abstract

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character.

Our evaluation develops in four steps.

• First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human - robot relationships.
  

• Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users.
  

• Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human - robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios.
  

• Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility.