Sunday Sex Reads: Best of the Week

“The evidence that the arrival of a Super Bowl correlates with an increase in trafficking ranges from fuzzy to nonexistent. The few statistics regarding arrests made in and around the game often conflate prostitution and coercive sex trafficking. Reports can be misleading. After the 2014 Super Bowl, New Jersey authorities announced that antitrafficking efforts “recovered 16 children between the ages of 13 and 17 and arrested more than 45 pimps and their associates in Super Bowl–related activities.” The release did not mention that this abnormally high figure was culled from a tristate area and backdated to months preceding the kickoff.”
* Investigating the Super Bowl sex-trafficking myth (Sports Illustrated)
See also: Selling Snake Oil: Anti-trafficking Awareness Campaigns 2017 (Desiree Alliance/Google Docs)

“The government is about to adopt a law known as the Swedish model that would make it illegal to pay for sex. … Frances Fitzgerald, the justice minister, rejected attempts by opposition parties to soften an anti-sex work bill by claiming that the measures would be exploited by pimps. Amnesty International warned that the human rights of sex workers would be undermined and that the government had failed to heed international evidence.”
* Bill makes sex workers ‘poorer and unsafe’ (Times UK)

“I was placed in front of a microphone, pointed directly at the display, with a vibrating saddle donning a fleshy silicone nub at my feet and a petite fuck machine thrusting into thin air just behind me. The microphone was meant to enable two-way communication but was useless due to the surrounding noise. I stood mostly still as I attempted small talk with Monroe, who writhed around a plastic folding chair. She was like a small, soft-core stripper version of the Wizard of Oz on mute. It was, by far, the most bizarre lap dance I’ve ever experienced.”
* Porn doesn’t need a XXX hologram (Engadget)

“In 2015, MSNBC reported that the estimated revenue from the pornography industry in the United States was between $10 billion and $12 billion dollars. Tarrant notes the range and says it’s hard to get at firm figures because it’s been understudied by economists who routinely study other industries. She also says a lot of the companies that produce and distribute online pornography are private enterprises and under no obligation to disclose their finances.”
* Porn-o-nomics: Drawing back the curtain on the online porn industry (CBC)

“The cover of Paris Match magazine late last year featured a handsome, 30-something man strolling arm in arm with an attractive blond woman in her 60s. The same couple were on the cover of a summer issue, holding hands at the beach, and on a spring edition dressed up for a state dinner. … He’s the upstart presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, and she’s his former high school French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, now his close adviser and wife.”
* Sex and the French Elections (NYT)

“[The sewing machine] sits there, before a multi-coloured display case filled with high- heeled shoes, plastic models of fruit, a penis-shaped ashtray and small figurines of couples copulating in various positions, as a symbol of the vast and misunderstood world that sex workers inhabit. … Called This Is Us, the museum on the third floor of Empower’s office in Nonthaburi province hopes to give some context to all of that.”
* Thai museum tackles stigma surrounding sex workers (Straits Times)

“A human won’t be able to compete in this world. A studio will be able to hire a porn actor for a thousand dollars or just rent the software and create one for less,” said Ian Pearson, a senior futurologist at the communication agency Futurizon, a former British Telecommunications engineer, and a chartered fellow of the British Computer Society.”
* Automation Is Coming for Our Porn Stars (Vice/Motherboard)

“What has also shifted is the perception of who an adult actor or actress is. Thanks to social media, many performers now have a direct way of communication with their viewers and displaying their personality. Additionally, several adult actresses are outspoken and have engaged in activism – speaking out when they feel they have not been treated with respect or have been taken advantage of.”
How porn has changed since the 90s (Independent UK)

“On the morning of January 25, 1917, the anti-vice crusader Reverend Paul Smith opened the door of the Central Methodist Church in the Tenderloin, surprised to find 50 prostitutes bearing down on him. And the women kept coming, until they numbered more than 200.”
* 100 Years Ago Today, Sex Workers Marched for Their Rights in San Francisco (Modern Luxury)

“… Even if hitting the sheets right after pounding the streets isn’t appealing, the effects of a running routine—on the heart, circulation, and self-esteem—will have long-term benefits for one’s sex life, Penhollow said. But at extremes, too much running can damage desire. Testosterone drops, cortisol peaks, and women can stop menstruating, all of which destroy the libido.”
* How Does Running Affect Your Sex Life? (Runner’s World)

Main post image via DNA Lounge (SEQUENCING: Backstage) ; photo by Cody Molica from the Hubba Hubba Revue “Brovember” event.