If you followed some of the media coverage last month around Eliot Spitzer’s resignation you may have thought to yourself, haven’t we been here before:
Step 1: Politician has sex for money/in a bathroom/with an intern
Step 2: Politicians sexual activities are “discovered”
Step 3: Media creates endless repetitive content which tells the same story they always, tell but with different pictures (bathroom stall, blue dresses, images of text messages, pictures of sex workers, etc…)
But there was something different with at least some of the coverage. Sex workers were engaged like never before and in some cases were actually listened to both in the content and by the editors.
This week the radio show Search Engine has a great interview this week with Melissa Gira, co-founder of Bound, Not Gagged and a member of the Desiree Alliance, about the ways that sex worker organizations, individual sex workers, and allies, worked together to influence and engage the vast media coverage surrounding the disclosure that Spitzer paid for sex. I had the chance to hear Gira and a colleague present at Sex:Tech earlier this year and found it fascinating to hear about the connections they make between sex work and work in advocacy, media, and IT. Just as we tend to segregate sex out from the rest of our lives we usually think of sex work as something that would offer a narrow set of skills, not easily adapted to other work. Of course we're wrong on both counts.
[disclosure note: I am related to one of the producers of Search Engine...and they’ve still never had me on their show.]
Listen to Search Engine - Sex Workers of the World Unite!!!
Read More – Regina Lynn: Twitter, iPhones Let Sex Workers Spread Their Gospel
Previously - Eliot Spitzer Roundup