Last night, federal agents seized longtime Bay Area sex work advertising network MyRedBook, arresting the editors and disabling the site in the process as part of an ongoing sex work sting. Longtime Bay Area based escort/massage advertising website MyRedBook seized by FBI. http://t.co/OuTLq7y478pic.twitter.com/aPv03szoSe — Melissa Gira Grant (@melissagira) June 25, 2014…

"Whore is maybe the original intersectional insult," writes journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant. In her new book Playing the Whore, part of a series by Jacobin writers published by Verso Press, she explores the sex industry from the perspective of the workers themselves. That includes strippers, porn performers, and prostitutes, whether they work on the street, in clubs, or even at home as independent porn performers. What she found was unnerving:…

“I know who held the knife, but they might as well have put it in his hands,” wrote the mother of Jasmine, a 27-year-old woman who was murdered on 11 July by her former partner. "They" here refers to the Swedish state, which had removed Jasmine's children from her home within hours of learning that she was a sex worker. Custody of the children was awarded to the man who subsequently killed her. As…