A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

  And yet another revision as of Sept. 10: Yes, the speaker lineup had more balance than I initially thought, but sex-worker organizations note that even so, the ratio was 2:1 in favour of further criminalization of the industry. A wise media scribe also noted that media tend to cover the first day and the last of a meeting, and that it had to be more than coincidence that the first day was almost exclusively anti-decriminalization.  Mea culpa: Turns out I was looking at only the first day of the Senate meetings when I wrote this, in which the lineup is very much abolitionist. But here's the full list for the 3 days of meetings , and I see many more sex-work groups have been invited to speak. Sorry, Senators! Carry on. Looks like the Conservative-controlled Canadian Senate is taking extreme measures to avoid hearing anything that might shake up their conviction that all sex workers are exploited victims when the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee consid...

   Still reeling from the news that they're putting Uzis into the hands of nine-year-olds for fun in the U.S. (well, at least until they accidentally kill their shooting instructor ), I now see that whites in the United States believe that anti-white racism is a bigger problem than anti-black racism. Oh, my.      But there's loads more in this piece from the New York Times than that little depressing tidbit. Like how the income gap between whites and blacks in the U.S. is now greater than it was in South Africa during apartheid. Or how a white boy born today in the U.S. will live an average five years longer than a black boy born at the same time.     Read it and weep, or at the very least confirm once and for all that race issues are very much alive and tragically well among our neighbours to the south, if recent events in Ferguson, Missouri leave any room for doubt. Americans are great people individually, but collectively they've got some se...

    Draw close to the debate about decriminalizing the sex industry in Canada and you will quickly learn that while sex workers' organizations are working hard to move this issue forward, they don't enjoy much support from most women's groups.     At least on the surface, the problem seems to boil down to a fundamental divide between those who see all sex work as exploitation and victimization, and those who support Canada's adult sex workers in making a free choice to work in the industry and in safe circumstance. Many women's groups have tended to align themselves with the exploitation side of the debate, which has left sex-worker-led organizations largely on their own to fight for safer working conditions, equality and basic human rights.     Given what a hot-button topic this is among women's groups,  it's a powerful thing that the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre has done in stepping up to the plate this week to announce its solidarity with C...

    Last week when I commented on Facebook and then reworked the comment into a blog post that I could tweet, I felt like I was one with the social-media universe. I know a lot of people who have mixed feelings about social media and how it's changing the cultural landscape and way we interact. But personally, I love it.     The big surprise for me has been Twitter, which I avoided for the longest time. The idea of being restricted to 140 measly characters just didn't do it for me, and I really didn't want a whole new "thing" to have to tend on-line.     But I finally caved a couple of months ago and signed on, only to discover that a well-planned Twitter feed is like having an army of story-hunters around the world connecting me to the most interesting and diverse angles on what's going on out there. I've never had so many interesting news stories put in front of me.    I like Facebook, too, although it tends to be used more as a gentle and...

     I wrote this response to a couple of my Facebook friends just now on a great comment thread that has developed on my Facebook site . The comments came after I posted a rather pleading message to people to get past the knee-jerk stuff around the Canadian sex industry and get informed before Bill C-36 becomes law. Figured I'd put it out to my blogger audience, too, because damn it, all of us who feel this way need to be shouting from the rooftops right now before this country goes and does something that is shameful, regressive, poorly considered, potentially harmful, discriminatory and mean.      For Lisa and Darlene, you are both my friends and I have MUCH time for both of you, and I do understand that this is a divisive subject. But this is a time for getting together to understand why each of us feels the way we do. I know that both your viewpoints come from your own life experiences. But we can't just stay here like this, in a standoff where...